Representations of Public Spaces and the Construction of Race in Yoko Tawada's "Bioskoop der Nacht"

• Published in: The German Quarterly Vol. 90; no. 2; pp. 196 - 211
• Main Author: Redlich, Jeremy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cherry Hill American Association of Teachers of German 01.04.2017; Wiley; John Wiley & Sons, Inc; American Association of Teachers of German, Inc
• Subjects: Analysis; Bioskoop der Nacht; Criticism and interpretation; Cultural Background; Cultural Context; Cultural differences; Cultural heritage; Ethnicity; Ideology; Individualized Instruction; Intellectual History; Japanese literature; Linguistics; Literary Criticism; Multilingualism; Performativity; Portrayals; public space; Public spaces; Race; Racial Factors; Racial Identification; Racial Segregation; Rhetoric; Rhetorical figures; Segregation; Self Actualization; Semantics; Tawada, Yoko; Tawada, Yoko (1960- ); Transnationalism; whiteness; Works; Writers; Yoko Tawada; South Africa; Japan
• ISSN: 0016-8831; 1756-1183
• DOI: 10.1111/gequ.12032

However, despite the prominence of dermal and racial tropes throughout her oeuvre, there has been little discussion in secondary scholarship on this ideologically provocative aspect of Tawada's work. To illustrate Tawadas highly critical engagement with, and deconstruction of, racialized identities, the following analysis focuses on the short story "Bioskoop der Nacht" through a theoretical lens informed by critical race theory, theories of racial performativity and critical whiteness studies. Specifically, I investigate how public spaces, like a public toilet and a segregated public bench, can be consequential in producing a subject's identification with a racial category, which over time sediments as a naturalized and normalized fact of nature that seemingly never required constituting in the first place.