Investigating the politics of seeing and its effects, this book draws on Slavoj Žižek’s notion of fetish and Walter Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious to offer newer concepts: “tinted glasses”, through which we see the world; “unit-thinking”, which renders the world as consisting of discrete units; and “coherants”, which help fragmented experiences cohere into something intelligible. Examining experiences at a Japanese heritage language school, a study-abroad trip to Sierra Leone, as well as in college classrooms, this book reveals the workings of unit-thinking and fetishism in diverse contexts and explores possibilities for social change.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Tinted Glasses, Unit Thinking, and Coherants
Chapter 1. The Politics of Vision and the Fetish beyond Optical Unconscious: Towards Spectacle Pedagogy
Chapter 2. Seeing Failed Ninja, Ghost Samurai, and Last Samurai: Phantom Japan at a Weekend Japanese Language School in the US
Chapter 3. Seeing Angels: The Fetish of Smiling Angels in the “Poor but Happy” Discourse in Sierra Leone
Chapter 4. Seeing Holy Mouth Man: Fetish of Study Abroad Transformation Talk
Chapter 5. Seeing Dr Jekyll in Mr. Hyde: Political Others and Beyond Polarization of “Critical” and “Uncritical”
Chapter 6. Seeing Fairies and Anti-Spectacle Pedagogy: Cottingley Photographs of Fairies and Linguistic Landscape Project
Chapter 7. Seeing Santa Claus and Elves: Swinging between Fantasy-World-for-Escape and Scrutinized-World-for-Change
Chapter 8. Seeing Robbers, Freaks, and Dirt: Seeing Maui’s Fishhook in Scorpio and Fetish of Us
Conclusion: Continuing Dialogues
References
Index
About the author
Neriko Musha Doerr is Assistant Professor at Ramapo College. Her publications include Transforming Study Abroad: A Handbook (Berghahn, 2020), The Global Education Effect and Japan: Constructing New Borders and Identification Practices (Routledge, 2020) and The Romance of Crossing Borders: Studying and Volunteering Abroad (Berghahn, 2017, with Hannah Taïeb).
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