The Specular Self

[imomus]

Once I wrote a song about an actor. And, as writers writing about actors are wont to do, I attacked him for being 'all image' and 'all front'. The song was 1998's 'Harry K-Tel' and the lyric describes the narrator's disgust at method actors who think they can

...hit on any girl in the world without denting your fronts
As if morals themselves are simply image
Like you've got this gold-plated credit card charisma to cover all the damage



The idea of charm, charisma and image being a dangerous and superficial distraction from substantive personal qualities like integrity, morality and depth is a familiar binary in western culture. It lies behind a lot of misogyny and homophobia; women and gays cannot be 'moral' because they rely too much on their appearance and on seduction. They use their 'cosmetics' and 'wiles' to charm and beguile us rather than winning us over with good conduct and consistent character. Gay writers have been as fascinated with this idea as anyone else, although they've treated it with more ambivalence, from Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray to 'Three Month Story', Gary Indiana's book about gay confidence trickster Andrew Cunanan, killer of Gianni Versace.

'Don't judge a book by the cover,' we're told. 'Beauty is only skin deep!' 'Handsome is as handsome does!' Western culture consistently denigrates the visual, seeming to agree wholeheartedly with Groucho Marx: 'Why believe your own eyes when you can believe me?' In a metaphysical tradition that goes back to Plato, we believe that ultimate reality is something absent and invisible. Christianity names this ultimate reality 'God' whereas Plato names it 'the Ideas'. But in both traditions it's equally absent, and equally invisible. You acknowledge reality with words, the verbal: 'in the beginning was the word'. Visual representations are frowned on in Christianity as in Islam, which, when it reached Indonesia, forced the puppet-makers to disguise their puppets as monsters to contravene the ban on the representation of human forms.



I've become convinced that the people who denigrate Japan are people who feel uneasy with its visual orientation as well as its collapse of western notions of surface and depth. In many cases, these are the same people who mistrust visual professionals like designers and architects, and have, at the very least, mixed feelings about women and gays. Postmodernism and Japan both, to these people, seem to threaten the established western hierarchy which puts the verbal above the visual. The verbal is seen as a direct route to reality, whereas the visual is mere distraction. The verbal is reassuringly universal, the visual misleadingly specific. A photographer in the West has to title his book (as Wolfgang Tillmans did) 'If One Thing Matters, Everything Matters', almost as if to apologize for the specificity of photographs, to give each snap of each specific thing the kind of link to univerals that language automatically has (in fact, language's reductiveness is the key to its effectiveness as a means of communication -- it strips away specificity until we all think we're talking about the same thing).

The other day a Japanese person posted a comment after my entry on ethnocentric Japanology mentioning Lacan's statement that Japanese could never be successfully psychoanalysed: Lacan suggested that the Japanese language is so complex and polyvalent that the Japanese have their unconscious on the surface all the time, or have no unconscious, perhaps. It's true that to this day there are almost no western-style psychoanalysts in Japan. But the idea that the unconscious might be on the surface of Japan's culture rather than hidden in 'depths' which only psychoanalysts and priests have access to is a fascinating one. It ties in with a similar idea about the different way guilt works in Japan. In 1946 anthropologist Ruth Benedict published a book called 'The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'. The book divided the world into 'shame' and 'guilt' cultures. In guilt cultures there's a personal sense of morality deep in the individual which makes him feel guilty if he transgresses against God's law. In shame cultures everything is on the surface, out in public. Shame only results when the community condemns someone, and only for as long as it keeps condemning.



Wilton S. Dillon of the Smithsonian Institute read Benedict's book and it changed his life. In the late 40s he was a civilian on General MacArthur’s staff during the occupation of Japan. 'As part of the Allied demilitarization effort,' he writes, 'I was supposed to help make the then 90 million Japanese feel guilty for the war. Ruth Benedict’s book offered a reality check by distinguishing between “shame” and “guilt” cultures. I gave up the guilt quest and embraced anthropology as a vocation aimed at reducing my naïveté.'

Britain's Chief Rabbi, Professor Jonathan Sacks, sees postmodern Britain turning from a Judeo-Christian guilt-based culture into a Japanese-style shame culture:

'It seems to me that Britain, once biblical in its values, has now become a shame culture. What counts today is public image - hence the replacement of prophets by public relations practitioners, and the ten commandments by three new rules: Thou shalt not be found out, thou shalt not admit, thou shalt not apologise. It's a bad exchange. A shame culture turns mistakes into tragedies. A guilt culture turns them into learning experiences. I know which I prefer.'

But of course in Japan, as everyone knows, there is no end of apologising. Or is it just the appearance of apology? And if it is, is there anything wrong with that? If the unconscious is on the surface, and virtue is on the surface, why not apology too? Doesn't it all make for a fabulously vibrant and spectacular public life?



Ah, that word 'spectacular' -- Guy Debord of course wrote The Society of the Spectacle to condemn a west which was turning from a verbal culture into a visual one. In his post-Marxian analysis, spectacular visual cultures can't be criticized or challenged. Spectacle becomes a means for power to put itself beyond all criticism and attack. But Debord died before the advent of the internet and digital culture. The spectacular society he saw developing was a highly centralised one in which media professionals were well ahead of the general public. But what if everyone mastered the skills of visual presentation? What if everyone developed the 'front' that only actors have so far been able to manipulate? What if everyone became Japanese, a kabuki actor? Catholics and Italians are already halfway there -- the concept of bella figura, confession, and 'the theatre of everyday life' are familiar examples of 'specular' and 'shame' culture in Italy. In the US, mediatised therapy culture and a Nietzschean theatre of self-improvement and self-PR have joined in the form of spectacular public confessions, both in celebrity interviews and on shows like Oprah and Springer and on 'reality TV'.

Timothy Leuers, a psychologist based in Japan, thinks there are still major differences between the emerging American 'spectacular self' and the long-established Japanese 'specular self'. For a start, Americans seem to believe their own hype:



'Most Americans think that they are in the top quartile of social intelligence and creativity. Americans will make false claims of self consistency as in the "I told you so" bias. Americans will tell you that they have knowledge that could not possibly exist (since it is knowledge about non existent events) and get angry when this fact is pointed out to them. In short Americans have a selective attention - they will ignore negative information about the self and concentrate on their positive, socially desirable aspects. Indeed, the only Americans that have given neutral self appraisals are undergoing treatment for depression. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, there is nothing surprising about this. This selective attention, editing, ignoring, and creating a positive self image is nothing other than the ego at work. However, all the above measures of self enhancement show neutrality or even self depreciation when applied to the Japanese.

'My own work on "visual self enhancement" suggests however that the Japanese do have a positive self regard when it is confined, literally, to the regard or the gaze. I claim that they enhance their self-image, or the imaginary representation that they maintain of themselves. Give a Japanese a piece of paper and ask him to write about himself and he will portray himself as the same as the next guy. Give him a camera and he will suddenly become appealing, positive and upright. There would seem to be a much greater importance placed on the visual sign rather than the phonetic. From this data I have suggested the existence of a mature "specular self" in Japan.'

The specular self, a lightly floating element in a 'shame society' where guilt as we know it doesn't exist. A society where you apologize with a deep bow, but never have to prove that you're 'really' sorry 'deep down'. A society in which morals themselves really are just image, but where image isn't denigrated but treated with the utmost respect. A society in which the unconscious is up on the surface for all to see and share, where the unconscious is not structured 'like a language' but appears as a sequence of pictures. A society where personal life and public life are one and the same thing. A society without shadows or metaphysics or God. What's not to love?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I would like one of those t-shirts. are they available? will you make me one? cozen

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Damn it, I knew those T shirts would upstage me! Yes, you can buy them (http://www.ildeboscio.com/t-shirts.htm). But remember, looks aren't everything. It's what's inside that counts.

[tianamolko.livejournal.com]

that was extremely well written!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I should really have made the point in pictures, shouldn't I?

[mrslunch.livejournal.com]

Amazing!

Just earlier today my boyfriend had said to me, "It's strange...you seem to be able to acknowledge that stability/integrity/morality are good values, but you don't seem to care about them!"

I couldn't answer why at the time, but this entry has been incredibly eye opening!

[fufurasu.livejournal.com]

Ah, but remember that in pre-Christian (pre-Paltonic?) Greece, beauty was a virtue equal to morality. The ancient Greek word for beautiful ("kalos") has come to mean "good" in modern Greek. In the Greek pantheon, the ugliest god, Hephaestus the blacksmith, was given the most beautiful goddess, Aphrodite, as a wife. So I guess I blame Christianity for the downgrading of beauty"...

The concept of "saving face" in Asian cultures is both realted to morals and to appearances, as if the two cannot be separated.

In my limited abstract investigations, I have come to the conclusion that ethics and aesthetics go hand in hand, and whatever conclusions one can make about one also apply to the other.

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

Mr Wilde also said, "It is only the shallow who do not judge by appearances".

Why aren't I big in Japan yet?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Wilde's dictum is superb, but only half way to enlightenment. For although the phrase rescues the visual from denigration, it does not rescue shallowness from the same fate. It leaves us with the odd picture of a shallow man who judges deeply, or a deep man who judges shallowly. The latter being, perhaps, Wilde himself when confronted with Bosie.

[remittens.livejournal.com]

"A society where personal life and public life are one and the same thing". But is it really the case in Japan right now (just asking, never been there)? And you, do you think Momus is Nick Currie, i.e what you show of yourself covers what/who you are? Same question in reverse: is Nick Currie Momus?

Since you're speaking of Debord: what do you think of brand management? It seems to me big corporations (say Nike, Gap, etc) are just companies who manage their own brand, their own image, and let the "dirty work" (producing the shoes, the clothes, etc) to subcontractors. And talking to various people who are employees, it seems the way forward (for big or small companies). So we have 1) a Christian separation of the mind and body, the holy and the vile; and 2)a split of a "body" (the company) into several units who just perform one task (say a company of secretaries, a company for H.R tasks, etc), with just the image/brand company to manage less or more the whole thing, leading to everything being just a resource, including "humans". How do Japan works with capitalism? Are they superflat about their economy or is it like in the west, a nice image hiding all the dirt?

What's not to love?

[(Anonymous)]

What's not to love?</>

When the government says, "We have to take over mainland Asia now," and everyone says, "Ok."

As much as you denigrate the metaphysical soul, I would argue that the Westerner is more likely to look deep within himself to say what is right or wrong, instead of looking to his neighbor. Bush looked within himself and found the answers in invading Iraq, so the system obviously has its flaws, but without guilt, Japan's moral stability depends on external guidance. And those higher authorities always lead with their own particular goals in mind.

Marxy

Re: What's not to love?

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

When the government says, "We have to take over mainland Asia now," and everyone says, "Ok."

hahahaha. It's funny 'cause it's true. Mostly.

There does need to be some cultural context for this, though. Even today, but moreso through the end of the Tokugawa up to WWII, Japan was very much a culture of ancestor veneration. The emperor was also considered a divine figure. In that context, defending the homeland is seen as the absolute good.

And just like today's talk of Iraqi Freedom, the attempted conquest of Asia was talked about in terms of liberation. To make Japan safe, we must make Asia safe. To make Asia safe, we must expel the colonial powers. Asia for the Asians!

Just like today, people were shocked! Shocked! When the manchurians, as the Fallujans, were less than appreciative.

Given that this whole pan-Asianist doctrine that was the "humanitarian" justification for Japan's conquest of Asia was specifically modeled after the monroe doctrine, were the Japanese only mirroring a fundamental moral defect of western culture?

[starofpersia.livejournal.com]

Just out of idle curiosity, it's no coincidence that Harry K-Tel sounds a lot like Harvey Keitel, correct? Did he really have phone sex with your sister?

We were discussing Tracy Emin over dinner last night and I told my friend about "Everyone I Ever Slept With" the song, so I figure it's best not to take things at face value sometimes?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You know when it says 'All events and characters portrayed in this picture are fictitious and any resemblance to people living or dead is co-incidental...' Well, that's almost always a lie, but it's there for a good reason.

Needless to say, a gentleman never reveals what his sister really did may or may not have done. But it's worth pointing out that the disgust in that song is camped up for comic effect. From my current stance, I have nothing against consensual phone sex, or even morals themselves being 'merely image'. But being a method actor, now that's inexcusable. What, after all, is method but the rockism of acting?

[saikoutron.livejournal.com]

... a society where a social form/structure has clearly replaced the prior function it was married to.

Though it seems that the personal life is still one that remains unaddressed, not tended to, in favour of the upkeep of the public one. Arguably it could still be the same thing, if not for the fact that a majority of Japanese women still remain somewhat discontent with their relationships, even though by all counts the public aspect(successful boyfriend, husband, good family) continues to blossom. Or *appear* to be merely doing just that. It's very peculiar that Lacan would postulate an absence of the unconscious, much like a garden I think our components are the same, and some are tended too, while some are tended too a bit more. Either that or a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I should draw any conclusions at this point.

[pintele.livejournal.com]

Who's the creepy man in the white suit? I KNOW I've seen him before but I don't know if it was in a movie or what, and it's driving me nuts. So, yeah, who is he? :D

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Matthew Barney.

Here is an article critical of Barney's work: http://www.eserver.org/bs/38/vanproyen.html

An excerpt which might provide interesting debate:

Looking at Barney's work...we can feel comforted that we are somehow in the presence of "issues" and perhaps even a "radically transgressive practice," when in fact we are only witnessing a mannerist exercise in elaborate and perhaps extreme decoration. Granted, it is grotesque and sometimes even shocking decoration. But it is really only the latest example in a long line of self-conscious appeals to the para-aristocratic deity of dandyism that was advanced in the 19th century by Beau Brummel, Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire. Barney's work presents the decoration of self-as-decoration, yet another calculated and ingratiating appeal for "special" attention from the parents of the world, carrying with it a refusal to act in reality or fantasy as a parent of the world. Like other variants of the narcissistic position, dandyism, whether in the form of modernist elegance or post-modern freak show, is essentially a display of the dandy's investment in his own infantilism and his eager availability for cynical, administrative manipulation and exploitation.

Wakefield's oxymoronic playing with the words "psychological" and "unbounded" reveals the naiveté that underlies the artworld's epidemic of Barney-mania, and it speaks well of the suspension of disbelief that Barney's work achieves. Who could actually believe that desire could be unbounded — that is, unframed by the objects of desire as well as the uncontrollable motives of those objects and the complex conditions in which they are encountered? Only one whose object choice was limited to him or herself, for that is the only object that knows itself well enough to trust itself even as it experiences itself in a state of self-inflicted isolation. The fact that many of Barney's narratives involve themes of combat and escape attests to this dandified drama of self-desire, and in this Barney is not alone among contemporary artists. From Marcel Duchamp to Cindy Sherman, and from Andy Warhol to Orlan, contemporary art is rife with images of self-spectacle, all parading under the conveniently vague banner of "identity." Essentially, they overdress themselves to compensate for the inner dread of their own emptiness and their potential for social absence — "the living death of common anonymity" as a character in J.K. Huysmans' novel A Rebours puts it.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Authenticity is the most disingenuous form of narcissism, wearing a cape is the most honest form of narcissism, and wearing a flower is the most fragrant form of narcissism.

W

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

Last year, when I toured the Barnum-like exhibit of Barney's in Manhattan, I felt a profound sense of unease--I didn't know whether to praise or condemn, whether I loved or hated what I saw. Maybe it was the Guggenheim's vertiginous stairwell, but I felt quite dizzy. Later, I realized that this sense of unease is exactly what has always attracted me in many of my favorite artists' works, from Wilde to Duchamp to Warhol. We don't always have to fall into a binary ditch, we can fade to gray, we can find satisfaction in confronting our inner doubts or desires and not really have to seek comfort in the arms of either well-groomed "good" or tantalizingly perfumed "bad" angels--but choose the ones who smoke, swear, and still heal the sick. (Watch me now as I refrain from making judgements and retreat into the smokescreen of metaphor.)

All of this, I'm certain, the intelligent readers of Click Opera already know and understand, but sometimes I have to remind myself with your kind help. Words and images will always work together, because words ARE images and images can't help but conjure words. Such is the very essence of "metaphor." Ah, comrades, I wish I had your ability to speak wisely of metaphysics, abstractions, and philosophies! I wish I could decide which is the most fragrant flower to pluck from the bouquet!

And what Momus said about "inversion" in the piggery was brilliant. (But as others here can attest, the well-tailored lining is pleasure itself.)

[(Anonymous)]

Quote: "Western culture consistently denigrates the visual"

Now that is utter bollocks. Is your head on upside down? Western culture is enthralled by the visual. Japanese too? Maybe that's why so many of them need glasses ;-)

Jimmy from Glasgow

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well I agree with you that things are changing, Jimmy. After all, television has the word 'vision' in it. But does television really show a concern with the visual? How much of television is about pictures, and how much about words?

I think the extent to which we're actually in 'the society of the spectacle' has been over-rated. For instance, when the candidates in televised presidential debates bring sketch pads, and use them more than they use words, then I'll believe we're really in an age which has elevated the visual over the verbal.

[(Anonymous)]

Nick,
Your writings on Japanese bathing and other were very interesting as a form of travel writing. I hope to hear more of that kind of thing soon.
Regards,
A friend of Emma's

[(Anonymous)]

I really wish I lived in a society where friends checked their e-mail and wrote me back promptly (wink wink).......a society without idol worship would be nice too, whether it be god, producers or shoe companies, etc. etc.

love and love and love love,
john flesh

[andypop.livejournal.com]

This might go some way towards explaining the enormous success of comics in Japan, while the form has historically struggled in the US and appears to have died in the UK (though it's been strong for a long time in other non-English-speaking countries - but not as ubiquitous as in Japan, by a long way). And many manga do show what might be termed images from the unconscious, which could not be shown so easily in Western media. There's a different relationship with the image. Here, disturbing/deviant imagery is treated as if it a) will encourage disturbing/deviant acts, and b) is equivalent to a disturbing/deviant act in itself, and should be hidden or punished accordingly. In Japan, it seems to be accepted that what is shown doesn't correspond with what is. At least, as far as I know - which isn't very far when it comes to Japanese culture. I'd be interested to know what you think about it, having spent so much time there.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I agree totally that seeing people on a Japanese subway train reading manga is like watching people dream. The pictures are lurid and 'psychopathic' -- sexual or violent or both -- and yet the readers show no embarrassment about being seen reading them. When similar imagery appeared in western media, goverments tried to repress it. I'm thinking of the UK conservative government's response to 'video nasties' circa 1984. This, in classic psychoanalytical terms, is the superego repressing unconscious impulses, sending them back underground where they suppurate and fester and gain in strength. The Japanese approach seems palpably more sensible. The whole otaku thing is fascinating too. An otaku is basically a 'maniac' -- in other words, someone who has embodied on the surface a mania or fetish which in the west would be secretive and repressed. Going to a mangaka or cosplay convention in Japan, you're struck by the openness of the maniacs, who photograph schoolgirls without any apparent guilt or any attempt to 'displace' their mania through British-style self-deprecating jokes.

[w-e-quimby.livejournal.com]

This post really touches into something I've been worrying about unconsciously deep down in my psyche. I suppose you're right in that the Eastern and Western mindset are so very different as to be irreconciliable with each other and are diametric opposites. It might still be the case that most people in the East and West have yet to acknowledge the fact that Western ideals are not superior-- in fact, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about the shift of education in Japan from rote learning to stressing individual thought and creativity and back to rote learning again. That rote learning improves test scores and other methods experimented upon in Japan actually lead to a decrease in their international scholastic ranking. However, it was acknowledged that Americans consistently outperform Japan and other Eastern countries in job productivity and innovation.

That's Great for Education

[(Anonymous)]

Japanese students don't need to learn skills for use in the real world, just look like they're learning things, right Momus?

Somebody made a good point that many Japanese women still find themselves in unhappy relationships, and this seems to be more of the tyranny of visual over internal. Why does it matter how your marriage is going if it looks happy on the outside?

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

Timothy Leurs writes:

'Give a Japanese a piece of paper and ask him to write about himself and he will portray himself as the same as the next guy. Give him a camera and he will suddenly become appealing, positive and upright. There would seem to be a much greater importance placed on the visual sign rather than the phonetic.'

Well, I'd suggest that if you give a Japanese a camera you'd get a series of shots that portrayed him/others in much the same terms as this next guy: standing in front of various sightseeing attractions, making peace signs, larking about with friends and so on. I'm not sure what Leurs is suggesting in this very rickety experiment.

Admittedly, you could make some distinctions about languages that use character-based systems. I can read Japanese but forget how a series of characters is read. I still know the meaning, but there's no sound. I respond to the visual cue. Similarly, I can write characters and communicate haltingly with someone who's Chinese, but I can't speak a word of that language.

Reading Japanese, given its mix of characters and syllabary, is a curiously pleasant experience compared to the Roman system. In English, I scan the page line by line, seeking the meat and potatoes. In Japanese, this information is almost always distinguished in the text by being in characters. I read the page as a whole and spot the concept or name I'm looking for in that sea. The characters bob to the surface more readily than their alphabet cousins.

This distinction between the verbal and the visual in Japanese culture is worth pursuing, but I'd suggest that there's nowt quite so distinct. In language, the verbal is visual also. When people hear words in Japanese, they frequently visualise their appearance as characters. It's one aspect of Japanese humour. I can say a word, you will visualise a character, I'll say another word, the appearance of which will play with that of the other and suggest other characters, other meanings, other sounds and associations. This form of play in language doesn't really exist in the Roman alphabet with the same dizzying range of possibilities.

A friend of mine, a psycholinguist, has been doing some work on these processes. In particular, Japan's very rich vocabulary of onomatopoeia (http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/anime/www/onomatopoeia.html). Is this aspect of language processed differently? Does it somehow bypass other processing systems? Not that the Japanese are wired differently, it's just that the high incidence of these sound words makes it the best language to study. The verbal, as you are outlining it, how much of that is to do with hearing?

The verbal and the visual may be one set of axes to chart positions, the silent and the spoken another.

Watch out.

[(Anonymous)]

In both "Nihongo: In Defence of Japanese" and "Japan's Modern Myth," esteemed linguist Roy Andrew Miller takes a lot of time out to make sure that no one believes oft-repeated idea that kanji somehow changes the way the Japanese spoken language is mentally processed. I doubt that a Japanese kid would visualize the characters for a word like "benkyou" (to study) or "mondai" (problem) when they have heard those words a million times before every knowing how to write them.

Kanji has little to do with the comprehension of spoken Japanese. The Japanese understand their own language, just like anyone else understands their own. I do think that kanji have undermined the lexical system since the simplification of the vowel system in Japanese (there used to be way more than 5 vowels sounds) makes all the Korean-Chinese pronunciations sound exactly the same. (Look up the sounds "kousei" and you'll get about 10 different, unique words). This limits the amount of lexical items used orally, but has more to do with the pronunciation overlaps of the loan words than the actual visual properties of the kanji characters.

Although you didn't say this, it's good to make sure people know that the kanji are not used as pictograms. No one looks at an unknown character and says, oh the rice radical and the blue radical... it must be spirit! Everyone in Japan learns kanji like we learn words and they are not decoding the characters when they read.

The Japanese writing system is different than Alphabet-based systems, but I do not think you can claim that it leads to a visual-orientation of the world. Read Miller's books if you want a better defense of this argument.

[(Anonymous)]

I posted about Lacan earlier...
Wow the essay... great... Phonetic vs Visual unconscious differences of East and West. Maybe, the traditional psychoanalysis is formed Derridean “phonocentric” in the way,i guess.
I do not want deny Japanese literature, but they owe a lot to visual imaginations. There is good book, Kojin Karatani’s “Origin of Japanese literature”, discussed that Land scape was important metaphored (or cognition) of Japanese psyche in modern Japanese literature. Anyway,even music I think we perceive it more visually. When I was kid, I could not understand any English at all, but I loved Brits indie rock, I did not care whatever Mark E Smith or whoever singing about, the music visually stimulate my perception, and I could not buy record with bad art work even the music was good. Sorry... (I mean I’m so Japanese)... I want to say a lot of stuffs on the topics on the essay and the threads, but too much for this little box.
Yet one more, there is psychotherapy called “Hakoniwa Ryouhou (Box garden therapy)”

http://www.amy.hi-ho.ne.jp/shinsaku/sandplay/

I could not fine English site, but they use little box garden (on the pic) for psycho therapy. I love the concept.

Taku

[(Anonymous)]

I just watched a video conversation with the director Kieslowski; he was attempting to describe the invisible forces and impulses (he said 'metaphysical' actually) his characters often deal with. As he paused to choose his words, the way his hand absentmindedly waved in and out of the frame (and the little flashes of the spotlight on the face of his watch) said much more.

L'Anti-Oedipe: Capitalisme et Schizophrenie

[(Anonymous)]

What about a Guattari t-shirt? It would make an excellent trio, a wonderful "closed-family system" of t-shirts. Ha ha they would despise it! Or maybe they would think it was clever.

Would it be possible for me to have a t-shirt?? I would be so very thankful.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I wanted to add three thoughts:

1. On this thing about the Japanese interpreting punk as a fashion, I think the people who get punk wrong are people in Berlin or San Francisco. Assuming punk was a radical sectarian alternative lifestyle, these people dropped out of society to live in punk squats. This act was 'metaphysical' in the sense that it was based on the idea that 'reality is elsewhere' than society. In dropping out, though, all these punks ended up doing was becoming homeless, battling illness and the police. There was no 'punk infrastructure' to support them; no 'punk hospitals' or 'punk landlords'. What's more their punk garb, worn to this day as if it were not fashion but some kind of tribal folk dress, looks increasingly ridiculous. These 'lifestyle punks' have not stepped outside history, they have merely frozen a moment in its flux.

2. I also wanted to say that I find it very interesting that Alex Kerr is gay, and that his critique of Japan is largely visual. Or rather, that he starts with things he hates visually about postmodern Japan, like all the concrete, then tries to find the institutional 'problems' that generate it, like the 'corrupt bureaucracy'. Kerr is like a psychoanalyst: he gets to define what Japan's sickness is, then he gets to 'find' its source in an unexpected and hidden place. This is a 'paranoid critical method', some ghastly collision of metaphysics and conspiracy theory, which believes there is a hidden 'key', a plot, an unlikey, absent yet hugely important reality underlying every manifest thing.

3. In my essay Metaphysical Masochism of the Capitalist Creative (http://www.imomus.com/thought110100.html) I said that fetishist perverts and 'masochistic' creatives were the only western people to understand the Japanese way of thinking, because they go 'beyond the call of duty' and treat postmodern trash (pop records, graphic design, sex fetish) as if it were some sort of holy calling. This might be seen as a deviation, but it's a salutory one; the west is ruled by two 'conspiracies' or 'paranoias', the idea that everything is about money, and the idea that everything is about god. People who resist these 'paranoias' and actually focus on what's in front of them as if it really mattered for its own sake are, to me, heroes.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

I think you perhaps read too much into Kerr and, at the same time not enough. I haven't read Dogs and Demons properly (and don't really want to) so I don't know how much of his own story he tells in there. It's covered in 'Lost Japan' which I can recommend. He's spent a large part of his life in Japan. His experience is not limited to traditional culture - his contacts include people like Issy Miyaki and Tadao Ando. I've heard that Kerr is fluent in Japanese and completely conversant in Japanese codes of behaviour.

I think the motivations behind 'Dogs and Demons' may be quite different from the ones that have been discussed here. Perhaps his claim (in interviews he has given about the book, and in the preface, I think) that he was prompted to write the book by Japanese friends is, in fact, true. Perhaps it's aim is constructive - to stimulate criticism aspects of the social system which are in crisis. It is certainly having that effect outside of Japan, and amongst resident foreigners. I heard that Kerr's popularity in Japan plummeted with the publication of this book. Criticism is taboo in Japan - but on the other hand it is listened to and responded to. In the recent media he has appeared in a more positively light again, and he is saying positive things about Japanese culture.

But I find myself defending a book which I don't really like myself - mainly because it seems to frame the criticism as a kind of implicit comparison with the USA. The USA is in much, much worse shape than Japan in most respects - we've certainly seen that is the case over the last week.

[(Anonymous)]

You might be interested in this week's TLS, which has a long review of a book by Martha Nussbaum on shame and guilt cultures. The Crysanthemum and the Sword is mentioned, and I think the reviewer criticises Nussbaum's shame/guilt construct, although I read the review late last night in bed and can't remember it very well. I'll read it again tonight and report back if you're interested.

-H.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, tell me about it, H. The TLS doesn't put much online, and I don't know if it's available here.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry... totally off the topic but I read somewhere
When Japanese writer Kenji Nakagami and Derrida were in some discussion.
Nakagami said Japanese culture is like "kobe beef". Derrida pointed out French culture also has similar food like "fois gras". Then Nakagami said fois gras is from the organ which sorts out stuffs, but "kobe beef" is muscle which fat is evenly integrated. Even Dedrrida couldn't response with the comment.
Anyway...I wish could explain better... but I thought that was good point. Sorry I'm retarded right now..

Hope is muscle

Taku

[loveskull.livejournal.com]

have you seen all the cremaster? they wont even show it at the little private cinemas here.