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OTAKU_MODERN

                                               May 10, 2012

   Azuma talks a lot about                        "Oatku Japan's
   the modern world with                          Database Animals" (2001)
   it's one central grand                         by Hiroki Azuma
   narrative.
                                                       OTAKU_BASE
   One might wonder what "modern
   world" he's talking about.

   Did Thomas Jefferson have
   the same grand narrative
   as Alexander Hamilton?
   Did William Jennings Bryan
   share a grand narrative
   with Charles Darwin?

      If you insist that those are
      early harbingers of the
      postmodern era, I'm going to ask
      you about, say, Manicheans and
      Zoroastrians, and if that's too
      early, I'm sure we could find
      some other interesting disputes
      to discuss in any period of the
      never ending cacophany of history
      that you name.

         The idea that there's just *one*
         fundamental, favored understanding
         of the world all throughout the
         modern era would seem to be a
         gross exaggeration.

         It might be argued that the modern
         era was characterized by a belief in      So then, we're comparing
         the *possibility* of an underlying        a drive towards the
         truth, a belief that we might find        center that never
         one central narrative, without quite      connects to a drive
         knowing what it is.                       to query every item
                                                   in the database which
                                                   never completes...



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