Faciality of dialogic remembering: A study of Japanese military “comfort women” memory

This article examines the faciality of dialogic remembering concerning the Japanese military “comfort women,” with a focus on survivors’ vernacular memories. The vernacular memories that surfaced through dialogue in the early 1990s played a key role in constituting official memory of the comfort women. However, amid nationalist competition, survivors’ faces were reduced to mere head counts, and dialogue transformed into monologue. By applying the concept of faciality as theorized by Deleuze and Guattari, this study challenges the homogenization of victims and examines the potential for revitalizing layered memory and dissonant dialogue. This approach, aimed at restoring the ethical and political dimension of comfort women memory, aligns with the resistant practices of postcolonial feminism.