Shock and Naturalization - an Inquiry Into the Perception of Modernity
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Shock and Naturalization - An Inquiry into the Perception of Modernity Cassegård, Carl 2002 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Cassegård, C. (2002). Shock and Naturalization - An Inquiry into the Perception of Modernity. Carl Cassegård, Stjärng.15, 234 31 Lomma,. 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LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Contents Preface 7 Introduction 9 Aims 11 Sociology and literature 19 chapter 1 Shock-modernity 27 1-1: Shock 29 1-2: Aura 41 1-3: Spleen and the protective shield of consciousness 50 1-4: Hell and the dilemma of shock-modernity 56 chapter 2 Strategies in shock-modernity 63 2-1: Two ideals of the good life 63 2-2: Kawabata Yasunari: shock and the reunion with inner nature 76 2-3: Abe Kôbô and the triumph of shock 91 chapter 3 Montages 103 chapter 4 Naturalized modernity 121 4-1: "Second nature" 125 4-2: Naturalization 128 4-3: Non-sociality 137 4-4: Hades 147 chapter 5 Strategies in naturalized modernity 167 5-1: Murakami Haruki: loneliness and waiting 167 5-2: Murakami Ryû: boredom and the nostalgia for shock 188 chapter 6 Conclusion 203 Notes 207 Bibliography 227 Previous publications 239 Biographical reference of Japanese writers 240 Index 244 Preface Tirelessly the process of thinking makes new beginnings, returning in a roundabout way to its original object. This continual pausing for breath is the mode most proper to the process of contemplation. û Walter Benjamin (1985: 28) This book is an exercise in rethinking. The impulse to think something over once again always has a twofold origin. To begin with, something is encountered which promises to put an old thought in a new light. But, secondly, this novelty is not yet sure of how to understand itself and turns to the old to beg for clues. Such novelties are often encountered in literature, and what provides the clues û and at the same time often needs to be rethought û is of course sociology. Here I would like to express my great indebtedness, first of all, to my academic advisors Profs. Inoue Shun and Tsutui Kiyotada at the Department of Sociology at Kyoto University in Japan, and Prof. Göran Dahl at the Department of Sociology at Lund University in Sweden. I would also like to express my gratitude to everyone who have contributed with important criticism, advice or suggestions, at seminars or in private discussions: above all Martin Bengtsson, Chikamori Takaaki, Hôgetsu Makoto, Carl-Göran Heidegren, Bo Isenberg, Ishihara Shun, Kurashima Akira, Keiko Kockum, Matsuda Motoji, Murata Yasuko, Nishimura Hiroshi, Nomura Akihiro, Frans Oddner, Okazaki Hiroki, Per-Olof Olofsson, Judith Snodgrass, Song Kichan, Taga Kentarô, and Tano Daisuke. A special thanks is due to Matsuura Yûsuke for our many helpful and delightful "philosophical chit-chats". I also thank the anonymous referees of the journals where my articles have been published for their valuable comments. My gratitude also goes to my parents and my friends, whose support has helped make the writing of this thesis worthwhile. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Japanese Ministry of Education and, indirectly, from the Swedish and Japanese taxpayers. Introduction Over great historical periods of time the mode of sense perception changes with the overall mode of existence of the human collective. û Benjamin (1977:141) It was in the crowd, Walter Benjamin writes, that the Parisian flâneurs at the time of the second empire obtained "the unfailing remedy" for their boredom. "Anyone who is capable of being bored in a crowd is a blockhead. I repeat: a blockhead, and a contemptible one", he quotes Constantin Guy, a painter and friend of Baudelaire (Benjamin 1997:37). The crowd inspired a mixture of fascination and dread. Inextricably entangled with its intoxicating and fascinating aspects were its menacing ones: its wildness, brutal indifference, and the possibilities of sudden, shocking encounters. "What are the dangers of the forest and the prairie compared with the daily shocks of civilization?", Baudelaire asks rhetorically, "Whether a man grabs his victim on a boulevard or stabs his quarry in unknown woods û does he not remain both here and there the most perfect of all beasts of prey?" (quoted in Benjamin 1997:39). As Benjamin points out, Baudelaire was a man who "made it his business to parry shocks, no matter where they might come from" and in whose poetry "every second finds consciousness ready to intercept its shock" (ibid 143, 154). The crowd was a remedy for boredom, not only because of the variety and the novelty it offered but also because of the need for constant alertness in order to avert its dangers. The tension between these two aspects can be felt in BaudelaireÆs desire to see the crowd as his home. Because it is to the crowd, this "immense reservoir of electrical energy", that what he calls the "artist of modern life" is attracted as if by a magnet. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world... The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito... (Baudelaire 1964:8) The flâneur claims the crowd as his home. But this home is not a place to relax. Being associated with an exhilarating anonymity, with inexhaustible novelty and variation, and with incessant shocks, it is the very opposite of the familiar and ordinary. "Baudelaire, great despiser of the countryside, of greenery and fields, nevertheless has this peculiarity: No one could be less inclined to view the big city as something ordinary, natural, acceptable", Benjamin writes (Benjamin 1999:386). As we turn to Okazaki KyôkoÆs manga-collection from 1989, I Love Boredom (Taikutsu ga daisuki), we encounter the figure of the flâneuse strolling in the bustling crowds of Shibuya, one of the trendy shopping areas of Tokyo. But something has changed. The crowd, which Baudelaire portrayed as a source of shock and fascination, seems to have become the backdrop of solitary reveries. To cast sidelong glances at the princes and princesses who stroll along the Shibuya streets. The piquant blue sky as I accidentally raise my eyes. ThatÆs boredom for me. Boredom resembles a landscape. And of course a blue sky. And as chubby Mari in Shi-shônen sings, donÆt you get down just by looking at the blue sky? e Like lovers going out to search for boredom under a hopelessly clear sky, like kids heading homewards after cramming school swimming like fish through a diluted night under the empty, flickering neon of convenience stores. DoesnÆt it make you feel cool and refreshed to walk around town like that û without dreading boredom? (Okazaki 1989:142) No shocking encounters interrupt the bored flâneuse in her meditations. The "sidelong glances" hint at the safe and comfortable distance that seemingly isolates her from the passers-by. Even as she moves in its midst, the crowd hardly intrudes upon her. Only people who are already at home with the crowd can swim through it "like fish", as if it were their element. She also seems quite immune against any fascination with novelties. It is not novelties that attract her attention. Indeed, Okazaki explains that her fondness for boredom stems from her "attachment and respect to the everyday things she has grown used to" (Okazaki 1989:141). To her, the city has become a natural and familiar environment. Rather than offering the fascination of the new, it is a source of pleasant boredom. * A montage is a way of suggesting meaning through a juxtaposition of contrasting images. Benjamin called it a "crystal" that could reflect the entirety of a complex series of events. Our aim will be to try to understand the difference brought to light in the above montage, that contrasts two images of the figure of the flâneur in the metropolitan crowd, the one from Paris of the 1860s and the other from Tokyo of the 1980s. Words that seem self-evident in their original context sometimes assume an ambiguous air when juxtaposed in the form of a montage. There is a subtle difference between the way Baudelaire and Okazaki feel at "home" in the crowd. Although both use natural metaphors to describe their experience of the street, Baudelaire’s "forest and prairie" belong to a concept of nature that seems incongruous with the submarine back streets through which Okazaki’s school children swim like "fish".