The State You’re In: Citizenship, Sovereign Power, and The (Political) Rescue of the Self in Kazuko Kuramoto’s Manchurian Legacy

Abstract

This article investigates the significance of Kazuko Kuramoto’s Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist (1999) as a life narrative that foregrounds the biopolitical implications of modern subjectivity in the context of the global system of nation states. Using the theoretical insights of, primarily, Giorgio Agamben, Carl Schmitt, and Georg Simmel, I argue that Kuramoto’s record of her own experience between Manchuria, Japan, and the United States, showcases the fundamental conflict between the nation and the family as the largest and smallest social circles vying for the individual’s allegiance. This discussion will show that the nation-state’s claim is preeminent and that the political is fundamental to the construction of a viable subjectivity in the modern world, leaving complete exclusion as the only alternative.

Keywords

• nationalism
• autobiography
• nation-state
• biopolitics
• life narrative
• sovereign power