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The Deafening Silence of the Korean “Comfort Women”: A Response Based on Lyotard and Irigaray

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2015

Constance Youngwon LEE  and
Jonathan CROWE
Constance Youngwon LEE
Affiliation:
T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia
Jonathan CROWE
Affiliation:
T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia
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Abstract

This article reflects upon the continuing historical denialism concerning the Korean “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. We argue that the refusal of the Japanese government and others to squarely confront this wrong is made possible through the exploitation of a différend in Jean-François Lyotard’s sense of the term. The différend arises from a complex set of social, cultural, and legal sources, including patriarchal, colonial, and nationalistic constructions of the wrong and its victims. We seek to tentatively expose the nature of the différend by identifying these factors. We then sketch the beginnings of a possible response, drawing on Luce Irigaray’s strategy of emphasizing sexual difference and separation to pave the way for reciprocality between the sexes. The testimonies of the “comfort women” must be allowed to speak for themselves before a response can emerge based in other discourses.

Keywords

“comfort women”silencingdenialismJean-François LyotardLuce Irigaray
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , November 2015 , pp. 339 - 356
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

Tutor and LLM Candidate, T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland.

**

Associate Professor, T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland. The authors thank Siân Littledale and Bonita Wong for their excellent research assistance and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments. A version of this article was presented at the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy Conference at Murdoch University in June 2014. We are grateful to all who participated in the discussion. Correspondence to Jonathan Crowe, T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia. E-mail address: j.crowe@law.uq.edu.au.

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