Konferenz ICAS 11, Leiden - Japanologie Frankfurt
Asia and Europe. Asia in Europe
The 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), Leiden 16-19 July 2019
Session 173: Japanese-European Intellectual and Artistic Representations of Nuclearity. Human Transformation, Thought Control, Atomic Landscapes
While a global cultural history of the nuclear is still missing, the Japanese-European axis of a nuclear modernity would certainly be a central part of it. The experience of the atomic bomb built the basis for a new philosophical debate on human existence both in Japan and Germany that also characterized art and literature in the postwar decades. When “3.11” happened, Japanese as well as German writers and artists reacted almost immediately to the so called trifold catastrophe, often referring to the heritage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Post-Fukushima art relies on postwar questions of life in the Nuclear State (Jungk) and in the state of nuclearity. The Nuclear State clearly shows totalitarian tendencies, exerts control over its subjects, forces them into denial of their personal identities and finally into silence. Living in nuclearity means that the nuclear danger challenges human bios to adapt to a toxic environment – facing the threat of death or deformation. Authors / artists such as Yôko Tawada, Tsushima Yûko, Doris Dörrie, Elfriede Jelinek, Sion Sono and Henmi Yô create models to reflect on the various aspects of a post 3.11-world such as the decay of democracy, right wing pedagogies, media manipulation, nuclear precarity, psychological crisis management, subversion and resistance, or possibilities of a new conviviality in a nuclear future.
Organization: Prof. Dr. Lisette Gebhardt (Goethe University)