The Anime Machine

In preparatory conversations for the WisCon panel on Miyazaki, it came up that Thomas Lamarre, who teaches East Asian Studies at McGill -- I had three classes with him and he is amazing -- has come out with a book on anime called The Anime Machine.

I can kind of hear his voice as I'm reading it, which brings back an intense feeling of nostalgia and fondness, and then all of a sudden I remember why I decided a Ph.D. was not for me, because being a YA writer means I never have to say post-Heideggerian thinking or post-Lacanian viewing.

E. Lockhart got some good mileage from Foucault. But I'm not E. Lockhart.

I'm not making fun of this kind of academic writing, just acknowledging that it's not my thing... this bit is really chewy and fascinating:

Yet at the outset it is crucial to point out that I do not think of the postmodern in terms of a break with the modern, as what comes after the modern. Rather I propose that we think the postmodern as a situation in which the modern appears at once intractable yet indefensible, neither easy to dismiss nor available for redemption.