Unuseless Cyborgs: Spiral Posthumanism and Popular Culture in Japan's Ushinawareta Nijūnen(1990-2010) by Andrew Lawrence Gilb
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Unuseless Cyborgs: Spiral Posthumanism and Popular Culture in Japan’s Ushinawareta Nijūnen (1990-2010) by Andrew Lawrence Gilbert B.A., Bethel College, 2004 M.A., Indiana University South Bend, 2007 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature 2017 ii This thesis entitled: Unuseless Cyborgs: Spiral Posthumanism and Popular Culture in Japan’s Ushinawareta Nijūnen (1990-2010) written by Andrew Gilbert has been approved for the Department of Comparative Literature Dr. Karen Jacobs (Chair) Dr. Faye Kleeman Dr. Eric White Dr. Jeremy Green Dr. Annjeanette Wiese Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Gilbert, Andrew Lawrence (Ph.D., Comparative Literature) Unuseless Cyborgs: Spiral Posthumanism and Popular Culture in Japan’s Ushinawareta Nijūnen (1990- 2010) Dissertation directed by Associate Professor, Dr. Karen Jacobs Abstract: Unuseless Cyborgs: Spiral Posthumanism and Popular Culture in Japan’s Ushinawareta Nijūnen (1990- 2010) examines contemporary American posthuman theories (theories that challenge humanist accounts of embodiment, agency, subjectivity and humans’ relation to the environment) through the lens of an emerging critical subjectivity in Japanese popular culture during the Ushinawareta Nijūnen (The “Forgotten Decades”). This dissertation creates a conversation between contemporary Japanese popular culture from 1990-2010 and American posthuman theories in order to identify a strand of Japanese subjectivity that straddles the line between liberal humanism and a transhuman post-subjectivity (that emphasizes human entanglements with the non-human). In the absence of a developed Japanese critical discourse of posthumanism, this project adapts American posthuman theory for a Japanese cultural context, exploring the nascent forms of subjectivity revealed in Japanese cultural texts during these decades. These forms, I argue, are critical of Japan’s conventionally sanctioned subjectivity in this period, which emphasizes individuality, efficiency, and autonomous thinking. In addition to analyses of Haruki Murakami’s short fiction and Junji Itō’s horror manga, Uzumaki, this dissertation introduces the Japanese product Chindōgu (quirky inventions created to be specifically “unuseless”) to American theoretical discourse and is the first to analyze the ways they contribute to a specifically Japanese posthuman discourse during the Ushinawareta Nijūnen (“Forgotten Decades”) period that I argue is best exemplified in the spiral form. iv I would like to take a moment and acknowledge those who made this undertaking possible. Thank you all. This project is the result of the direction and encouragement of Dr. Karen Jacobs without whom I would not have reached this far or delved this deep. My committee, Dr. Annje Wiese, Dr. Eric White, Dr. Faye Kleeman, and Dr. Jeremy Green, has brought each of their own specialties to this project and allowed me to expand its scope in exciting ways. My family has been a gigantic support and all of them have contributed to this by listening to my theories and asking thoughtful questions. My wife, Darcy Winteregg Gilbert has been my biggest cheerleader, intellectual catalyst, and inspiration for the theories introduced within this project. My greatest accomplishment has been seeing the pride in her eyes. My mother, Dr. Amy Gilbert, more than anyone, understood the trials of obtaining my doctorate and became a lighthouse for when the work seemed to fog my surroundings. My sister, Ashley Guntle, has never let me settle with “good enough.” Her own accomplishments have challenged me to constantly strive to be better and take risks. My father, Ron Gilbert, helped instill in me the work ethic I needed to accomplish my professional goals while balancing my personal life. My grandparents, Linda and Harold Towsley, have been integral in supporting us as I finished my degree. We could not have survived without their constant care. My mother-in-law, Kathy Winteregg, has shown me nothing but love and demonstrated for me the meaning of strength. And my late father-in-law, Terry Winteregg, showed me that it was okay to be quiet and contemplative. Without these guiding qualities, I would not have come out of this research unscathed. My Friends – Max Kinsey, Galway and Darcy Traynor, Kevin and Naomi Croghan, Lena Knechtel, TJ Checco, Marc Rich, Matthew Eaton, Mikel J. Wisler, Rachel and Aric Dorschner, Michael Burnett, Colin Guntle, Jeani and Paul McAleer, Eric Bumpus, Ben Sky, Okla Elliot, Scoot Peercy, Steven Webb, Jeremiah Hawn, and many others – you have challenged me, encouraged me, and humbled me when necessary. I could not have achieved this without you. My teachers, counselors, and professors over the years – Greg McCormick, Jennifer Shepherd, Chris Foster, Dan Kuhn, Jim Gilmer, Mickey Ratliff, Martin Becker, Jon Sabo, Lisa and Bob Staples, Dr. Kelcey Parker, Dr. Joe Chaney, Dr. David Ferris, Dr. Paul, Patricia Paige, and Dr. Earl Reimer – you taught me to think critically, to organize my time and my arguments, and to hunger for knowledge. My humble thanks to all of you and the many more that I have forgotten here. My research is the sum total of all of you. v CONTENTS CHAPTER: INTRODUCTION: Posthumanism Proper ....................................................................1 1. Posthumanism and Post-Shutaisei ......................................................................38 2. Murakami Haruki’s Subjectivity .........................................................................64 3. Unuseless Cyborgs ............................................................................................108 4. The Posthuman Spiral .......................................................................................139 CONCLUSION: Potential Applications of Spiral Posthumanism .............................171 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………..………………… ....………………………189 1 Introduction: Posthumanism-Proper Japanese Subjectivity through the Lens of Anglo-American Posthumanism Discourse We are something other than ‘autonomous’ … but that does not mean we are merged or without boundaries. Judith Butler, Precarious Life (27) Me: Cleverbot, I’m using you in my dissertation. What do you think about that? Cleverbot: I dream of funerals. Conversation with the AI Cleverbot on October 29th, 2016 (cleverbot.com) The comparative and interpretive act performed in this dissertation unearths a critical Japanese subjectivity which at once straddles the borders between liberal humanism (defined as the human self autonomously delineated from the non-human and non-self through modes of cognition such as mastery, hierarchy, and progression)1 and a transhuman post-subjectivity2 (a view of subject as inextricably interconnected with and subsumed under the non-human or non- self). An inconsistency exists within Anglo-American3 transhumanism which utilizes liberal humanist thought processes (mastery, hierarchy, or erasure) in order to attempt to surpass humanism and the Japanese posthuman subjectivity extracted in this project supplements these current theories by uncovering a posthuman subjectivity in Japan that resists such an 1 The culmination of enlightenment thinking. 2 Post-subjectivity, according to Christoph Schmidt’s “Subjectivities After the Death of the Subject” - an introduction to a collection of essays entitled Post-Subjectivity (2014), expresses the questions of subjectivity as a theory set apart from the post of post-humanism which tends to retain something of humanism. Here, post- subjectivity engages with the “always already present element of community, [Jean Luc Nancy’s] being-with, and intersubjectivity, as well as the role the Other might play in the constitution of self without subjectivity” (5-6). Here, the alterity that Emmanuel Levinas seems to transcend couples with the new work on love from Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Marion, and William Desmond in order to discover a way to philosophize a phenomenology without the subject. In America, this post-subjective influence is expressed in notions of Object Oriented Ontology and New Materialism which work to transcend the individual subject to find its necessary connection to objects and the environment that shares existence with the self – no longer an actual subject. For this project, post-subjectivity will be used to define a subject inextricably diffused into community, others, objects, and the world as opposed to a Cartesian cogito, both in their zenithal senses. Post-subjectivity will soon be fully subsumed under the umbrella of transhumanism as it opposes humanism. 3 Rather than a self-identified group, the collection of posthuman theorists used in this dissertation happen to share ethnic and national boundaries, boundaries that I hope are broadened with the inclusion of Japanese texts. 2 inconsistency. This subjectivity recognizes the borders of the other already present within itself, a complicated and contradictory subjectivity which separates and conjoins the self and the non- self, and is exhibited within contemporary Japanese popular culture from 1990-2010.4 This particular Japanese subjectivity remains undertheorized. With a goal toward reexamining inconsistencies and Western-centric biases in Anglo-American posthumanism,