{"id":3629,"date":"2023-03-30T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T09:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=3629"},"modified":"2023-03-17T11:28:29","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T10:28:29","slug":"somewhere-out-there-in-a-place-no-one-knows-yoko-ogawas-the-memory-police-and-the-literature-of-forgetting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2023\/03\/30\/somewhere-out-there-in-a-place-no-one-knows-yoko-ogawas-the-memory-police-and-the-literature-of-forgetting\/","title":{"rendered":"Somewhere Out There in a Place No One Knows: Yoko Ogawa\u2019s The Memory Police and the Literature of Forgetting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Article Summary by John Henning<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This essay reads Yoko Ogawa\u2019s 1994 novel, <em>The Memory Police<\/em>, as a subtle allegory for the progression dementia and other neurological disorders. In Ogawa\u2019s book, inhabitants of an unnamed island suffer a series of \u2018disappearances\u2019. At the same time on random days, they forget about things like birds, hats, roses, sucking sweets, and music boxes\u2014eventually losing control over various parts of their bodies. In this world, a collective called the Memory Police remove all traces of \u2018disappeared objects\u2019 and ruthlessly dispose of islanders whose forgetting doesn\u2019t follow the correct sequence. Since the release of its first English translation in 2019, the text has attracted a handful of interpretations from literary scholars. Most of these focus on the novel\u2019s allegorical potential in relation to issues of totalitarianism and collectively enforced memory loss\u2014as evocative, for example, of the Orwellian dystopia, or the state silencing of radiation victims in Japan. While my essay does not aim to \u2018disagree\u2019 with these readings, it does suggest that they should not be considered exhaustive. To do this, I consider <em>The Memory Police<\/em> alongside a collection of texts from what might be called a \u2018literature of forgetting\u2019\u2014Thomas DeBaggio\u2019s <em>Losing my Mind:An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer\u2019s<\/em>, David Shenk\u2019s <em>The Forgetting<\/em>, Nicci Gerrard\u2019s <em>What Dementia Teaches Us about Love<\/em>, and others\u2014in an attempt to draw out some of their eerie resonances with Ogawa\u2019s island.<\/p>\n<h3>Read the full article on the <a href=\"https:\/\/mh.bmj.com\/content\/49\/1\/117\"><strong><em>Medical Humanities <\/em>journal website<\/strong><\/a>.<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>John Henning is reading towards a Master of Arts in English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town. His research is focused on micro-spatial constructions (or \u2018small places\u2019) in the literature of South Africa\u2019s interregnum. His essays on the works of Sol Plaatje, Arthur Miller, and Sisonke Msimang have appeared in various South African and international publications.<\/em><!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Article Summary by John Henning This essay reads Yoko Ogawa\u2019s 1994 novel, The Memory Police, as a subtle allegory for the progression dementia and other neurological disorders. In Ogawa\u2019s book, inhabitants of an unnamed island suffer a series of \u2018disappearances\u2019. At the same time on random days, they forget about things like birds, hats, roses, [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2023\/03\/30\/somewhere-out-there-in-a-place-no-one-knows-yoko-ogawas-the-memory-police-and-the-literature-of-forgetting\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15028],"tags":[15044],"class_list":["post-3629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal-announcements","tag-research"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Somewhere Out There in a Place No One Knows: Yoko Ogawa\u2019s The Memory Police and the Literature of Forgetting - Medical Humanities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=3629\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Somewhere Out There in a Place No One Knows: Yoko Ogawa\u2019s The Memory Police and the Literature of Forgetting - Medical Humanities\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Article Summary by John Henning This essay reads Yoko Ogawa\u2019s 1994 novel, The Memory Police, as a subtle allegory for the progression dementia and other neurological disorders. 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