SELF-RECOVERY AND VIOLENCE AS A FORM OF RE-HUMANIZATION: KENZABURO OE, THE SILENT CRY (MAN’EN GANNEN NO FUTTOBORU, 1967)

Abstract

This study attempts to demonstrate the ambivalent role of violence, which, as suggested in the Japanese novel, is simultaneously destructive and constructive. The history of mankind, which is in constant metamorphosis, appears to be defined, both from a mythical and socio-political perspective and from an intellectual or psychological vantage point, as struggle and violence. This is one of the reading interpretations proposed by the Japanese novel, in which the dialectics of violence targets more than an ideological revolution or political transformation, since, by acquiring the connotations of sacredness and rebirth, it finally bears witness to a process of self-recovery and re-humanization. Admixing elements of real history in a fictional trauma, Kenzaburō Ōe’s novel amounts to what might be called a fiction of the real. In order for the history of this seemingly lost present not to fall prey to ideology and political abuse, the Japanese author proposes a return to myth, without idealising it; though the appeal to logos demands the rethinking of tradition according to the future it may give rise to. Humanism has been interrogated