Abstract
In this article, we offer a new conceptualization of intellectuals as carriers of cultural trauma through a case study of the Aum Affair, a series of crimes and terrorist attacks committed by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyō. In understanding the performative roles intellectuals play in trauma construction, we offer a new dichotomy between “authoritative intellectuals,” who draw on their privileged parcours and status to impose a distinct trauma narrative, and “dialogical intellectuals,” who engage with local actors dialogically to produce polyphonic and open-ended trauma narratives. We identify three dimensions of dialogical intellectual action: firstly, the intellectuals may be involved in dialogue with local participants; secondly, the intellectual products themselves may be dialogical in content; and thirdly, there might be a concerted effort on the part of the intellectuals to record and to disseminate dialogue between local participants. In the context of the Aum Affair, we analyze the works of Murakami Haruki and Mori Tatsuya as dialogical intellectuals while they sought, with the help of local actors’ experiences, to challenge and to alter the orthodox trauma narrative of Aum Shinrikyō as exclusively a social evil external to Japanese society and an enemy to be excluded from it. Towards the end of the article, we discuss the broader significance of this case study and suggest that in light of recent societal and technological developments, the role and scope of dialogical intellectuals as carriers of trauma are changing and possibly expanding.
Highlights
In this article, we offer a new conceptualization of intellectuals as carriers of cultural trauma through a case study of the Aum Affair, a series of crimes and terrorist attacks committed by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyō
This article contributes to sociology of intellectuals and cultural trauma theory through a case study of the aftermath of the 1995 Tokyo sarin incident, the worst terrorist attack to take place in Japan in the post-War period
We offer the dichotomy of Bauthoritative intellectuals^ and Bdialogical intellectuals^ as two genres of intellectuals who engage in distinct kinds of trauma work
Summary
The concept of cultural trauma is fundamental to this study. Cultural trauma theory holds that certain historical events have indelible and enduring effects on collective. We develop and refine a new concept of intellectuals whose performative role is to contribute to shared understandings of cultural trauma through dialogical engagement with local actors, rather than to dictate authoritative accounts to the public. As we show in the case study, Murakami engages in the second type of dialogical action, while Mori displays both the second and third types of dialogical intervention Because of their mode of public engagement, we contend, dialogical intellectuals can create dialogical and polyphonic trauma narratives that, instead of imposing authoritative interpretations, and can help to introduce nuance, uncertainty, and contradictions to interpretations. Unlike Gramsci’s Btraditional intellectuals^ who uphold hegemony in the service of the dominant class, authoritative intellectuals frequently position themselves as outsiders and impartial voices of reason, and critique the ruling elite with the purpose of speaking Btruth to power^ (Said 1994) Such intellectuals can subvert official silence on historical events or governmental whitewashing through accusation, fact-finding, and counter-narration. Mori’s case raises questions about the relationships between intellectuals and access to means of symbolic production, their supposed Bfree-floating^ nature, and raises the possibility that, rather than cultural capital facilitating trauma work, dialogical trauma work may provide the cultural capital to perform subsequently as public intellectuals
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