1,720,976 research outputs found
Immediacy in contemporary culture
No full textThis chapter discusses immediacy’s embeddedness in contemporary cultural discourses by examining debates on Japanese literature, popular culture, and the arts. This focus recontextualizes notable postulations such as Azuma Hiroki’s database theory, describing the habits of fans of popular culture to “consume” works as combinations of immediately familiar tropes, as well as less-studied approaches, such as Uno Tsunehiro’s views on popular culture, for example his survive-kei theory describing narratives of the vacuum and constant action. In the final section, the chapter discusses a reduction of culture to an endless present by analyzing Murakami Takashi’s “Superflat” and psychiatrist Kumashiro Tōru’s “rejuvenation depression.” While stemming from different fields, both theories share the view that contemporary Japan has witnessed a cultural flattening to an endless elongated space where differences coalesce, be it that between high and low art, and that of age phases
Epilogue
No full textThe concluding chapter brings together the different immediacies seen throughout. It argues that across diverse authors, genres, and media, what unites narratives of immediacy is the importance of human connections. Despite the emphasis on immediate selfish action, the stories always oscillate between scenes of connection and disconnection, of isolation and attempts at community-building, with characters ultimately longing for human ties. At a broader level, this tension elicits opposing responses from readers too, by immersing them in these portrayals conveying doubts and stimuli, for violence and carnality, suggesting that society has reached an emotional point of disconnection where it is necessary to rethink human interactions and build new inter-personal bonds to create new communities, thus escaping the vacuum of immediacy. The exploration of this analytical frame can advance the understanding of recent developments in Japanese narratives, and that it may also offer an interdisciplinary model to construct a wide overview of works that have appeared after the time frame proposed here, thus providing a milestone in assessing further evolutions of fiction’s fundamental relationship with human ties and its visions of contemporary society
Immediacy in popular culture
No full textThe chapter analyzes anime and manga offering fantasies inextricably linked with immediacy, action, isolation, and the absence of thought. First, in the robot anime Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996), these traits are visible in the mental isolation of the protagonist Shinji, a teenager pilot who confines himself to solipsistic fantasies of self-hatred in a desperate attempt to escape the harsh demands imposed on him by adults in an opaque world. The second anime, Psycho-Pass (2012–2013), imagines a futuristic, dystopian Japan where citizens exchange their intellectual freedom to the immediacy of a technological system that regulates all aspects of life to guarantee prosperity and stability. In the manga series Shingeki no kyojin (Attack on Titan, 2009–2021), immediacy is represented physically by the three massive walls behind which humanity has retreated to survive. These barriers are a solid boundary between an uncritical safe life and the enquiry into the outside world, where the cannibalistic Titans roam. Their overwhelming strength makes humans who encounter them live the end of the world repeatedly, as if in presentist cycles. In all three narratives critical efforts to be part of something greater, beginning with individual inspection, can build communal bridges to change an immutable reality
Immediacy in literature II: Takahashi, Taguchi, Hirano
No full textThe chapter examines immediacy in literature with close readings of three works by Takahashi Gen'ichirō, Taguchi Randy, and Hirano Keiichirō, respectively. All texts under analysis offer insights into immediacy’s relationship with sexual stimuli. The first novel Koi suru genpatsu (The Nuclear Plant in Love, 2011), sees a film crew shooting an adult movie as a charity initiative to help the victims of 3/11. Through this outrageous setting, it offers a provocation that encourages critical thinking in a society that standardizes practices of mourning. Taguchi Randy’s debut novel Konsento (Outlet, 2000), outlines the protagonist reflections on the reasons for her recluse brother’s sudden death, laying bare her loneliness and her frantic pursuit of sexual stimulation. Thirdly, Hirano’s novel Kao no nai ratai tachi (Nudes Without Faces, 2006), stresses immediacy’s actualization between stimulation and technology, as seen in a story where a teacher and a civil servant kindle a perverse and exhibitionist sexual relationship by sharing videos of their violent acts online. All three works signify a departure from the Cartesian mind/body separation by showing that characters may achieve a deeper understanding of themselves through stimulation, but only through viscerally connecting with others can that realize an escape from immediacy
Immediacy in literature
No full textThe chapter discusses immediacy in Takahashi Gen'ichirō’s literature by focusing on three works published between the mid-90s and the early 2000s. The first one, the novel Godira, shows the predicament of characters living in an endless, seeming immutable, present, who survive only by acting without exerting critical thought. The second text, the novel Nihon bungaku seisuishi (History of the Rise and Fall of Japanese Literature, 2001), problematizes the possibility and necessity of literary histories in immediacy by creating a hodgepodge replete with anachronisms, where illustrious writers of the late 19th and early 20th-century engage in present-day pastimes and situations. The last text, the short-story collection Kimi ga yo wa chiyo ni yachiyo ni (May Your Reign Continue for a Thousand, Eight Thousand Generations, 2002), exposes the incommunicability in a contemporary world dominated by immediacy, highlighting that words like love, sex, and happiness are meaningless, and institutions like marriage are accepted passively. Across all works people in the ideological vacuum carry on their empty existences craving the immediacy of action in response to physical stimuli. The only possible escape from the uncritical, eternal present, is building a community based on mutual comprehension and the re-establishment of a collective memory
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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