 Nice, pleasant read, informative and simple. An example of anthropology that is dépassé, I doubt that anyone today would write a book about Japanese culture as a monolithic entity.
Benedict could not conduct fieldwork in Japan while studying Japanese culture due to WWII enmity between the US and Japan, so she makes up for it with a heterogeneous array of sources (autobiographies, newspaper ask-a-doctor columns, novels, films etc.), and still manages some great linguistic analysis of some key Japanese concepts like on, giri, gimu etc. (I can't comment on how correct her analysis is). Benedict's analysis falls short when she tries to use Japanese culture (personality-writ-large) as an explicative variable in international politics without considering political situation, historical circumstances, events, etc. (But this might be because I think this book was more for a popular audience, long complex analyses would have slowed down the pace of the book). For example, Benedict talks about the Japanese propensity to 'take one's proper station' and describes the surprise of the Japanese at the negative reaction of colonized people under the Japanesw Empire, as if Japanese colonization was a mere misunderstanding.
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 Great novel, had no expectations for it. Unfortunately, I didn't do a very thorough reading, didn't make notes, etc.
The novel is set in the 17th century and follows a four year journey made by a group of low-ranking samurai (+ retainers) sent on a diplomatic mission by a faction of the Japanese government to the King of Spain to secure trading rights with Neuva Espagne (Mexico), trip that takes them to a meeting with the Pope. With them is Velasco, a missionary and their translator, who is on this trip for his own purposes, which is to secure influence for himself and his faction (the Dominicans) in the missionary effort in Japan. Endo has a constructs differences between the Japanese mind and the Christian mind--the former, a culture with immanent spiritual conceptions, no conceptions of the Absolute, practical, and the latter, an opposite of the former--through the opaque samurai (especially Hasekura Rokuemon, the protagonist, who is referred to more than often by his title than name) and the transparent diaries of Velasco. Above all, this is a story of a journey of faith (unfortunately, I'm not a man of faith and I cannot comment on Endo's biblical and Christian references), faith for the samurai in their government and emperor, and faith for Velasco in God, and a resulting loss of trust in man-made political formations (Emperor and Japanese government, Catholic church). Endo seems to point to a personal relationship with Christ (the Japanese priest the group meets in New Mexico presents a model outside of the workings of political processes).  Second reading, still one of the most interesting books I have read in my lifetime.
Consists of three independent but related essays (different terms and vocabulary used in each essay) investigating the origin of "moral prejudices." First essay invesigates the origins of good and bad, good and evil. The 'good' were the noble, the aristocratic who positively named themselves as such (which I found interesting from the perspective of structuralism), and the 'bad' were the common, the vulgar, who were the opposite of the 'good' (thus negatively defined). The 'good' were named 'evil' by the brooding and sickly priestly class, who felt an overwhelming ressentiment for these healthy, noble, aristocratic people, they performed a reevaluation and named themselves (and their followers, the meek, the lowly, the herd) the 'good'. Basically they were haters. But here I think it is important to note that Nietzsche is not saying that what had happened is "bad," he is telling a story of the genesis of morality. "--but it is only fair to add that it was on the soil of this essentially dangerous form of human existence, the priestly form, that man first became an interesting animal, that only here did the human soul in a higher sense acquire depth and become evil--and these are the two basic respects in which man has hitherto been superior to other beasts!" (p. 33) Man becomes an interesting animal at that moment--a huge complement from Nietzsche. Second essay is about the origins of "that other 'somber thing'" or bad conscience/guilt. Nietzsche initially traces this origin in the creditor/debtor relationship using the same etymological analysis as in essay 1 [he notes the connection between 'schuld' (guilt) and 'schulden' (debts)] and then takes this idea to one of its limits to explore the relationship between the Christian God and Christians, the Absolute Debtor under whom is created the arena for the maximum feeling of guilt. There is also another hypothesis that Nietzsche provides in Section 16, which is the result "which occurred when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and peace" (p. 84). All of man's "animal instincts" (I think an interesting study can be done on Nietzsche's constant refer to this animal self) become internalized, leading to the development of the "soul" and leading to depth, breadth and bad conscience. This shaping of man "into a firm form" (p. 86) was an act of violence (by those who were stronger) and not a result of a contract (Locke)--is this culture?--an "instinctive creation" by "involuntary, unconscious artists." Again, is this a "bad" thing? "Let us add at once that, on the other hand, the existence on earth of an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself, was something so new, profound, unheard of, enigmatic, contradictory, /and pregnant with a future/ that the aspect of the earth was essentially altered..." (p. 85). I will stop here for now, I would encourage anybody and everybody to read this work by Nietzsche, you don't have to agree with him, but he will be endlessly provocative.  Second reading.
Wrote a longer review which I hope to publish somewhere. Snow Country starts (and ends) with Yoko, a girl with "such a beautiful voice that it struck one as sad." Shimamura is only permitted an indirect apprehension of her through Kawabata's window-mirror (there is an interesting short study published by the japantimes, will link below). Yoko is a phantasm, a fantastical dreamlike object of desire who floats in the background. Shimamura is a married and rich idler from Tokyo who goes to snow country to see Komako, who is basically his geisha side bitch. He has a highly developed sense of aesthetics, as can be attested by numerous image-passages (flaneur-photographer type, I initially thought of film director Ozu when I read these, but I think they are a bit different in form and function, an example can be found p. 34 - 35). His chief preoccupation is with the Occidental dance (ballet), a form that is distant enough for him to freely project his fantasies (but what happens when the Occident is embodied? See pages 63 to 64 for the answer). Kawabata makes a direct comparison between the Occidental dance, Komako, Yoko, so basically the three are objects/figures for him to freely project his fantasies on, and catalysts who allow the aestheticization of experience. Once Komako becomes "too intimate, too familiar" it is time for Shimamura to go (I think it is instructive to see how Kawabata writes of their physical liaison; it is unwritten, a silence, a way of keeping Komako from losing her fantastical appeal?). Last few pages are amazing, the immediacy and urgency of the fire versus the cold detached universal presence of the Milky Way. I think that the last page shows that Komako and Yoko are doubles of each other, joined by madness, the foreground and background of Shimamura's painting of Snow Country (also check out page 5, Shimamura encounters Yoko through his thoughts about Komako). If you haven't read Snow Country this book review was probably not too instructive.  The first book for amateurs on Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos, the educator of Bitcoin. (I have read the second volume and have the book review up already.)
The second volume is much more interesting, and he goes deeper into different visions for Bitcoin. This volume is more basic. Some interesting things (tried to avoid duplication): A comparison for Bitcoin using computer science terminology: while Bitcoin is in the form of a decentralized, mathematical, peer-to-peer architecture, older financial models resemble a client-server, master-slave architecture. The terms Master and Slave here are interesting, can provide a bridge for thinking about Bitcoin through a Nietzschean lens: the Master controls the rules, the grammar, the values while the slave can only follow; with Bitcoin's decentralized network, anyone on the network can innovate and transform the structure/rules/values. Antonopoulos introduces the distinction between privacy and secrecy, and the term sousveillance. The global financial system is a system of surveillance, or a system where the powerful can look down from above. There is no privacy for those under surveillance, while the powerful have the privilege of secrecy, or the ability to escape accountability. Bitcoin gives the masses privacy and introduces transparency into the system--this is a system of sousveillance (to look from below) that allows the masses to keep those in power responsible. Bitcoin provides the context for "the festival of the commons" because it is an open source network that allows anyone to contribute innovations that add to its functionality. These innovations are not depletable--they add value to everyone on the network. This is in comparison to other resources that lead to the "tragedy of the commons." Everyone will be able to create a currency, and currencies will be an expression of a community. Antonopoulos thinks that there might be an "index currency" as a result. This index currency, in his words will be "a currency that is not in itself tradable, that has no intrinsic use as a transactional commodity, but instead is only used to express the purchasing power vis-a-vis the various coins in our wallets" (p. 72). This is similar to the S&P 500 index fund, for example. With all these micro-communities, he thinks that it might be currency that creates sovereignty, instead of our system of nation-states where sovereignty creates currency. Bitcoin currently suffers from bad design metaphors. A bitcoin wallet is not a wallet, it is a keychain. A bitcoin is not a coin, it is an output. Miners don't mine coins, they create ledger entries. This problem is due to the fact that Bitcoin represents a radical break from previous financial systems.  Another Yoko Tawada that I read four months prior while in Germany.
This collection of short stories was written in German originally, I found her writing to be shocking in the best way possible. Never have I read anything like this sentence from her short story "Spores": "Every morning at six, Kinoko-san arranges the neckline of her kimono just so, draws herself up straight and smiles with her shiny cheeks and kindly-looking crow's feet." Kindly-looking crow's feet? I will mostly take the examples from her ahort story, "The Bath" for the following. Tawada, as a transnational subject, is attentive to the constantly shifting nature of subjectivity: "Eighty pervent of the human body is made of water, so it isn't surprising that one sees a different face in the mirror each morning." She surgically removes the artificial boundaries between East and West, the Japanese narrator in the Bath becomes the double of a middle-aged dead German lady in the middle of the book. The short story "When Europe Begins" is also an excellent case in point: where does Europe begin? the narrator wonders as she goes from Japan to Europe on the transsiberian railway. In the place of the regional and national (or other territory-bounded) myths, Tawada uses her own myths, or uses stories from all different cultures to create a potent hodgepodge that disturbs boundaries. (These are present in several of her stories in this collection, I will not copy an example.) As a polyglot and writer in two languages, Tawada is very aware of the tactility of words. The protagonist in "The Bath" is a translator who translates for a German and Japanese business group, which she likens as the following: "People's mouths fell open like trash bags, and garbage spilled out. I had to chew the garbage, swallow it, and spit it back out in different words." I really liked this collection (I was not a big fan of Facing the Bridge) and I wanted to write a longer review, but four months have passed and I don't want to reread the whole thing. Sad.  Read this four or so months ago, forgot what I wanted to write about it.
Three stories, Yoko Tawada wrote these stories in her native Japanese; apparently she is not as experimental in Japanese as in German (according to some article I read somewhere). All of the stories deal with in-between subjectivities. First story relates the story of a Japanese exchange student in Germany with Anton Wilhelm Amo, a captured slave to Germany who became Professor. Second story is about a tourist; I find the figure of the tourist an interesting one in literature, and not very well explored. (The only other one I can think of is a Houellebecq book where a French tourist group goes to Thailand.) Third story is about a translator--this one I found confusing to no end.  This book contains four plays by Sartre: No Exit, the Flies, Dirty Hands, and the Respectful Prostitute
No Exit Three of the deceased--Inez, Garcin, Estelle--expect hell in the afterworld but find themselves in a drawing room in the Second Empire style. Where is the torturer? they wonder. There is no torturer but it is still hell: "hell is--other people" as Sartre's celebrated bon mots goes, as the three are stuck in the unblinking gaze of the other two forever and ever. (This reminded me of Bunuel's Exterminating Angel, although the two works are motivated differently.) What does it mean to say that hell is other people? This is not a mere discomfort at a lack of personal space, it is the acknowledgement of the subjectivizing power of the gaze of others. In every person an image of me exists, and this image is present when the person forced onto me his or her persistent gaze, constraining my freedom with these set of expectations... I'm glad I'm not an instagram influencer. I find it interesting to compare Sartre's idea of the gaze that constrains freedom with Jean Rouch's (visual anthropologist) idea of the camera's gaze which acts as a generative and disruptive presence. In Rouch's conception, the camera's gaze constructs a performative context for individuals under the gaze--this is a key part of Rouch's camera psychoanalysis (I cannot remember the exact term) that facilitates the discovery of deeper individual truths. Both these ideas are the same, in my opinion, but just worded differently--I still prefer Rouch's conception. The Flies Sartre's rewriting of the story of Electra and Orestes. I have not read the original, so I cannot make a comparison. Basic story: Agememnon returns from the Trojan War, gets killed by Aegisthus, the lover of his wife Clytemnestra; Orestes, who is in Athens, and Electra, who remains in Argos, avenge his death. Argos is infested with flies, who were sent by Zeus as punishment, and the whole city is burdened by guilt, both on the level of the collective from the murder of their former King Agememnon and on the individual level. Orestes, in contrast, is the pure, the unburdened, and represents a sort of childish freedom: he is light-footed and memory-less and without responsibility, with nothing to call his own. He desires maturity and even envies the Argos townspeoples' suffocating guilt, even if "that would mean killing [his] mother-" Electra, while one of the Argos people (Argosans?) seeks to rise above and absolve herself. In one moment in the play, she dances courageously in the face the dead and the flies that come to haunt the people of Argos once a year--a freedom with the burden of responsibility. However, only Orestes is able to take the final leap into this true freedom--after murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, Electra succumbs to guilt, while Orestes conversely realizes his freedom through this act. Zeus attempts to bring Orestes back under his control, offering him the Kingship of Argos in return for his guilt, but Orestes refuses. "I am doomed to have no other law but mine" Orestes says, and Zeus admits defeat: "In the fullness of time, a man was to come, to announce my decline." Ends with quite an exhilarating and affirmative Nietzschean moment. Dirty Hands A play that probably concerned Sartre's own life as an intellectual left-wing Communist sympathizer of bourgeois origins. Hugo is a bourgeois intellectual who belongs to the revolutionary communist party during WWII. His code name is Raskolnikov, after the protagonist in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov the overman commits a murder and spends the rest of the novel deteriorating in guilt; Sartre makes a clever inversion for his play. As a bourgeois intellectual, Hugo's hands are already dirty--to make himself pure he must commit a murder (and act) and wash his hands clean in the blood of Hoederer, the reactionary and compromising leader within the Communist party who wants to strike a deal with reactionary forces. The above is the main point, some additional notes below. Hoederer becomes a surrogate father for Hugo, who disowned his family to attempt purification. Hugo and his wife Jessica cannot help but feel as if they are playing a role in a play (dramatic irony), they are mere children. Hugo gets his opportunity to act, but his act becomes meaningless; Hugo was not the agent who pulled the trigger, it was chance--a tragedy. Hugo's childish idealism leads him to an ultimate rejection of life in the end, at the moment of the great reversal.  As the excellent introduction by Adam Thirlwell writes, French intellectuals in Paris at the particular historical conjuncture were debating the definitions of left-wing literature by its form and content and readership while leaving intact the 'myth' of Literature as a reified, universal and eternal, bourgeois cultural form.
Barthes takes the myth of Literature as his object of study, contending that Classical forms of writing (the only form of writing due to a unified bourgeois consciousness in writing) disintegrated in 1850s (due to a French revolution of some sort I suppose, my French history isn't so good), from which the writer confronts an inevitable choice, and "there is no Literature without an Ethics of language" (p.6). Barthes then goes on to trace the various forms that occurred after the dissolution of classical Literature through Flaubert, Maupassant, Camus etc. As usual I appreciate Barthes' extraordinary abilities to read (eg. his chapter on 'Writing and the Novel' where he analyzes the role of the preiterate tense and third person narration in creating a sphericity, a 'real' artificiality that sustains the novel as a bourgeois institution).  Good introduction to Saussure.
Good review on paradigmatic relations and syntagmatic relations. Learned one important thing about Saussurian structuralism that I was not aware of: "... the linguistic system consists of different levels of structure; at each level one can identify elements which contrast with one another and combine with other elements to form higher-level units, and the principles of structure at each level are fundamentally the same" (p.46) Also relates his linguistic revolution to Freud and Durkheim, showing how his transformation of linguistics was a part of the development of modern thought at that time. Culler sees the future of Saussure's legacy in semiology, a field that has not been studied adequately by linguists. |
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