What matters is the time in which the myth is told, not the time it tells of.
—Brian Henderson, “‘The Searchers’: An American Dilemma”, adapted.
Prologue: More Than Dream-Thoughts
Before Concrete Revolutio ~ Superhuman Phantasmagoria, Seiji Mizushima, Sho Aikawa, and BONES had collaborated on UN-GO. The two works are almost identical in their destructive retelling of the Shōwa era: a dimension of “fantasy” beyond “historical memory” places them in an uneasy position—neither history nor wild fantasy, but something closer to a dream.
If we treat UN-GO and Concrete Revolutio as dreams arising from the Shōwa era, we must begin with the form of the dream to bring out what they leave unsaid: “not the content hidden by the form … but, on the contrary, the ‘secret’ of this form itself,” as Žižek puts it. In other words, we must distinguish strictly between “latent dream-thoughts” and “unconscious desire.” The latent dream-thoughts here are obvious: as we established at the outset, the entire dream is simply a retelling of the passionate Shōwa years. But why? Why choose this particular fantasy?
A somewhat abrupt conclusion lies hidden in the world of Fate/stay night, a representative work of “the imagination of the 2000s.” The modern world is one from which mystery has ebbed away; only by drawing on the power of Heroic Spirits from a time when mystery still remained can the world be overturned. Is this not precisely what Concrete Revolutio leaves unsaid? Japan after Shōwa no longer possesses genuinely destructive forces, so we cannot tell the heroic stories of that passionate age in everyday language, but only through fantasy. This essay attempts to unravel the enigma of the desire driving this dream. To some extent, this is also an attempt to open up a critique of “imagination after the ebb of mystery.”
I. “A Tale of Two Cities”
… The grandiloquent truth of gestures on life’s great occasions.
—Baudelaire1
If we break an anime down into nothing more than “images” and “sound,” Concrete Revolutio might seem an exemplary work of “collage.” By superimposing a host of genres dating from the Shōwa era within its story, it presents encounters between characters as repeated incursions into one another’s “empires of signs.” In the first episode alone, a “giant robot” and a “magical girl” intervene in the classic binary opposition of “Ultraman versus monster,” allowing the story to move beyond the simple narrative of “defeat the monster and protect the peace.” The city thus unfolds its many faces: it is at once a conspiracy (Jiro), the destruction of nature (Emi), the fragile landscape of everyday life (Kikko), a factory (Equus), and even historical necessity (Hyouma).
Yet we inevitably encounter another dimension independent of all these genres: the city as “physical reality.” There is no denying that the story of Concrete Revolutio can be decoded in terms of Shōwa-era historical memory—the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the Japan–US Security Treaty, democratic movements, the Zenkyōtō campus struggle councils, and so on.2 Through this decoding, we arrive at the divided “two bodies of the city”: the “thing-in-itself” that exists in “history” and “memory,” and the “fictional” city that exists as a simulacrum.
The gap between these two cities, on which the entire story rests, may already be present metaphorically in the layered artwork: the layer of appearances, the empire of signs, sits above the layer of history, while the characters above can hardly ever truly enter the background below.3 It is this separation that produces what Jameson calls a “depthless text.” The postmodern text does not lead to physical reality, nor does it offer such interpretive depth; outside the text, there is only more text. In this sense, the intertextual games of postmodernism are also far removed from “physical reality.”
This is why we do not read the work as a metaphor. In fact, even the “superhuman revolution,” so intimately bound up with the superhumans themselves, appears more as background to the story. Whether the battle is against Claude or Yoshiaki Satomi, we arrive at a “showdown,” not a “war.” The story breaks off uneasily at this point, as though the outcome of the duel were also the outcome of the war. As we shall see, even if we set “history” aside and concern ourselves only with this political narrative, this remains intolerable.
II. The Politics of Superhumans or Monsters
Neither superhumans nor monsters stand beyond politics in Concrete Revolutio. And when the outcome of a showdown between superhumans corresponds to the outcome of a war, the “human” side of the “superhuman” often gives way to a purer embodiment of force. On this basis, examining Jiro Hitoyoshi’s identity almost inevitably brings us to a contradiction: the simple division into superhumans, humans, and monsters breaks down. Examining the advertising agency Teito as an “ideological apparatus” offers one way to expose the paradox in this discourse: the similarity of its attitudes toward superhumans and monsters unmistakably reveals that “monsters” and “superhumans” have been assimilated to one another.
If we discuss the opposition between “superhuman” and “monster” within the broad category of the “nonhuman,” the two sides clearly represent two strands of radical political philosophy: Laclau’s “discourse politics” and Žižek’s “monster politics.” Laclau calls such conflict “hegemonic struggle.” The various forces’ accounts of “justice” constitute a battle to the death over “hegemony”:
… Along what Laclau calls a “chain of equivalence,” three stories compete with one another, each attempting to elevate itself to the position of the “big Other.” This self-elevation is what Lacan calls the operation of “sublimation.” It can never be fully accomplished, because the symbolic “big Other” can only ever claim to be absolute, never actually become absolute—a story cannot become “truth,” however often it is repeated or however many people accept it. Even when a story succeeds in becoming the dominant discourse, the mainstream ideology, it remains constantly exposed to challenges from other stories.4
The struggle of the “superhumans” thus becomes the kind of “Frankenstein” struggle Žižek criticizes: in his account, the monster in Frankenstein is actually a metaphor for the French Revolution—a story that was never properly told. Let us return to where the entire discussion began: Jiro Hitoyoshi. At the end of the story, Jiro’s “true” identity is revealed as the human form of Hiroshima’s “Little Boy.” Is he not, then, also that “out-of-control” “monster” created by Victor? Just as capitalism produces its own excess, humanity produces its own excess: the proper way to write “superhuman” is “(super)human.”5 Superhumans have become distinct from “humans,” yet cannot escape their human essence.
Likewise, discourse politics has the limits Žižek identifies: subjects cannot change the existing order by telling their own “stories,” because those stories are always already unconsciously determined by the existing symbolic order. The genuine challenger to that order, the subject wholly beyond it, can only ever be a monster that does not speak. Here the two episodes of “Japan ‘Beast’ History” become a point of entry into the whole text of Concrete Revolutio. The declaration “Our anger is the monster” is also precisely the fervor on the Stalinallee described by Brecht:
It was not that Brecht tolerated the cruelty of the struggle in the hope that it would bring a prosperous future: the harshness of the violence as such was perceived and endorsed as a sign of authenticity.6
Yet even as an embodiment of the “passion for the Real,” MegaGon only “officially” becomes a monster—or “the night of the world”—after it is enraged. Like the alien in Alien—that true subject—it kills its own creator, abandons protest through “discourse,” and embarks on destruction driven purely by “passion.” What we see is another version of Fight Club: even the “I” from whom the revolution begins can no longer choose its direction; reason counts for nothing before the passion for destruction. Most importantly, the first target of the death drive propelling the “space monkey” is himself.
Once the revolution’s “leader” retreats from the master’s discourse into university discourse, Jiro’s declaration becomes a powerful anchor: “Whoever you are, I’ll fight you if your flames make children cry!” Confronted with the only “monster” in Concrete Revolutio, both sides in the struggle of discourse politics seem equally threatened. If we return here to the level of “dream-thoughts,” might we say that MegaGon’s appearance is precisely Freud’s burning child?7 The actual wish to destroy the symbolic order appears as a monster; to avoid confronting the Real of that desire any longer, Jiro must appear and defeat the dream’s “true subject.” From this point onward, the story has no more monsters, only differences between (super)humans in their understanding of “justice.”
III. The Specter of “Freedom”
It is in this exclusion of the “monster” that we once again encounter the break between the text of Concrete Revolutio and history. In its struggles of discourse politics, each side gathers around a particular superhuman as its ideological leader and fights for its own “justice.” But this view already contradicts the facts:
The violence of the Zengakuren does not precede its own regulation, but is born simultaneously with it: it is immediately a sign: expressing nothing (neither hatred nor indignation nor any moral idea), it does away with itself all the more surely in a transitive goal (to besiege and capture a town hall, to open a barbed-wire barrier) … a purely pragmatic action puts the symbols between parentheses, but does not settle their account: one utilizes the subject, while leaving it intact.8
Does not the very act of interpreting “justice” castrate the movement’s genuine radicalism? The movement’s passion comes from destruction, from Benjaminian “divine violence”: it is the “angel of history” settling accounts with the injustice called “progress.” Any further interpretation on this basis repeats the error of Job’s theologian friends: appealing to an omniscient and omnipotent being in the hope of annulling the event. Yet this very error is presented as the foundation of Concrete Revolutio. Before a battle begins, we are always told how the two sides’ understandings of “justice” conflict and why they have no choice but to fight. But we all know that even when the participants in a movement fight for the most concrete “freedom,”9 this “freedom” is still nothing but an empty signifier.
This is precisely why Concrete Revolutio’s interpretation of “divine violence” is disappointing: this pure, sublime eruption is presented as a “conflict” internal to society—or to the family—and always revolves around “feelings.” A peculiar bond is bestowed on each pair of antagonists: Jiro and Claude, Jiro and Yoshiaki Satomi. The two sides of discourse politics thus seem to be staging a tragedy in which members of the same household turn their weapons on one another. It is here that the struggle’s genuine cruelty is erased.
As “divine violence” is degraded into “sacred violence,” Concrete Revolutio, a history of Shōwa protest stripped of its cruelty, also enters another interpretive framework. Against the story’s premise that “absolute justice is impossible,” the struggles of the various parties, each insisting on its own “justice,” already amount to nothing more than Tsunehiro Uno’s “decisionism”:
The world does not explicitly tell us what constitutes “correct values” or “the meaning of life”: this is a self-evident “premise.” Given this premise, anyone who remains immersed in a private world cannot survive in society. “Contemporary imagination” therefore chooses the attitude of thinking and acting for oneself in order to survive. Even if it means “being wrong” or “hurting others,” one must choose a position. The thinking here is that, “put in the starkest terms, there is no basis for the choice”; one “boldly” chooses particular values, thereby assuming this decisionist attitude.10
But we must not forget the circumstances in which “decisionism” arose: 9/11 and the awareness of a “society of widening inequality” brought about by Koizumi’s reforms. It is worth asking: does decisionism’s portrayal of both sides as “similarly pitiable people,” each clinging to “justice,” not also conceal a neoliberal form of tolerance? In the context of “(super)humans” and “humans,” let us close this section with a passage from Žižek’s criticism of Blade Runner 2049:
The film’s implicit humanist message is that of liberal tolerance: we should give androids with human feelings (love, etc.) human rights, treat them like humans, incorporate them into our universe… But, upon their arrival, will our universe still be ours?11
IV. The Disappearance of 1968
Having finally arrived at the context of neoliberalism, we might return to the beginning of this essay. What we face is a retelling of Shōwa-era historical memory that paradoxically uses every means to depart from that genuinely passionate age. Viewed from the Left, the history of postwar movements is unquestionably spontaneous and uncompromising, with more cruelty than warmth. Yet all we receive are “magical,” “discursive,” “compassionate” battles. Are not these three veils, extending from form to content, all devoted to concealing a shattering historical “truth”?
Looking back at that passionate age, the “May uprising” that likewise raged in 1968 was gradually killed off. The combined machinery of the culture industry and “philosophy” tore apart the picture of a world in which revolution confronted reaction. In its place came New Wave cinema, counterculture, or radical philosophy. As 1968 was continually rewritten, whatever capitalism could not accommodate was erased; everything else was co-opted. In Japan, meanwhile, the moralism constraining the movements and the economic leap of the 1970s meant that young people no longer devoted themselves to “overthrow” and “change.” All that remained was communism as a hobby, and dissenters captured by the libidinal economy.
Now Lacan’s curse upon the May uprising has come true: “You want a new master; you will get a new master.”12 The young people and women who drove Japan’s postwar social movements sought to resist the pressure of mainstream society. In the end, the former got higher rates of educational advancement; the latter got washing machines. Today, both are tightly linked to the production chain of the social machine, enjoying “tolerance.”
When revolutionary history is stripped of its political dimension in the retelling and replaced by conflicts over “justice” fixated on pleasure, capitalism converts the eruption of 1968 into energy for itself. Is this not precisely the final sequence of Concrete Revolutio? Former “superhumans”—and monsters—are sold as merchandise and imagery, while the surviving superhumans devote themselves to nurturing the next generation or fighting “antisocial” criminals. Curiously, they themselves were once called the same thing. Demands become “longings”; battles become spectacle; sacrifices become “stories.” We thank the superhumans, yet do not want them to appear in the sunlight again.
We can now answer the question: what drives the dream-thought that is Concrete Revolutio? The answer, of course, is the excluded otaku. As a period of awakening for Japanese television anime, 1968 is not remote from otaku history. For the otaku who emerged in the age of Space Battleship Yamato (1974), the passion of the student movement had long since become their “primal scene.” They turn to the history of resistance by the oppressed to give expression to their own desire. Yet otaku anger does not target the foundations of society. Even “the imagination of the 2000s,” or indeed “imagination after the 2011 earthquake,” ultimately aims at nothing more than “keeping on living”13—or living more “respectably.” This dream can therefore only tread carefully around the Real within it, lest the symbolic order actually be overthrown.
V. The Possibility of the Impossible
To conclude, Concrete Revolutio shows us the imagination available to us after “mystery” has ebbed away: we are incapable of representing genuine, destructive passion. To some extent, the entire story is nothing but empty muttering in a dream. It strains to display the passion and spectacle of Shōwa precisely in order not to tell the story of the real Shōwa. The attempt to speak of an age of “mystery” ends in discourse that exposes our present poverty.
Yet the story does leave a blank: the door to “another world” that opens after Jiro burns himself out. Jiro himself becomes another “vanishing mediator.”14 Unlike Jack in Titanic, however, he does something besides saving “Rose.” Those “superhumans,” those fighters who have risen above the banal, those characters unwilling to be co-opted—they become the living embers, and will continue the struggle in another world.
We can certainly criticize Concrete Revolutio for allowing its imagination to end in the banal “growth” of individuals within the system, ultimately co-opted by the very thing that history’s passion hoped to overthrow. This recalls Derrida’s sharp criticism of Marxism: it ultimately becomes a traumatic voice within the capitalist system, repeatedly turned by the bourgeois subject into a means of pursuing perverse enjoyment—jouissance. But we must also point out that pleasure is co-opted by capitalism not because it indulges itself too freely, but because it does not insist on itself enough. In the co-optation of pleasure, there is always some “impossible” remainder. This is precisely the key to “going beyond.”
Here, then, lies the possibility of a critique not only of Concrete Revolutio, but of all ACG(N) works—animation, comics, games, and novels. Again and again, we are accused of using psychoanalysis, or any theory of literary criticism, to appreciate ACG(N) merely to conceal our inability to appreciate a work and be “simply” moved by it—in other words, to pursue a perverse pleasure. Yet Lacan had already answered in Seminar XVII: contrary to Dostoevsky’s maxim, “If God is dead, everything is possible,” God is dead, and nothing is possible any longer.15 In an age without authority and without respect for authority, the father who brings prohibitions is already dead. All anyone can do is deceive themselves in hysterical enjoyment.
Psychoanalysis is an impossible undertaking; on this basis, every possibility is opened up by the impossible. To borrow once more from Walter Benjamin, failed revolutions continually show the world that history remains unfinished, awaiting redemption by a successful revolution. To persist in this form of criticism, which moves away from the work, even to the point of killing it, while awaiting the possibility of genuine “criticism” or “appreciation,” is itself to remain faithful to the ultimate ethics of psychoanalysis:
Do not give way on your desire.
—Jacques Lacan
References
- Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology
- Slavoj Žižek, Violence
- Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real!
- Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs
- Roland Barthes, Mythologies
- Tsunehiro Uno, The Imagination of the 2000s
- Wu Qiong, Jacques Lacan: Reading Your Symptom
- Wu Guanjun, “Discourse Politics and Monster Politics”
Editor’s note: This essay and the preceding article approach Concrete Revolutio from two different angles and can be read together. The earlier article is “Anime’s Media Form: Reconsidering Concrete Revolutio and the ‘Socially Engaged’ Sho Aikawa”.