Wednesday 16:00-16:30
Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research.
07 June 2006
INDUSTRIAL RUINS and THE DISORDERING OF MATTER
Dr Tim Edensor, Senior Lecturer in Environmental and Geographical Sciences has visited hundreds of industrial ruins during the past four years in former heavy industrial areas throughout the UK. What unites them is that they are all redolent of an industrial past which ended very quickly. They act as a rebuke to the way in which matter is normally ordered and waste and decay are kept carefully out of sight.
As Tim himself says "Through processes of decay objects in ruins gradually transform their character and become charged with alternative aesthetic properties, and conjure up the forgotten ghosts of those who were consigned to the past upon the closure of the factory but continue to haunt the premises. In these ways, ruined matter offers ways of interacting otherwise with the material world."
KAMIKAZE and CHERRY BLOSSOMS
The symbolism of cherry blossoms became part of Japanese consciousness in the 9th century when Japan was overwhelmed by Tang dynasty China. From the end of the 19th century, the Japanese military government started to us e cherry blossoms as a symbol of young soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves for their country.
Laurie Taylor is joined by Professor Emiko Ohnuki-Tierneyto explore some of the abiding myths surrounding Japanese Kamikaze pilots or tokkotai. Far from being uneducated zealots driven by patriotic fervour to volunteer for suicide missions, many were cosmopolitan graduates struggling to come to terms with the unavoidable fate of dying for emperor and Japan. Professor Ohnuki-Tierney also counters the misleading parallels which have been drawn between the tokkotai and those responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US mainland.
Additional information:
Dr Tim Edensor, Senior Lecturer, Environmental & Geographical Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University
Professor Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, William F. Vilas Research Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226619508
Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226620913
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