Abstract
This chapter explores monstrous motherhood in Hideaki Sena’s Parasite Eve and Ken Asamatsu’s Queen of K’n-Yan. Dumas examines Eve with reference to the discourse of “maternal excess” that has materialized in contemporary Japan, reading its titular antagonist as a metaphor for the dissolution of established identity paradigms in an era marked by shifting familial dynamics and economic transformation. Referencing Jacques Derrida’s neologism hauntology, she examines female monstrosity in K’n-Yan as a vehicle for engaging the traumatic memory of Japanese wartime aggression amid the intensification of neo-nationalist rhetoric in 1990s Japan. Dumas also contrasts the conclusions of these titles, arguing that while the tidy resolution of Eve reinforces established gender paradigms, the apocalyptic K’n-Yan constructs a powerful critique of patriarchal discourses on Japanese nationhood.
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Dumas, R. (2018). Xenogenesis: Monstrous Mothers and Evolutionary Horrors in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction. In: The Monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92465-6_3
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