Okinawa After Area (Studies): Writing Historically from the Belly of the Beast

Abstract

This paper traces the transformations in the authors thought from the publication of her first monograph, The Limits of Okinawa to her second, Waiting for the Cool Moon so as to clarify what she believes are the ethical and political obligations of a scholar of modern Okinawan history who writes from within the (settler colonial) North American academia. In particular, the stability of the category of “Okinawa,” narrative form, the colonial gaze embedded in notions of archival mastery, and clarifying what it means to write from the current conjecture are explored in the paper.