Ogino Anna and parodic language

Abstract

Ogino Anna drew both critical and popular attention with a collection of parodic ‘fiction‐critiques’ entitled Watashi no aidokusho (My love‐hate affair with books) in 1991. She has added many more titles to the list of her works since then, most of which are parodic fiction‐critiques and parody‐like works of fiction. This paper examines how parodic language in some of these texts works to trace the operations that produce what qualifies as ‘men’ and ‘women’ of different classes and categories. The paper attempts at the same time to highlight the subversive function of laughter that disrupts the process by which the narrator‐protagonists of the same texts become subjected to the discursive effects of their own parodic scrutiny. I also seek to address some problems of feminist politics recently brought to attention by critics such as Judkh Butler and Teresa Ebert. Considering Ogino's parody as a possible, if not entirely unproblematic, attempt at a new feminist strategy of subversion, I ask the question of how resistance is, or is not, possible after identity politics and oppositional subjects have fallen into disrepute.

Keywords:

• parody
• laughter
• post‐modernism
• self‐reflexivity
• feminism
• resistance