ROOF PODCAST / EPISODE
Zuanshi: In recording this episode, I came to understand how postmodern theory and the postmodern condition differ, and how they are connected. The “post-” in “postmodern” signifies both temporal succession and a theoretical response. As theory, the postmodern may be no more than an account of many philosophical problems offered by particular thinkers; as an era, however, it has undoubtedly already enveloped us all.
Yeshen Renjing: The postmodern is not modernity’s polar opposite; rather, it is multiple temporalities still layered together within an age regarded as already distinct from the modern. In a sense, grand narratives have not vanished: broken down and crushed into fragments, they have been absorbed into the many small narratives that compete and coexist. We could say that ACGN works—anime, comics, games, and novels—offer us one way to grasp these small narratives. Erciyuan’s connections with the postmodern are not limited to consumer society. Perhaps “paradigm shifts” in scholarship—Hiroki Azuma’s game-like realism in relation to the Japanese cultural context, for instance, or Thomas Lamarre’s The Anime Machine in relation to film theory—can bring something fresh to our understanding of animation and individual works.
Tiankeng: What matters more than these theories and thinkers bundled together under “the postmodern” is the context in which the thinkers put forward their views and theories, and the problems they were addressing. If we want to discern the features of contemporary society through erciyuan—or, to put it another way, through the consumption of popular culture today—we still need more locally grounded and more concrete analysis and practice, building on the work of those who came before us.
Japanese Anime and Manga Critics Mentioned, and Their Representative Works
- Eiji Ōtsuka: An Intellectual History of “Otaku”: On the 1980s (「おたく」の精神史―1980年代論; descriptive English title)
- Hiroki Azuma: Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals
- Tamaki Saitō: Beautiful Fighting Girl
- Tsunehiro Uno: The Imagination of the 2000s (ゼロ年代の想像力; descriptive English title)
Western Thinkers Mentioned in This Episode, and Their Representative Theories and Works
- Jacques Derrida: Of Grammatology; Writing and Difference
- Michel Foucault: Madness and Civilization; Discipline and Punish
- Jean Baudrillard: The Consumer Society; Simulacra and Simulation
- Jürgen Habermas: communicative rationality
- Marshall McLuhan: media theory
- Fredric Jameson: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (晚期资本主义的文化逻辑; descriptive English title)
- Pierre Bourdieu: Distinction
- Thomas Lamarre: The Anime Machine