Resilience through Rituals

This paper intends to survey the conceptual frameworks which deal with the scene of Electronic Dance Music (ECDM) by addressing some ethnographic topics. First, the concept of ‘resilience’ drawn from physics and engineering or the recent current of psychology is raised in order to analyze the scene of techno party instead of the notion of ‘resistance’ posited by Birmingham School in the context of Cultural Studies. Second, this essay examines with the applicability of some concepts borrowed from the philosophy by Deleuze and Guattari for the same purpose. Third, the notion of ‘generic’ is posited as the crucial moment for the formation of genres in the techno music and the specificity of position of DJs as the generic intellectual

Humanities is Dead as Rock is Dead : Death of an Experimental University

This paper was the featured panel in the annual conference for Association for Japanese Literary Studies (AJLS) at Chicago University in 2013. The panel was organized by Michael Bourdaghs, the professor on Japanese literature and pop-cultures at University of Chicago. The focus was on two musicians: Hayakawa Yoshio（早川義夫）and Masahide Sakuma（佐久間正英）, their band, Ces Chiens, held a live concert after the panel. Both famous musicians were students of Wako University in the early days. Unfortunately Sakuma (one of my rock heroes in my teen years, the mid of 1970\u27s) was struggling with the serious stage of cancer which showed in his performances at the gig (Sadly he passed away in January 2014). Side by side with two legendary musicians from Wako in the panel, my paper drew on a brief historical retrospection and some critical remarks of the recent situation of Wako University. The intention of this essay is not romanticizing or idealizing nostalgically some moments of Wako. Rather, indeed, the paper would explore critically why and how the interesting and radical attempts in the past has been smashed away or even repressed under the name of \u27normalization\u27, which is certainly a bi-lateral result of neo-liberal reformation of higher education system in Japan since the decade. The banalization of Wako can be posited along with the degradation and crisis of humanities in general. This essay doesn\u27t contend to go back to customs and methods in the past, but rather engages with opening the new potentiality and imagination for the ruined Wako

Toward a Trans-Local Encounter within Philosophy : Gilles Deleuze Toshihiko Izutsu

There have been until today numerous attempts to compare the philosophy of Gille Deleuze with Eastern or \u27Oriental\u27 philosophy and thought. However, rather than hastily positing an affinity between both threads of thought, this paper aims at presenting a possible interpretation or \u27trans-local\u27 comparison of the works of Deleuze (1925-1995) and Toshihiko Izutsu(1914-1993).Following this interpretive approach, I will in this paper examine the three following points. First, this paper will open with an interpretation in terms of language of the difference or contradiction between immanence and transcendent in both philosophies of Deleuze and Izutsu. Second, I will explore the potentialities of the sentence \u27One is always the index of a multiplicity\u27 written by Deleuze in his last essay in light of Izutsu\u27s philosophical discourses. Lastly, I will re-examine the series of notion of virtuality, singularity and void or nothingness in Deleuzian philosophy

War and Anime in the Age of Machine-Oriented Ontology : The Case of OSHII Mamoru

This paper explores Oshii Mamoru\u27s films and animations. First, his view of the cinematic citation (appropriation) is analyzed in some comparison with Jean-Luc Godard. Second, his preoccupation with the plot of the weird duality between reality and dream is examined with plural contexts of cultural avant-garde in the 20th century. Third, the question of why Oshii Mmoru has been so much interested in the warfare in his works. Through the series of problematics, this essay would locate his perspective in some philosophical and ontological debates, in which Deleuze & Guattari and others must be addressed. Then, his insightful but provocative statements on the war and history are interpreted in the philosophical streamwhich I would like to call Machine-Oriented Ontology

The Ontology of Withdrawal (1) : What is a Withdrawal?

This essay is a part of my ongoing project, the "ontology of withdrawal". In this introductory section, this work begins with comparative interpretations of both philosophical projects by François Laruelle and Toshihiko Izutsu. Some basic but quite idiosyncratic concepts by Laruelle are clarified and explained: One-in-vision, One-in-One, non-philosophy, given-without-givenness,unilaterality, clone, dualysis, stranger-subject, and so on. Each conception is considered and re-examined from the perspective of non-religious philosophy by Izutsu. Rather than being contented with a mere demonstration of similar or compatible points in these two philosophical systems, this paper would like to make some interventions for the recent philosophical debates after the "so-called speculative turn" raised by Object-Oriented Ontology and Speculative Realism

Infancy and Critical Theory

This paper examines with a relationship between infancy and critical theory by addressing a Japanese postwar intellectual who is a kind of counterparts of Frankfurt School scholar in Euro/Am context, Fujita Shozo, and one of his texts in the details

The Ontology of Withdrawal (2) : What is a the Void? And Other Respects

This essay continues to provide with an introductory explanation of some basic conceptions raised by French philosopher Francois Laruelle, of which the previous section of this series of essay has already scrutinized, while keeping in mind something comparable or counterparts within some Japanese philosophy including Izutsu Toshihiko\u27s one or other potential references. Insofar as Laruelle\u27s non-philosophy has given conceptual inspirations for the recent debates around speculative philosophy and Object-Oriented Ontology since a decade, in which I am interested in the intention of re-elaborating the potentiality of (speculative) materialism in both the philosophical sense and critical theory

The Ontology of Withdrawal (4) : Photo-fiction and Philo-fiction

In the former part of this section (4), I am going to interpret an entanglement or superposition between philosophy and photography in Laurelle’s non-philosophical discourse, by addressing American photographer, William Eugene Smith (1918～1978), who thematized patients of Minamata disease in his photographic works in the early 1970’s. In the latter part, this essay grapples with the question why both Laruelle and Izutsu as philosopher have been so much interested in the discourse of gnosis, revolt and insurrection

Anthropomorphism, Panpsychism and Becoming in Nonhuman Agencies in the Recent Human Sciences

This essay explores the significance of anthropomorphism in the recent human sciences and humanities in general. The analysis begins with the assessment of some subcultural pieces in manga and anime cultures. Rather than drawing on the detailed interpretation of works in popular subcultures, this paper analyses just a cultural and social context, or a certain ambience, in which both the heoretical paradigm of human sciences and the affective mode deployed in subcultural pieces have something in common in terms of the notion of non human turn. In order to grasp such a conceptual and cultural milieu, what should be analyzed here is the usage of anthropomorphism in recent humanities, which is articulated in the three different perspective: animism, vitalism, and panpsychism. In philosophy or critical theory, Deleuze and Guattari, Whitehead, Gillard, and the recent discussion of speculative philosophy are scrutinized, while, in science, Margulis, Valera, Stengers are analyzed

Friends of Felix Guattari in Archipelagoes : Micro-Politics, Circle Movements, and Post-Media Activism in the Post War Japan

application/pdfFélix Guattari loved groupscules (small groups or fractions of some party and organizations) in his political philosophy in both his early days and ecosophy in his late work. ‘Subjectgroup’, groupuscules, and circles, unlike ‘subjugated group’, are constantly operative in the translocal context which Guattari could not have fully known in his life. This essay introduces some (potential) unknown friends of Guattari outside Europe, that is, Asia, especially in the post war Japan. It also examines how Guattarian activist philosophy, especially his ecosophy with three (virtual) ecologies is able to be compared with circle movements and its critical and theoretical perspective in the post war intellectuals of Japan.departmental bulletin pape