Becoming inauthentic: capitalism, commodification, and performance in Wataya risa's Insutōru.
Asako, the protagonist of Wataya Risa's 2004 novel Insutōru (Install), is a seventeen-year-old high school student who becomes fed up with the unrelieved sameness of late capitalist Japan. She is intensely aware of the value capitalist society places on her body, bearing as it does the desirable 'br...
| Publicado en: | Japan Forum Vol. 35; no. 4; pp. 434 - 456 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Oct2023
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=173105341&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 173105341 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09555803 5BH jtl: Japan Forum issn: 09555803 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct2023 vid: 35 iid: 4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 173105341 10.1080/09555803.2023.2248148 ppf: 434 ppct: 22 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T db: hlh ui: 173105341 – @attributes: type: P db: hlh ui: 173105341 tig: atl: Becoming inauthentic: capitalism, commodification, and performance in Wataya risa's Insutōru. aug: au: Smith, Christopher affil: Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA su: Capitalism Femininity High school students Capitalist societies Social context Commodification sug: subj: Capitalism Femininity High school students Capitalist societies Social context Commodification keyword: literature postfeminism postmodernism wataya risa women writers literature postfeminism postmodernism wataya risa women writers ab: Asako, the protagonist of Wataya Risa's 2004 novel Insutōru (Install), is a seventeen-year-old high school student who becomes fed up with the unrelieved sameness of late capitalist Japan. She is intensely aware of the value capitalist society places on her body, bearing as it does the desirable 'brand' of joshikōsei (female high-school student). As an act of defiance she stops attending school and throws away all her belongings and furniture, becoming a kind of hikikomori in order to remove herself from alienating Japanese society and capitalist mediation of her body and find some kind of authenticity. However, she comes to the realization that late capitalism is exitless, and her rebellion is doomed to failure. Salvation comes from an unlikely source: a neighbor elementary-school student who introduces her to a part-time job selling chatroom 'sex' on the internet. This paper argues that it is precisely the move into a social environment that is highly anonymized and heavily mediated by capital that allows Asako to come to terms with society. Online she plays the role of a 26-year-old housewife, allowing her to perform a different and adult femininity. Asako realizes that both capitalism's discipline of her productivity and patriarchal society's discipline of her body into a valuable commodity can be satisfied by inauthentic performance. In the end, Asako overcomes her angst by giving up on the need to discipline her authentic self into someone that can be accepted by a community or society that will provide meaning. Instead, she realizes that all of her interactions with friends, teachers, and society as a whole can be mere transactional performances. For Asako this is a kind of liberation, as she need only perform for society rather than discipline herself to become an authentic member of it. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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