Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2019


Cartographies of ("Posthuman") Love and Labor


Thomas Looser


19:15-20:45, July 9th, 2019

Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University


However much the concrete structures of cities might appear to be molded by the same conditions of everyday life that have defined the 20th century and earlier, we know that the rhythms and flows by which we now inhabit these spaces indicate fundamental changes in what we call work, sociality, politics, and life itself. This paper takes up (and brings together) two basic categories of everyday life--labor and love--in the context of both cities and internet infrastructures; specificity comes from two examples (Brooklyn and Tokyo). The aim is, first, to map out the contours and implications of these conditions of labor and love, as central to a fundamental shift in human life--and then also to briefly consider them as directly relevant to ongoing demands for the return of community and for legitimate self-production in the wake of what we have perhaps simplistically called neoliberalism.


Thomas Looser (PhD in Anthropology, U. of Chicago) is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at NYU. His areas of research include Cultural Anthropology and Japanese Studies; Art, Architecture and Urban Form; New Media Studies and Animation; and Critical Theory. A senior editor for the journal Mechademia, an editor for Asiascape: Digital Asia, and editorial advisory board member of ADVA, he is the author of Visioning Eternity: Aesthetics, Politics, and History in the Early Modern Noh Theater, and has published articles in a variety of venues including Boundary 2, Japan Forum, Mechademia, Shingenjitsu, Journal of Pacific Asia, and Cultural Anthropology.


This talk is organized by Professor David H. Slater (FLA)

Lecture in English / No RSVP required

http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2019-2020/190709_Looser.pdf


Institute of Comparative Culture (ICC) Sophia University / 7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, JAPAN / Web: http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/