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OTAKU_ANIMAL

                                               May 7, 2012

                                              "Oatku Japan's
                                              Database Animals" (2001)
The Animal/Human distinction                  by Hiroki Azuma
Azuma makes seemed quite a
puzzle at a distance, where                        OTAKU_BASE
every description or summary of
Azuma's work makes it sound more
complicated than it is.

Was the idea that living with a grand
narrative is to live as a human being
(or perhaps just a humanist?) and the
otaku has descended (or ascended?) to    From the translators
some sort of animalistic level of        introduction, I got the
indulging pure desire-- or perhaps       idea is that the otaku
gathering moe-points like acorns?        engages with art by
                                         identifying and cataloging
    OTAKU_ACORNS                         familiar elements, that is
                                         by "databasing" them; and
                                         this way of relating to art
                                         is "animalistic", as befits
                                         a post-marxist classless
                                         society that has gotten
                                         beyond artificial "human"
                                         status-seeking.

                                                    This all makes sense,
                                                    right?  Animals are
                                                    well known for their
                                                    database skills.


                            Other riffs you
                            could play:

                            animal-animate-animismanimal-animate-animism

                                   mal-adaption


    What Azuma is really arguing:
                                            Or see p 67, 68
    Azuma takes the line that
    humans have desires, but                OTAKU_SNOBBED
    animals merely have needs,
    that desires are bound up in
    complex interactions with                                  ANIMAL
    the other, but that in
    post-industrial society,
    humans have (or can become?)
    "animalized": their needs                     I might go with the idea
    can be satisified without                     that it's human to struggle
    personal human interaction                    against the nature of the
    (e.g. through restaurants,     (Animals       world, and that once that
    or the sex-industry).          love whore     war is won, it becomes
                                   houses.)       possible to relax and drift
       (see p.86, 87)                             and perhaps devolve into
                                                  consumerism.

     So then, Azuma essentially buys
     the mainstream critique of the
     Otaku as socially damaged: trying
     to live without real personal
     interaction, instead substituting
     the consumption of product.                   Azuma also has a bunch of
                                                   stuff about "snobbery"--
                                                   which I grant is at least
         OTAKU_CONSUMED                            a form of interaction with
                                                   the Other-- but he seems
                                                   convinced it's the only
                                                   possible one.  Or rather
                                                   it's the only possible one
                                                   now that our souls have
                                                   been postmodernized.

                                                       OTAKU_SNOBBED


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