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Literature and Linguistics (Vol. 1 No. 2); Literature and Violence (Vol. 3 Nos. 1-2)

Women, Consumption and Popular Culture (Vol. 4 No. 1); Life, Community, and Ethics (Vol. 4. No. 2)

The Making of Barbarians in Western Literature (Vol. 5 No. 1); Chaos and Fear in Contemporary British Literature (Vol. 5 No. 2)

Taiwan Cinema before Taiwan New Wave Cinema (Vol. 6 No. 1); Catastrophe and Cultural Imaginaries (Vol. 6 No. 2)

Affective Perspectives from East Asia (Vol. 9 No. 2); Longing and Belonging (Vol. 10 No. 2, produced in collaboration with the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies)

Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations, 1776 to the Present (Vol. 11 No. 2). 

ABSTRACT

Posthumanism, as recent discussions on the issue suggest, can be regarded as a survival strategy adopted by minority groups to subvert the dominant regime in the age of globalization: the posthuman imaginary of a hybridized subject facilitates the possibility of an assemblage among subjects of different races, ethnicities, classes, genders, and sexualities. However, this strategy fails to address the complicity between the posthuman conception of “prosthesis” and late capitalism, whose logic of decentralization depends on the exploitation of multiplicity and multiculturalism instead of a monolithic, top-down disciplinary regime. This essay attempts to address the ethical question of what it means to be posthuman in Japanese animation director Mamoru Oshii’s three major sci-fi films: Ghost in the Shell, Innocence, and The Sky Crawlers. As the analysis will show, these three movies foreground the dynamic relationship between the posthuman subject and the Symbolic Order and explore the vexed question of what it means to be an ethical subject in relation to the ever changing structure of the Symbolic Order. The essay is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the relationship between “Subject,” “Structure” and its “Exception” by resorting to Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis and Jacques Derrida’s analysis of structure. The second section takes Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell and Innocence as the main texts to explore how the posthuman subject in these two texts responds to the structural change of the Symbolic Order as it transforms from the dominance of nation to capitalism. The third section takes The Sky Crawlers as a case in point to illustrate how anxiety can be regarded as an affect that points to a line of flight within a Symbolic Order that sustains itself by the cultural logic of late capitalism. 

KEYWORDS: Mamoru Oshii, Ghost in the Shell, Innocence, The Sky Crawlers, posthuman, prosthesis, anxiety, ethics

摘 要

在如今所謂的後現代時空中,後人類(the posthuman) 的議題在戰後技術層面發展(如機械控御學、資訊學、以及 網際網路等等)以及文化全球化(如科幻文本)的推波助瀾 之下已成為論者熱烈思辯的話題。對於許多論者來說,變身 為後人類已是當今全球化的主要指標之一。這裡所指的變身 後人類,並非僅僅指的是人類生理機能因應「失能」或「增 能」的需求而以「取代」或是「增添」的方式和機械連結; 更重要的是,變身後人類所指向的是對於「人」本身定義的 質疑以及概念上質變,也因此,許多論者往往將後人類視為 串連弱勢族群、鼓吹多元文化主義、以及鬆動既有規馴治理 霸權的有效策略。然而,如此的後人類論述在面對晚進資本 主義治理邏輯時往往力有未逮,因其並未有效對於該邏輯的 去中心、去集中化的壓迫機制提出針砭,反而有與其共謀之 嫌。本文擬以上述問題意識出發對於後人類增能補缺邏輯提 出批判,並以日本動畫大師押井守的科幻三部曲為例進一步 剖析後人類主體在面對象徵結構轉變過程中所具備的倫理 性。論文分為三部分:第一部份討論象徵結構生成與其例外之間的關係,重點在於爬梳例外與象徵層普同性之間看似互 斥、實為相互形構的關係,並將(後人類)主體生成置入此 關係中討論。第二部分則討論押井守動畫《攻殼機動隊》以 及《攻殼機動隊 2 Innocence》中後人類主體如何因應象徵結 構由國家機器轉換至資本主義所提出的顛覆策略。第三部分則以押井守的近作《空中殺手》為例進一步探討後人類主體 在面對晚進資本主義規馴所展現的焦慮倫理。

關鍵詞:押井守、《攻殼機動隊》、《攻殼機動隊 2 Innocence》 《空中殺手》、後人類、增能補缺、焦慮、倫理性