Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0904232027440.16657@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>,
Cyberculture <cyberculture@zacha.org>
Subject: Cybermind / OTAKU: Japan's Database Animals (fwd)
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:28:06 -0400 (EDT)
Dear ListServ Administrator: Please post this to Cybermind. Also, please let me know if you'd like to review the book for your listserv. Thanks! Best wishes, Heather Skinner, Publicist University of Minnesota Press 111 3rd Ave S, Ste. 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 skinn077@umn.edu v * 612-627-1932 f * 612-627-1980 http://www.upress.umn.edu A publishing event-the highly influential best seller in Japan translated into English. OTAKU: Japan's Database Animals Hiroki Azuma Translated by Jonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono University of Minnesota Press | 176 pages | 2009 ISBN 978-0-8166-5352-2 | paperback | $17.95 ISBN 978-0-8166-5351-5 | hardcover | $54.00 Hiroki Azuma's Otaku offers a critical, philosophical, and historical inquiry into the characteristics and consequences of this consumer subculture. For Azuma, one of Japan's leading public intellectuals, otaku culture mirrors the transformations of postwar Japanese society and the nature of human behavior in the postmodern era. A vital non-Western intervention in postmodern culture and theory, Otaku is also a perceptive account of Japanese popular culture. "Abandon every preconception, all ye who enter! In this mind-boggling book on Japan's postmodernity, Hiroki Azuma conjures the ghost of the famous post-Hegelian Koj�ve, whose theory gets revived and even 'animated' here to reinterpret the anime-saturated realism that dominates our global Japanized reality studio. No one has more tactfully intertwined post-Derridean philosophy with Otaku-centric subculture studies than Azuma."-Takayuki Tatsumi "This is one of a truly seminal set of works attempting to theorize the form of social being that we now call the otaku. One can see in this book a set of conditions ("postmodern" really isn't adequate)-including structures of desire, production, consumption, and a return to animal philosophy-that are specific to Japan, but increasingly relevant to us all."-Thomas Looser For more information, including the table of contents, visit the book's webpage: http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/A/azuma_otaku.html Sign up to receive news on the latest releases from University of Minnesota Press: http://www.upress.umn.edu/mediaalert.html -- Heather Skinner, Publicist University of Minnesota Press 111 3rd Ave S, Ste. 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 skinn077@umn.edu v * 612-627-1932 f * 612-627-1980 http://www.upress.umn.edu Sign up to receive news on the latest releases from UMP: Media: http://www.upress.umn.edu/mediaalert.html Public: http://www.upress.umn.edu/eform.html Follow UMP on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/UMinnPress ...and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minneapolis-MN/University-of-Minnesota-Press/4007078344