top of page

Talk#15: Tricksters and Troublesome Women: Strategies of Gendered Identities and Social Change

in Two Moments in Postwar Japan

Saturday, 19 November 2022, 10-11AM JST

Speakers: Chelsea Szendi Schieder (Professor, AGU) and Daniela Lazoroska (Postdoc, AGU)



In this discussion, Daniela Lazoroska (Aoyama Gakuin University) and Chelsea Szendi Schieder (Aoyama Gakuin University) introduce two moments in postwar Japanese social movements that may be used to reconceptualize ideas about gendered political and social participation. Lazoroska explores women’s experiences of leadership in solar energy communities in post-3/11 Japan, and their appeal to "disembodied" knowledge as a way of evading positioning. Schieder discusses how women’s entry into postwar Japanese politics was predicated on an idea about women’s “apolitical” authenticity, a strategy that defined much of the housewife activism of the 1950s and 1960s. In conversation, we tease out the resonances, and reflect on which subjects or political subjectivities are seen as possessing moral legitimacy to instigate social change. We propose the framework of the “trickster” to explore how some politically active women may play in the space between gendered social expectations and may risk the label of the “troublesome woman,” but instead employ strategies that successfully justify their actions. With these brief provocations, we hope to open onto a larger discussion about who is a trickster and who is dismissed as merely disruptive. And what does this mean about the possibilities and constraints for transformative politics? We end with reflections on the potential the trickster figure has for thinking pro-environmental and norm critical behaviour from an environmental humanities perspective.



Recent Posts

See All

10月13日~14日の二日間にわたって、The Asia-Norway Environmental Storytelling Network(ANEST)のワークショップが国立台湾師範大学で開催されました。ANESTは環境人文学という分野横断的・学際的な研究交流を目指すネットワークであり、 “Teaching Through and With Environmental Storytelling

「環境問題を考える手がかりは文学にある。ソロー、石牟礼道子、梨木香歩、アレクシエーヴィチ、カズオ・イシグロらの作品に、環境をめぐる文学研究=エコクリティシズムの手法で分け入ろう。人間に宿る野性、都市と絡みあう自然、惑星を隅々まで学習するAI──地球と向き合う想像力を掘り起こし、未来を切り開く実践の書。」 ​ 詳しくはこちら https://www.iwanami.co.jp/book/b63151

「故郷の池の精霊たち:カワウソ、オオカミ、そして…」 Saturday, 13 May 2023, 10-11:30 AM JST TORIGOE Keiko (Professor, Soundscape Studies and Design, AGU) 故郷の池(武蔵野三大湧水池のひとつである善福寺池)とその周辺の土地に棲まう精霊たちとの出会いや再会についての報告。報告者は先ず、専門とするサウン

bottom of page