Genocidal Organ and “Unreliable writing system”
Genocidal Organ, A SF novel written by Project Itoh, has many flaws but this title is very thrilling because of its extremity pushing “unreliable narrator” to “unreliable writing system”.
Let`s summarize its narrative ; This story is narrated by Clavis Shepherd, a fictional US Special Forces officer, chasing John Paul who spreads genocidal wars around world. Shepherd found that John Paul was former linguistic researcher of the Pentagon and he discovered “Genocidal organ”. Genocidal Organ is the part of brain decreasing sympathy and encouraging people to kill each other, supposed to be an evolutionary by-product for balancing human popularity. This organ is triggered by specific flow of language, and John Paul named it as Genocidal grammar and weaponized it for keep peace of USA from developing countries who would have a strong dissatisfaction.
After all of events, Shepherd decide to reveal the truth of John Paul in public but through genocidal grammar in English. In result, The law and order of US entirely collapsed.
As I referred, This story is narrated by Shepherd AFTER collapse of USA. It implies that this entire narration is written by genocidal grammar. The problem is, because of genocidal grammar`s nature, that we readers can not tell how cause-and-effect relationship of its narration worked. Was it the will of Clavis Shepherd to spread genocidal grammar? Did John Paul`s note about genocidal grammar “infect” Shepherd? Or Was the condition of USA already fulfilled so genocidal grammar autonomically triggered? Those weren`t answered at all, So the writing system of Genocidal Organ leads readers into suspension of judgment.
On the top of that, The story of Clavis Shepherd is intended to be “False” bildungsroman. In narration of Shepherd, He traversed many locations and realized that he is living on First-world privilege built on tons of corpses. Clavis Shepherd even told John Paul about the death of Lucie, a love interest of and a former lover of John Paul, making him realize that some thing can not be in reduction toward worlds of language = sign. But remind that Shepherd used genocidal grammar in the end. This narration is just an excuse of his personal revenge. There is no growth in this story.
In conclusion, This novel push the word “unreliable” of literature in its extreme by resonating the writing system and narrative of the novel with the concept of genocidal grammar, language that has no relationship with meanings but only with effects. Plus, This concept is very unique because it ignores not only meaning but also intentions of speakers, So this writing system is far from speech actor theory of John L. Austin.
In addition, Project Itoh does not land this concept & writing system on speculative dimension. Genocidal Organ also suggests rich examples how words can be “fleshed” out through social and technological methods : Shepherd`s permission of detaching life-support system from his mother in vegetative state, The child soldiers who wants to be registered into a simple Excel file of warlords for surviving, The pain masking by nano-machine treatments, “The uncounted” who escape from social registration system by snatching identities of missing people, etc etc. In my opinion, these examples are very important, because with these Genocidal Organ catches mid-process and network of entities so shows that words, the tool of communication, do not work directly but with other medium.
