Journal of Discourse Review
Open Access Humanitarian scholarship
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Open Access Humanitarian scholarship
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Volume: 1 Issue: 1
a Department of Humanities and Sciences, Siddhartha Institute of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad, India
1* Corresponding author, [email protected]
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-7999-1659
Year: 2025, Page: 12-22,
Received: Feb. 10, 2025 Accepted: March 21, 2025 Published: April 22, 2025
Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore presents a complex engagement with gender identity through the character of Oshima, a transgender man whose narrative unsettles established gender binaries. This paper investigates Oshima’s role as a discursive and social agent who negotiates identity within and against normative frameworks. Drawing upon contemporary gender theory and discourse analysis, the study focuses on Oshima’s self-narration, his dialogic interactions, and the socio-cultural contexts that inform his positioning. The analysis situates Murakami’s text within a broader transnational framework that accounts for intersecting discourses of gender in both Global North and Global South contexts. Oshima’s characterization challenges culturally inscribed binaries and contributes to a critique of essentialist identity models. The paper argues that Murakami constructs a narrative space in which gender is not a fixed category but a performative and contested construct. This literary representation functions as a critique of socio-normative conventions and opens up interpretive possibilities for understanding gender as fluid and relational. In doing so, Kafka on the Shore contributes to evolving literary and critical discourses that interrogate identity formations beyond traditional categorical boundaries.
Keywords: Gender, discourse, identity, transgender, hegemonic binaries, deconstruction.
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