ABSTRACT
The final section of the book provides a brief conceptual overview with final remarks on how the nondominant reading of postwar avant-garde art in Japan needs to be placed within a larger decolonial program. But this prospect requires careful negotiation as the artistic scene in Japan interfacing with the dominant, if mainstream, art history in the United States is misconstrued as a critical challenge from the margins. If the postwar avant-garde effort to think in a nondominant fashion can indeed resonate with decolonial efforts, it would have to start from acknowledging the ongoing colonial implications of Japan and how its globalizing culture continues to exercise dominant thinking. Only in assiduously tracking how art functions to promote hegemonic projects can the theorization of “minor contemporaneity” be pursued as a critical challenge against the concentric historiographical organization of expression.
