Mono No Aware and Gender As Affect in Japanese Aesthetics and American Pragmatism

Johnathan Flowers

doi:10.5771/9781793626714

Summary

Mono no Aware and Gender as Affect in Japanese Aesthetics and American Pragmatism places the naturalistic pragmatism of John Dewey in conversation with Motoori Norinaga’s mono no aware, a Japanese aesthetic theory of experience, to examine gender as a felt experience of an aware, or an affective quality of persons. By treating gender as an affect, Johnathan Charles Flowers argues that the experience of gendering and being gendered is a result of the affective perception of the organization of the body in line with cultural aesthetics embodied in Deweyan habit or Japanese kata broadly understood as culturally mediated transactions with the world. On this view, how the felt sense of identity aligns with the affective organization of society determines the nature of the possible social transactions between individuals. As such, this book intervenes in questions of personhood broadly—and identity specifically—by treating personhood itself as an affective sense. In doing so, this book demonstrates how questions of personhood and identity are themselves affective judgments. By treating gender and other identities as aware, this book advocates an expanded recognition of the how to be in the world through cultivating new ways of perceiving the affective organization of persons.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-2670-7
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-2671-4
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 412
Product type: Book Titles

1. Dedication No access
2. Contents No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 20
1. Aware No access
2. Mono no Aware No access
3. Notes No access
1. Poetry, Being Overwhelmed and Communication No access
2. Self-Cultivation and the “Way of Poetry” No access
3. The Distinctive Nature of Poetic Language No access
4. Poetic Cultivation and Cultural Communication No access
5. The Role of Mono no Aware in the Communication of Ethics No access
6. Notes No access
1. Mono no Aware as the Ground for Humane Social Action No access
2. Conclusion No access
3. Notes No access
1. A Poetics of Gender as Aware in the Genji Monogatari No access
2. Codifying Aware as Gender: Wakashu Aware as an Historical Poetics of Gender No access
3. Conclusion No access
4. Notes No access
1. The Centrality of Nature and Situations No access
2. Consciousness and Experience in Situations No access
3. Generic Traits, Universes of Discourse, and Temporal Quality: The Shortcomings of Western Philosophy and the “Beginning of Wisdom” No access
4. Continuity in Dewey No access
5. Continuity in the Eco-ontology and the Naturalist Philosophy of Thomas Alexander No access
6. Culture as the Creative Nexus for Realizing Identity-Within-Environment No access
7. Notes No access
1. Pragmatic Individuality No access
2. Personality and Imagination No access
3. Culture and Mythoi in the “Production” of an Individual No access
4. Conclusion No access
5. Notes No access
1. Culture, Custom, and Habit No access
2. Assignment of Offices as Butlerian Performative Acts No access
3. Habit as Constitutive in Offices and Gender No access
4. Habit as Style or Qualitative Unity No access
5. Beyond Habit—Toward Aware No access
6. Notes No access
1. Chinese Xin and Japanese Kokoro No access
2. Kokoro as the Heart of Aesthetic Experience and Forms No access
3. Expanding the Meaning of Kokoro in Japanese Contexts through John Dewey No access
4. Animal and Human Kokoro No access
5. Shinto and Traditional Japanese Conceptions of Heart and Environment No access
6. Kokoro in Things No access
7. Notes No access
1. Reconceiving Aware No access
2. Depth of Aware as Grounded in Temporality No access
3. Aware, Koto, and Mono as Continuity No access
4. Reconceiving Mono no Aware No access
5. Impediments to Mono no Aware: Two Examples No access
6. The Aware and Mono no Aware of Mythoi and Culture No access
7. Conclusion No access
8. Notes No access
1. Pragmatic Aware in Somatic Stylization No access
2. Reconsidering “Offices” and “Ways” of Stylizing the Body No access
3. The Dō and the Kata of Gender No access
4. Conclusion No access
5. Notes No access
1. Nō Drama and the Cultivation of Mono no Aware No access
2. Interlude: On Female-Likeness No access
3. Imitation and Interaction: Onnagata Gender Performance No access
4. The Disciplinary Praxis of Takarazuka Otokoyaku No access
5. Conclusion No access
6. Notes No access
References No access Pages 395 - 400
Index No access Pages 401 - 410
About the Author No access Pages 411 - 412