Workshop Abstract: Joseph Murphy

[Abe-Nornes]

HERE IS ANOTHER ABSTRACT FOR THE SPRING WORKSHOP; THESE ARE GOING UP ON THE
KINEMA CLUB SITE, IF YOU EVER NEED TO CHECK THEM OUT AGAIN. 

EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO PARTICIPATE IN THE WORKSHOP. THE MORE THE BETTER! I
WILL LOOK FOR A PLACE TO CRASH FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN COMING. JUST LET ME
KNOW.

MARKUS

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Japanese Cinema Studies in the Rear-view Mirror:  Re-viewing the Discipline
Workshop Proposal

Introduction:  One might guess from the title of this workshop that the
object of discussion is a pre-existing discipline called "Japanese Cinema
Studies."  But the text of the call for papers stresses as the occasion for
gathering a situation that is more open-ended:  "It is evident to all
researchers and teachers in the field that we are in a state of flux...
there are now people approaching Japanese cinema from a variety of
disciplines including history, literature, area studies, anthropology, and
comparative literature. It is apparent that the study of Japanese cinema
now has no 'home.'"  One important task of this workshop will undoubtedly
be to try to bring the boundaries of Japanese cinema studies into better
focus, to define its proper object, appropriate methodologies and
procedures for legitimation, to map out agenda for future work that will
ensure its continued institutional growth.  However, the call to deal
"specifically with meta-critical and methodological issues" will likely
suggest an alternative aspect as well:  that our object of investigation
and discussion here is rather the flux itself, the seemingly unrehearsed
and ad hoc cross-disciplinary network over which Japanese film is being
disseminated as an object of study in the academy (the most salient datum
of which is the dramatically increasing percentage of job announcements in
modern Japanese literature that list "ability to offer classes in Japanese
film" as a desirable candidate attribute).  This perspective provides the
somewhat unsettling suggestion that "Japanese Cinema Studies" exists at the
moment less as a discipline than as a stake in which a number of existing
disciplines are claiming an interest, even at the risk of having to
reconfigure their own object.
        Perhaps the most direct way to defuse the ambiguous status of
Japanese cinema studies is to call for its establishment along with cinema
studies as a free-standing discipline with its own specific methodologies
and object.  In this sense, this workshop might be seen as performative, an
intervention designed to help the object precipitate out of this
institutional cloud.  Yet it is just as important to take a look at the
fact of this inter-disciplinarity, and ask what kind of larger
considerations might be at work under this ad hoc appearance.
        Moving profitably between these two conceptions will probably
require making explicit in the description of the workshop, and in our own
papers what is meant by terms like field, discipline, and institution.

Meta-Questions: I look forward to learning throughout the workshop more
about Japanese cinema studies in terms of its own inherent logic and power
to constitute its object.  But coming from a position in literary studies,
I hope I can best contribute to the workshop by pursuing the second line of
questioning.  Taking then the fact of this flux as my object, I would like
to go through three possible justifications from a literary studies
perspective for the uneasy cross-disciplinarity by which Japanese cinema
studies is being disseminated in the academy.  Each of these casts its ad
hoc appearance as a consistent expression of some larger problem, and each
has a different implication for the future disciplinary organization of the
field.
        The first way of understanding the incorporation of film by
established disciplines is institutional and argues that the
cross-disciplinary appropriation of Japanese film by literary studies,
anthropology, art history and area studies is not an expression of the
logic of their methodologies and object, being driven rather by
institutional considerations centering on the competition for scarce
resources.  That is to say in the 1990's film brings home the institutional
bacon and disciplines recognize their interest in having a piece.  This is
really no justification at all and argues for setting up the study of
Japanese film in separate cinema and media studies departments.
        The second justification proceeds from a consideration of
hermeneutics, and argues that the introduction of film into literary
studies in particular is a self-consistent extension of the hermeneutic
project from the narrow expressivism of the thesis of the identity of
thought and language on which it was founded in the 19th century to a
broader expressivism including not just verbal texts, but also visual
texts, images, sound, gesture, deportment (performance) as well, as the
proper object of hermeneutic exegesis.  This is to argue that the
introduction of film into a literary studies curricula is not merely an
institutional convenience, nor an indication that literature has lost its
bearings, but entirely consistent with a literary studies whose identity is
understood not in terms of a reified object like "written texts of a
certain quality," but in terms of the hermeneutic project.  The hermeneutic
project, though, would seem to make certain methodological demands of
literary study that are no longer accepted in the era of high theory.
        The third justification is historical and social, and theorizes the
increasing prominence across a variety of disciplines of visual texts and
images as symptomatic of a  historical reorientation of human sensibilities
away from verbal texts and toward the image, brought about by the
proliferation of mass image-making technologies in the 20th century.
Insofar as the prominence of the study of literature and religion in area
studies departments is based on the assumption that, to borrow Kosaka
Masaaki's words, they are "the most direct expression of the consciousness
of a society," the appearance of film as an increasingly insistent
supplement to modern Japanese literature seems to indicate that, from the
utilitarian perspective of Area Studies (to "know" the culture), film has
been perceived to push literature out of its place as this "most direct
expression" in the late 20th century.  However the notion implicit in
"visuality" of theorizing the way social and historical changes relate to
transformations in human sensibilities is clearly a site where an
interdisciplinary approach is required, and implies that in the
not-too-distant future we may see a wholesale reconfiguring of the
humanities, small comfort to be sure, for plotting careers.

        The conviction that Japanese film is important drives all our work.
It is my contention that the seemingly ad hoc way in which Japanese film is
presently being disseminated and housed in the academy may well conceal a
number of coherent perspectives and disciplinary concerns, and that setting
aside our commitment to individual disciplines for a moment, and taking
some time to explore these possibilities may make it easier to map out a
coherent course for its study in the future.