Voices of the Past : The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse / Naoki Sakai.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sakai, Naoki, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 p.) : 2 b&w illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Naoki Sakai maintains, a radical change took place in Japanese discourse—the sudden emergence of multiple new possibilities of conceptualizing the world. In this brilliant and searching reinterpretation of the cultural history of the Tokugawa period, Sakai traces this shift across a spectrum of artistic and critical texts from puppet theater to Confucian commentary. He asserts that during this time a new emphasis was placed on textual performance, practice, and communication, and he illuminates its ethical and political consequences.Sakai draws upon the insights of recent critical theory as he explores the historical consciousness of texts and the self-consciousness of language itself. Analyzing the conditions of discourse formation, he seeks to suggest how language may be used to inform historical investigation. He first considers the Confucian philosopher Ito Jinsai's critiques of Neo-Confucianism. Showing how the historical other was constructed and theorized, Sakai discusses key works of visual art, performance pieces, poetry, and wakun, a genre of graphic translation. Finally, he considers writings representative of intellectual movements that began to construct the identity of the Japanese language and culture.Intellectual historians, specialists in Japanese culture, anthropologists working with historical texts, literary theorists, linguists, philosophers, and others interested in East Asian thought will welcome this rich and challenging book.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Theoretical Preliminaries

1. Change in the Mode of Discursive Formation

2. Ito Jinsai: The Text as the Human Body and the Human Body as the Text

3.Textuality and Sociality: The Question of Praxis, Exteriority, and the Split in Enunciation

4.The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

5.Supplement

6.Defamiliarization and Parody

7.The Problem of Translation

8.Phoneticism and History

9. The Politics of Choreography

Conclusion

Appendix. Japanese and Chinese Terms

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 15. Sep 2020)

ISBN:

1-5017-3775-9

OCLC:

1198929851