In Theravāda, the category of the body becomes an especially fruitful focus.

Instead of aiming at a position of transcendence over the world, the novel tests out the possibilities of delivering, through words, worlds out of historical ignorance and amnesia, based on the quantum rules of randomness and undecidability.ĭrawing from the most ancient Buddhist texts, which are called ‘The Tradition’ (Āgama) in Sanskrit and ‘The Canonic Corpus’ (Nikāya) in Pali, we will engage with a different sort of corpus: the body as a rich envelope of unfolding knowledge. Specifically, A Tale for the Time Being draws on quantum mechanics as a trope and sees words as quantum particles that illuminate the plasticity and multiplicity of space and time. If we look at the relationship between the novel's two protagonists, Ruth and Nao, as that between a reader and a writer, we see how energy and matter on a small scale, in particular the energy and matter embedded in the words used in literary writing and reading, can actively engage with a scale as large as the world. I coin the term ' minor cosmopolitics ' and explain its indebtedness to as well as differentiation from ' minority cosmopolitism ' and ' minor transnationalism ' to explore the world-making potentials of mi-noritized individuals and the minor dimension of cosmopolitics in this novel.

Ultimately, I find that Ozeki encourages her reader to develop a historical consciousness, as locating ourselves within the complex web of time, history and politics allows us to better negotiate the narratives and images that inform particular postcolonial subjectivities.Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being (2013) responds to the radical global interconnectedness of today's world.

I suggest that Ozeki’s novel reveals that we continue to rely on stereotypes to understand the world around us, particularly when we seek to know other people and other cultures. I explore the links between postmodern amnesia, the disappearance of a multiplicity of perspectives in history and the inclination of Western mass media and popular culture to reproduce stereotypes. My reading connects continuing investment in these stereotypical representations to the postmodern epoch, where individuals and society as a whole have become incapable of dealing with the past. I argue that her use of stereotype unsettles popular images of Japan by constructing characters who challenge the hegemonic gaze of the Western cultural imaginary.

This project fuses personal narrative and literary criticism, as it excavates Ruth Ozeki’s representations of Japanese culture in the novel A Tale for the Time Being.

Ozeki a tale for the time being