Open Talk “Anime’s Modes of Globalization: Networks of Performing Animation”
Anime has come to be seen as a particular type of animation that signifies both Japanese culture and globalization. This creates a tension between the local (Japan) and the global as anime is seen as “Japanese subculture gone global.” But attending to anime as conventionalized animation reveals a very different way of being global, whereby what is supposedly “Japanese animation” is actually animated through a transnational network of production across Asia but centralized in Tokyo. Importantly, it is the performance of anime’s conventions of animation that both enables and hides this transnationality of the final image: the conventions enable a smooth process of production across national borders, but the conventions themselves signify Japanese culture. In this sense, this performance also affords a third dynamic of globalization, a more decentralized, distributed notion of cultural production, not necessarily isolated to one place of “authentication.” Ultimately, all three of these modes of being global operate in tandem in the performance of anime’s animation.
- Day & Time：July 18th, 2023 (Tuesday), 14:00-15:00
- Venue：Lab (2nd floor of WIHL)
- Language：English (Q&A: Japanese/English)
- Participation：Free
- Presented by the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, with support from the Waseda International House of Literature
Lecture
Stevie Suan
Associate Professor, Hosei University’s Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies (GIS)。
He holds a doctorate from the Graduate School of Manga Studies at Kyoto Seika University and a master’s in Asian Studies from University of Hawai‛i at Mānoa. Conceptualizing the dynamics of performance modes has guided his research across different fields and media, with a focus on Asia. Having done research on gender and aesthetics in Noh performance theory, he currently focuses on contemporary media, specifically anime and manga. In his recent research, he utilizes performance/performativity theory and media theory to explore anime’s animation and its transnational cultural production. This is the topic of his recent book Anime’s Identity: Performativity and Form beyond Japan (University of Minnesota Press, 2021). He also extends this interdisciplinary approach to ecocritical analysis of anime.
Facilitator
Lin Wenjiun
Yanai Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellow
contact
Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities : [email protected]
