Waiting, Witnessing, Withholding

Abstract

The conclusion takes up the question of mourning under colonial rule. It argues that the records of struggle and domination taken up in the book confirm the impatient stirrings of loved ones gone that weigh upon the living—stirrings that are refusals of what Dionne Brand calls the “aesthetics of imperialism.” It takes up the work of Okinawan writer Shinj? Ikuo, who warns that the first rule of struggling against the colonial nature of knowledge production is to “not speak carelessly.” Thinking with another Okinawan writer, Okamoto Keitoku, Shinj? cautions that careless speech places people in danger and points to the Japanese intellectual, confident in his ability to speak for Okinawa and treat it as allegory, as the primary propagator of such speech. The conclusion extends this critique to North America–based Japan studies.