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Unlocking a vital understanding of how literary studies and media
studies overlap and are bound together A synthetic history of new
media reception in modern and contemporary Japan, The New Real
positions mimesis at the heart of the media concept. Considering
both mimicry and representation as the core functions of mediation
and remediation, Jonathan E. Abel offers a new model for media
studies while explaining the deep and ongoing imbrication of Japan
in the history of new media. From stereoscopy in the late
nineteenth century to emoji at the dawn of the twenty-first, Abel
presents a pioneering history of new media reception in Japan
across the analog and digital divide. He argues that there are two
realities created by new media: one marketed to us through
advertising that proclaims better, faster, and higher-resolution
connections to the real; and the other experienced by users whose
daily lives and behaviors are subtly transformed by the presence
and penetration of the content carried through new media.
Intervening in contemporary conversations about virtuality,
copyright, copycat violence, and social media, each chapter unfolds
with a focus on a single medium or technology, including 3D
photographs, the phonograph, television, videogames, and emoji. By
highlighting the tendency of the mediated to copy the world and the
world to copy the mediated, The New Real provides a new path for
analysis of media, culture, and their function in the world.
Unlocking a vital understanding of how literary studies and media
studies overlap and are bound together A synthetic history of new
media reception in modern and contemporary Japan, The New Real
positions mimesis at the heart of the media concept. Considering
both mimicry and representation as the core functions of mediation
and remediation, Jonathan E. Abel offers a new model for media
studies while explaining the deep and ongoing imbrication of Japan
in the history of new media. From stereoscopy in the late
nineteenth century to emoji at the dawn of the twenty-first, Abel
presents a pioneering history of new media reception in Japan
across the analog and digital divide. He argues that there are two
realities created by new media: one marketed to us through
advertising that proclaims better, faster, and higher-resolution
connections to the real; and the other experienced by users whose
daily lives and behaviors are subtly transformed by the presence
and penetration of the content carried through new media.
Intervening in contemporary conversations about virtuality,
copyright, copycat violence, and social media, each chapter unfolds
with a focus on a single medium or technology, including 3D
photographs, the phonograph, television, videogames, and emoji. By
highlighting the tendency of the mediated to copy the world and the
world to copy the mediated, The New Real provides a new path for
analysis of media, culture, and their function in the world.
Nation and Aesthetics is a unique attempt to examine the ambiguous
nature of nationalism and nation by examining them through
aesthetics. In this translation by Jonathan E. Abel, Darwin H.
Tsen, and Hiroki Yoshikuni, Karatani grasps the modern social
formation as a nexus of three different "modes of exchange", namely
capital-nation-state. Nation here plays the role of complementing
capitalism and the state. Benedict Anderson defined nation as an
"imagined community". Through rethinking Kant, Karatani suggests
that "imagination" here is not a mere fancy, but very real, in the
sense that it mediates state and capital. Usually imagination is
regarded as fancying what is not present here. Kant grasped
imagination as a faculty to imagine what we can understand but
cannot sense; that is, to say, a faculty to mediate reason and
sensibility. This observation provided the foundation to Modern
aesthetics, which in the course of time became an important source
of nationalism. In Italy, Germany, and Japan, nationalism appeared
as fascism. They found in aesthetics a moment to go beyond
capitalism and the state. The key to go beyond nation, Karatani
argues, lies also in the thoughts of Kant, a cosmopolitan and an
advocate of a world republic. It is well-known that the League of
Nations was formed after First World War under the influence of his
"Perpetual Peace". Karatani draws attention to the overlooked fact
that around the same time Freud made a radical revision of his
notion of the "superego". Karatani introduces article nine of
Japan's postwar constitution, which renounces the right to wage
war, as a crystallization of Kant's ideal of peace and Freud's
superego. By providing a unique explanation of, and ways to
counter, current nationalistic and imperialistic tendencies, Nation
and Aesthetics argues that theories of Kant and Freud, which are
usually understood to contrast, are deeply linked and suggest ways
to go beyond capital-nation-state.
For decades, we have been told we live in the “information
age”—a time when disruptive technological advancement has
reshaped the categories and social uses of knowledge and when
quantitative assessment is increasingly privileged. Such
methodologies and concepts of information are usually considered
the provenance of the natural and social sciences, which present
them as politically and philosophically neutral. Yet the humanities
should and do play an important role in interpreting and critiquing
the historical, cultural, and conceptual nature of information.
This book is one of two companion volumes that explore theories and
histories of information from a humanistic perspective. They
consider information as a long-standing feature of social,
cultural, and conceptual management, a matter of social practice,
and a fundamental challenge for the humanities today. Bringing
together essays by prominent critics, Information: Keywords
highlights the humanistic nature of information practices and
concepts by thinking through key terms. It describes and
anticipates directions for how the humanities can contribute to our
understanding of information from a range of theoretical,
historical, and global perspectives. Together with Information: A
Reader, it sets forth a major humanistic vision of the concept of
information.
For decades, we have been told we live in the “information
age”—a time when disruptive technological advancement has
reshaped the categories and social uses of knowledge and when
quantitative assessment is increasingly privileged. Such
methodologies and concepts of information are usually considered
the provenance of the natural and social sciences, which present
them as politically and philosophically neutral. Yet the humanities
should and do play an important role in interpreting and critiquing
the historical, cultural, and conceptual nature of information.
This book is one of two companion volumes that explore theories and
histories of information from a humanistic perspective. They
consider information as a long-standing feature of social,
cultural, and conceptual management, a matter of social practice,
and a fundamental challenge for the humanities today. Bringing
together essays by prominent critics, Information: Keywords
highlights the humanistic nature of information practices and
concepts by thinking through key terms. It describes and
anticipates directions for how the humanities can contribute to our
understanding of information from a range of theoretical,
historical, and global perspectives. Together with Information: A
Reader, it sets forth a major humanistic vision of the concept of
information.
In Japan, obsessive adult fans and collectors of manga and anime
are known as otaku. When the underground otaku subculture first
emerged in the 1970s, participants were looked down on within
mainstream Japanese society as strange, antisocial loners. Today
otaku have had a huge impact on popular culture not only in Japan
but also throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. Hiroki
Azuma's Otaku offers a critical, philosophical, and historical
inquiry into the characteristics and consequences of this consumer
subculture. For Azuma, one of Japan's leading public intellectuals,
otaku culture mirrors the transformations of postwar Japanese
society and the nature of human behavior in the postmodern era. He
traces otaku's ascendancy to the distorted conditions created in
Japan by the country's phenomenal postwar modernization, its
inability to come to terms with its defeat in the Second World War,
and America's subsequent cultural invasion. More broadly, Azuma
argues that the consumption behavior of otaku is representative of
the postmodern consumption of culture in general, which sacrifices
the search for greater significance to almost animalistic instant
gratification. In this context, culture becomes simply a database
of plots and characters and its consumers mere "database animals."
A vital non-Western intervention in postmodern culture and theory,
Otaku is also an appealing and perceptive account of Japanese
popular culture.
In Japan, obsessive adult fans and collectors of manga and anime
are known as otaku. When the underground otaku subculture first
emerged in the 1970s, participants were looked down on within
mainstream Japanese society as strange, antisocial loners. Today
otaku have had a huge impact on popular culture not only in Japan
but also throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. Hiroki
Azuma’s Otaku offers a critical, philosophical, and historical
inquiry into the characteristics and consequences of this consumer
subculture. For Azuma, one of Japan’s leading public
intellectuals, otaku culture mirrors the transformations of postwar
Japanese society and the nature of human behavior in the postmodern
era. He traces otaku’s ascendancy to the distorted conditions
created in Japan by the country’s phenomenal postwar
modernization, its inability to come to terms with its defeat in
the Second World War, and America’s subsequent cultural invasion.
More broadly, Azuma argues that the consumption behavior of otaku
is representative of the postmodern consumption of culture in
general, which sacrifices the search for greater significance to
almost animalistic instant gratification. In this context, culture
becomes simply a database of plots and characters and its consumers
mere “database animals.” A vital non-Western intervention in
postmodern culture and theory, Otaku is also an appealing and
perceptive account of Japanese popular culture.
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