Synopses & Reviews
What will the future look like? To judge from many speculative fiction films and books, from Blade Runner to Cloud Atlas, the future will be full of cities that resemble Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and it will be populated mainly by cold, unfeeling citizens who act like robots. Techno-Orientalism investigates the phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in literary, cinematic, and new media representations, while critically examining the stereotype of Asians as both technologically advanced and intellectually primitive, in dire need of Western consciousness-raising.and#160;and#160;The collectionandrsquo;s fourteen original essays trace the discourse of techno-orientalism across a wide array of media, from radio serials to cyberpunk novels, from Sax Rohmerandrsquo;s Dr. Fu Manchu to Firefly. and#160;Applying a variety of theoretical, historical, and interpretive approaches, the contributors consider techno-orientalism a truly global phenomenon. In part, they tackle the key question of how these stereotypes serve to both express and assuage Western anxieties about Asiaandrsquo;s growing cultural influence and economic dominance. Yet the book also examines artists who have appropriated techno-orientalist tropes in order to critique racist and imperialist attitudes.and#160;and#160;Techno-Orientalism is the first collection to define and critically analyze a phenomenon that pervades both science fiction and real-world news coverage of Asia. With essays on subjects ranging from wartime rhetoric of race and technology to science fiction by contemporary Asian American writers to the cultural implications of Korean gamers, this volume offers innovative perspectives and broadens conventional discussions in Asian American Cultural studies.and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
Review
andquot;Thoughtful and insightful, this volume compellingly reshapes debates over global media with its rare interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between the global and the local.andquot;
Review
andquot;Exploring patterns of critical intervention, cultural remediation, and runaway speculation, these imaginative essays channel the logic of our zeitgeist, for Beyond Globalization opens the multiplicities of world making.andquot;
Review
andquot;Situating itself at the nexus of Asian and Asian American Studies, Techno-Orientalism covers an exciting range of topics and draws productive connections between literature, popular culture, technology, and the emergent geopolitics of what has been called the Pacific Century. This collection is a vital contribution to global media and cultural studies.andquot;
Review
andquot;and#39;Techno-orientalismand#39; is everywhere. This volume demonstrates for the first time that it is an indispensable critical category for contemporary thought. Any attempt to think globalization, neo-liberalism, and the human is incomplete without it.andquot;
Synopsis
Beyond Globalization highlights how mediated practices have become integral to global culture; how social practices have emerged out of computer-related industries; how contemporary apocalyptic narratives reflect the anxieties of a U.S. culture facing global challenges; and how design, play, and technology help us understand the histories and ideals behind the digital architectures that mediate our everyday actions. This provocative volume brings together the best new work of scholars within such diverse fields as history, sociology, anthropology, film, media studies, and art.
Synopsis
Does living in a globally networked society mean that we are moving toward a single, homogenous world culture? Or, are we headed for clashes between center and periphery, imperial and subaltern, Western and non-Western, First and Third World? The interdisciplinary essays in Beyond Globalization present us with another possibilityandmdash;that new media will lead to new kinds of andldquo;worldmaking.andrdquo;
This provocative volume brings together the best new work of scholars within such diverse fields as history, sociology, anthropology, film, media studies, and art. Whether examining the inauguration of a virtual community on the website Second Life or investigating the appropriation of biotechnology for transgenic art, this collection highlights how mediated practices have become integral to global culture; how social practices have emerged out of computer-related industries; how contemporary apocalyptic narratives reflect the anxieties of a U.S. culture facing global challenges; and how design, play, and technology help us understand the histories and ideals
behind the digital architectures that mediate our everyday actions.
Synopsis
Essays exploring the debates over the place of cinema within the culture of modernity by a leading cultural critic.
Synopsis
The beginning of this century has brought with it a host of assumptions about the newness of our technologies, globalized economies, and transnational media practices. Our own time is a period marked by experiences of fragmentation, sensation, and shock. The essays here are joined by a common concern to chart another side to modernity—precisely after the shock of the new—when the new ceases to be shocking, and when the extraordinary and the sensational become linked to the boring and the everyday. Patrice Petro explores how the mechanisms of modernism, German cinema, and feminist film theory have evolved, and she discusses the directions in which they are headed.
Petro’s essays—some published here for the first time—raise such questions as: What roles do television and other media play in film studies? What is the place of feminist film theory in our conceptions of film history? How is German film theory situated within international film theory?
Rather than continue to sensationalize sensation, Aftershocks of the New aims to lower the volume of debates over the place of cinema within the culture of modernity. And it accomplishes this by locating them within a more complex matrix of contending sensibilities, voices, and impulses.
Synopsis
To judge from many speculative fiction films and books, the future will be full of cities that resemble Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and it will be populated mainly by cold, unfeeling citizens who act like robots. Techno-Orientalism investigates the phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in literary, cinematic, and new media representations, while critically examining the stereotype of Asians as both technologically advanced and intellectually primitive, in dire need of Western consciousness-raising.and#160;and#160;
Synopsis
Latin American indigenous media production has recently experienced a noticeable boom, specifically in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia.
Indianizing Film zooms in on a selection of award-winning and widely influential fiction and docudrama shorts, analyzing them in the wider context of indigenous media practices and debates over decolonizing knowledge. Within this framework, Freya Schiwy approaches questions of gender, power, and representation.
Schiwy argues that instead of solely creating entertainment through their work indigenous media activists are building communication networks that encourage interaction between diverse cultures. As a result, mainstream images are retooled, permitting communities to strengthen their cultures and express their own visions of development and modernization. Indianizing Film encourages readers to consider how indigenous media contributes to a wider understanding of decolonization and anticolonial study against the universal backdrop of the twenty-first century.
About the Author
A. ANEESH is an associate professor of sociology and global studies at the University of Wisconsinandndash;Milwaukee and the author of Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization.
LANE HALL is a professor in the department of English at the University of Wisconsinandndash;Milwaukee. His work examines digital art and culture, procedural and experimental literature, and the history of the book.
PATRICE PETRO is a professor of English and film studies at the University of Wisconsinandndash;Milwaukee. She is past president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and has written and edited numerous books, including Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, Rethinking Global Security: Media, Popular Culture, and the War on Terror, and Global Currents: Media and Technology Now (all published by Rutgers University Press).
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Making of Worlds
1. Global Media and Culture
2. Burning Man at Google: A Cultural Infrastructure for New Media Production
3. Apocalypse by Subtraction: Late Capitalism and the Trauma of Scarcity
4. These Great Urbanist Games: New Babylon and Second Life
5. Format Television and Israeli Telediplomacy
6. Mediating andldquo;Neutralityandrdquo;: Latino Diasporic Films
7. Killing Me Softly: Brazilian Film and Bare Life
8. The Man, the Corpse, and the Icon in Motorcycle Diaries: Utopia, Pleasure, and a New Revolutionary Imagination
9. Saudades on the Amazon: Toward a Soft Sweet Name for Involution
10. States of Distraction: Media Art Strategies Within Public Conditions
11. Bio Art
Notes
About the Contributors
Index