Yōko Ogawa’s The Memory Police (1994) is set in an unknown island where objects and their meanings gradually disappear from society’s collective memory. Spencer argues that “power imposes itself on society through spatial initiatives that reconfigure the entirety of social space.” As memory is suppressed in this authoritarian society, the act of retaining memories of “disappeared” objects is a form of violation of that authoritarianism, as it is seen as the individual’s resistance against the collective goals of the state. This article examines the ways in which memory and trauma play crucial roles in the lives of individuals in reclaiming their sense of space and individuality. To escape tyranny and oppressive real space, the narrator creates an imaginary space that preserves any remaining memory. As memory is associative, it functions to retrieve information related to particular objects or concepts and to connect this information with its relevant context to yield meanings. The move to preserve memory acts as a form of agency exhibited by the narrator and the novel foregrounds the various ways memory can also lead to liberation.

中文翻译：

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（Re）想象“反乌托邦空间”：小川洋子的《记忆警察》中的记忆与创伤

小川洋子（YōkoOgawa）的《记忆警察》（1994）坐落在一个未知的岛屿上，那里的物体及其含义逐渐从社会的集体记忆中消失。斯宾塞认为，“权力通过重新配置整个社会空间的空间计划将自身强加于社会。” 在这种威权社会中，记忆被压制了，保留“消失的”物体的记忆的行为是对这种威权主义的一种侵犯，因为这被视为个人对国家集体目标的抵抗。本文探讨了记忆和创伤在恢复个人空间感和个性感方面在个人生活中起关键作用的方式。为了逃避暴政和压迫性的真实空间，叙述者创建了一个虚构的空间，该空间保留了所有剩余的记忆。由于记忆是关联的，它的功能是检索与特定对象或概念有关的信息，并将该信息与其相关上下文联系起来以产生含义。保持记忆的动作是叙述者所展现的一种代理形式，而新颖的前景则是记忆也可以导致解放的各种方式。