The ethics of aesthetics in Japanese cinema and literature : polygraphic desire / Nina Cornyetz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cornyetz, Nina.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Series:

Routledge contemporary Japan series ; 10.

Routledge contemporary Japan series ; 10

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authors, Japanese--20th century--Aesthetics.

Authors, Japanese.

Literature and morals.

Motion pictures--Aesthetics.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Japan.

Aesthetics.

Japan.

Physical Description:

x, 225 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2007.

Summary:

The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature is a study of the ethics of modern Japanese aesthetics from the 1930s, through the Second World War and into the postwar period. What makes this book unique is that Nina Cornyetz opens up the field in new and controversial ways by exploring the tensions and harmonies between psychoanalytic ethics of the drive and sociopolitical ethics of relation to the other. Rejecting the convention of viewing these as contradictory, Cornyetz insists that the exemplars of psychoanalytic ethics are to the contrary, simultaneously politically ethical.

Cornyetz embarks on innovative and unprecedented readings of some of the most significant literary and film texts of the Japanese canon, including works by Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Abe Kobo, and Shinoda Masahiro, all renowned for their texts' aesthetic and philosophic brilliance. The study looks at how relations between individuals and communities in these texts either reiterate or transcend stereotypes, and how desire is or is not limited by sociocultural norms. Cornyetz argues that these authors' and filmmakers' concepts of beauty and relation to others were, in fact, deeply impacted by political and social factors.

Ranging from a discussion of fascist aesthetics to heterosexism in modern Japan, The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature shows how certain changing political, intellectual, and artistic issues, as well as sociocultural norms, variously nuanced these texts' depictions of desire and the "other". Through her analysis of cultural texts such as the films Woman in the Dunes and Double Suicide, Cornyetz challenges the convention that praises the universality of their artistic, existential or intellectual achievements. Rather she seeks to reorient these within a specifically Japanese historical context to give a new and insightful interpretation to the work. This groundbreaking study is truly interdisciplinary and will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature, film, gender, culture, history, and even psychoanalytic theory.

Contents:

Part I Woman as second nature and other fascist proclivities in Kawabata Yasunari 13

1 Myth-making 16

2 Fascist aesthetics 23

3 Kawabata and fascist aesthetics 34

4 Virgins and other little objects 40

Part II The politics of climate and community in Woman in the Dunes and "The idea of the desert" 59

5 A preface to Woman in the Dunes: space, geopolitics, and "The idea of the desert" 64

6 Social networks and the subject 75

7 Technologies of gazing 96

Part III Naming desire: Mishima Yukio and the politics of "sexuation" 109

8 Textualizing flesh, or, (in)articulate desire 113

9 Narcissism and sadism: Mishima as homofascist 134

10 The homosocial fixing of desire 145

11 Scripting the scopic: disinterest in Double Suicide 155.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [176]-217) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

0415770874

9780415770873

0203967011

9780203967010

OCLC:

64624850

Online:

Publisher description