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Trauma, dissociation and re-enactment in Japanese literature and film

Trauma, dissociation and re-enactment in Japanese literature and film CONTEMPORARY JAPAN, 2018 VOL. 30, NO. 1, 135–141 BOOK REVIEWS Trauma, dissociation and re-enactment in Japanese literature and film,by David Stahl, New York, Routledge, 2018, vii + 224 pp. + index, $140 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-138-73325-1, https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-Dissociation-and-Re- enactment-in-Japanese-Literature-and-Film/Stahl/p/book/9781138733251 The prominent literary critic Peter Brooks begins his essay ‘The Idea of a Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism’ (1987) with these words: ‘Psychoanalytic literary criticism has always been something of an embarrassment. One resists labeling as a “psychoanalytic critic” because the kind of criticism evoked by the term mostly deserves the bad name it largely has made for itself’ (p. 334). Where does this ‘embarrassment’ come from? We might reflexively perceive the risk of taking psychoanalysis as a universal science and applying its methodology to literary analysis in a formulaic way. Or we might be wary of critics primarily aiming to analyze the psyche of the author, the reader, or the characters, displacing the object of analysis from the dynamism of the text itself. We might feel that somehow psychoanalytic criticism tends to be too confident in its explanatory capacity and miss something that is unique to literature. Have we, then, overcome this ‘embarrassment’? About 30 years have elapsed since Brooks’s attempt to articulate http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Contemporary Japan Taylor & Francis

Trauma, dissociation and re-enactment in Japanese literature and film

Hirata, Hosea
Contemporary Japan , Volume 30 (1): 3 – Jan 2, 2018
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Trauma, dissociation and re-enactment in Japanese literature and film

Abstract

CONTEMPORARY JAPAN, 2018 VOL. 30, NO. 1, 135–141 BOOK REVIEWS Trauma, dissociation and re-enactment in Japanese literature and film,by David Stahl, New York, Routledge, 2018, vii + 224 pp. + index, $140 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-138-73325-1, https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-Dissociation-and-Re- enactment-in-Japanese-Literature-and-Film/Stahl/p/book/9781138733251 The prominent literary critic Peter Brooks begins his essay ‘The Idea of a Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism’...
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2018 Hosea Hirata
ISSN
1869-2737
eISSN
1869-2729
DOI
10.1080/18692729.2018.1423600
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

CONTEMPORARY JAPAN, 2018 VOL. 30, NO. 1, 135–141 BOOK REVIEWS Trauma, dissociation and re-enactment in Japanese literature and film,by David Stahl, New York, Routledge, 2018, vii + 224 pp. + index, $140 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-138-73325-1, https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-Dissociation-and-Re- enactment-in-Japanese-Literature-and-Film/Stahl/p/book/9781138733251 The prominent literary critic Peter Brooks begins his essay ‘The Idea of a Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism’ (1987) with these words: ‘Psychoanalytic literary criticism has always been something of an embarrassment. One resists labeling as a “psychoanalytic critic” because the kind of criticism evoked by the term mostly deserves the bad name it largely has made for itself’ (p. 334). Where does this ‘embarrassment’ come from? We might reflexively perceive the risk of taking psychoanalysis as a universal science and applying its methodology to literary analysis in a formulaic way. Or we might be wary of critics primarily aiming to analyze the psyche of the author, the reader, or the characters, displacing the object of analysis from the dynamism of the text itself. We might feel that somehow psychoanalytic criticism tends to be too confident in its explanatory capacity and miss something that is unique to literature. Have we, then, overcome this ‘embarrassment’? About 30 years have elapsed since Brooks’s attempt to articulate

Journal

Contemporary Japan – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jan 2, 2018

References

  • The idea of a psychoanalytic literary criticism