Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945 (review)

Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945 (review) talist power directly into the human nervous system: neuropolitics" (p. xiii). As capitalist power extended into colonial bodies abroad, it extended into Japanese metropolitan minds at home, most vividly in ero-guro "image commodities" produced and disseminated in sexological and revolutionary pornographic discourses as well as in hardcore ero-guro fiction such as that written by the prominent detective novelist Edogawa Ranpo. Vampiric, these erotic-grotesque commodities colonized the human sensorium and in so doing "inculcated a fascination with murder and suicide" (p. xiv) which presumably complemented if not actively encouraged the necropolitical practices in 1930s Manchukuo. On its own, Driscoll's reading of metropolitan ero-guro culture is as fascinating as the subject matter itself, perhaps the most trenchant treatment of this material to date. And yet, if a weak link in this ambitious book is to be found it is in this second punch of Driscoll's argument, specifically in the linking of the outer and inner circles of imperial Japan through the triad of biopolitical/neuropolitical/necropolitical. Because the discussion of the change in colonial administration/exploitation from the earlier biopolitical to the later necropolitical regime follows so clearly and their connections are so concretely buttressed and documented by the end of the book, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Journal of Japanese Studies Society for Japanese Studies

Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945 (review)

Duus, Peter
The Journal of Japanese Studies , Volume 38 (1) – Feb 1, 2012
Download PDF
6 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/society-for-japanese-studies/primitive-selves-koreana-in-the-japanese-colonial-gaze-1910-1945-4vGUgnvwW2
Publisher
Society for Japanese Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Japanese Studies.
ISSN
1549-4721
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

talist power directly into the human nervous system: neuropolitics" (p. xiii). As capitalist power extended into colonial bodies abroad, it extended into Japanese metropolitan minds at home, most vividly in ero-guro "image commodities" produced and disseminated in sexological and revolutionary pornographic discourses as well as in hardcore ero-guro fiction such as that written by the prominent detective novelist Edogawa Ranpo. Vampiric, these erotic-grotesque commodities colonized the human sensorium and in so doing "inculcated a fascination with murder and suicide" (p. xiv) which presumably complemented if not actively encouraged the necropolitical practices in 1930s Manchukuo. On its own, Driscoll's reading of metropolitan ero-guro culture is as fascinating as the subject matter itself, perhaps the most trenchant treatment of this material to date. And yet, if a weak link in this ambitious book is to be found it is in this second punch of Driscoll's argument, specifically in the linking of the outer and inner circles of imperial Japan through the triad of biopolitical/neuropolitical/necropolitical. Because the discussion of the change in colonial administration/exploitation from the earlier biopolitical to the later necropolitical regime follows so clearly and their connections are so concretely buttressed and documented by the end of the book,

Journal

The Journal of Japanese Studies – Society for Japanese Studies

Published: Feb 1, 2012

There are no references for this article.