Ebook465 pages5 hours
Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media
By David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, Greta A. Niu and
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
About this ebook
What will the future look like? To judge from many speculative fiction films and books, from Blade Runner to Cloud Atlas, the future will be full of cities that resemble Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and it will be populated mainly by cold, unfeeling citizens who act like robots. Techno-Orientalism investigates the phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in literary, cinematic, and new media representations, while critically examining the stereotype of Asians as both technologically advanced and intellectually primitive, in dire need of Western consciousness-raising.
The collection’s fourteen original essays trace the discourse of techno-orientalism across a wide array of media, from radio serials to cyberpunk novels, from Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu to Firefly. Applying a variety of theoretical, historical, and interpretive approaches, the contributors consider techno-orientalism a truly global phenomenon. In part, they tackle the key question of how these stereotypes serve to both express and assuage Western anxieties about Asia’s growing cultural influence and economic dominance. Yet the book also examines artists who have appropriated techno-orientalist tropes in order to critique racist and imperialist attitudes.
Techno-Orientalism is the first collection to define and critically analyze a phenomenon that pervades both science fiction and real-world news coverage of Asia. With essays on subjects ranging from wartime rhetoric of race and technology to science fiction by contemporary Asian American writers to the cultural implications of Korean gamers, this volume offers innovative perspectives and broadens conventional discussions in Asian American Cultural studies.
Related to Techno-Orientalism
Related ebooks
Shadows of Doubt: Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAgainst Immediacy: Video Art and Media Populism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Political Film: The Dialectics of Third Cinema Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCinema & Counter-History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChinatown Ghosts: The Poems and Photographs of Jim Wong-Chu Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Economy of Affordances Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCinema and Landscape: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBland Fanatics: Liberals, Race and Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Politics of Postcolonialism: Empire, Nation and Resistance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNon-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReframing Reality: The Aesthetics of the Surrealist Object in French and Czech Cinema Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFuture Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Corn Wolf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Alert: Marxist Approaches to Science Fiction Cinema Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInsurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythical Beings of Asia: Insignia Drabbles, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWorld Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArt, Riot, Terror: The 60s Tokyo Avant-Garde: Mishima, Hijikata, Oshima Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Post Cinematic Affect Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Violent Embrace: Art and Aesthetics after Representation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSociety Of The Spectacle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gender and the Superhero Narrative Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain's Empire of Camps, 1876-1903 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Asian History For You
Wise Thoughts for Every Day: On God, Love, the Human Spirit, and Living a Good Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Yakuza: life and death in the Japanese underworld Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArt of War: The Definitive Interpretation of Sun Tzu's Classic Book of Strategy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnit 731: The Forgotten Asian Auschwitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inglorious Empire: what the British did to India Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unit 731: Testimony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEnemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 3]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side: A Guide to the Lotus Sūtra Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Caste (Oprah's Book Club): by Isabel Wilkerson - The Origins of Our Discontents - A Comprehensive Summary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'brainwashing' in China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Voices from Chernobyl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962—1976 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Man-Eater in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Techno-Orientalism
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Collection of mostly short pieces, as it says on the tin, from periods starting from the Russo-Japanese war and Looking Backward (1882) and going up to the Battlestar Galactica reboot and Dollhouse. Abigail De Kosnik compares The Mask of Fu Manchu, Son of Sinbad, and Star Wars: A New Hope, finding continuities and reworkings of Orientalist tropes to fit then-current anxieties. My favorite piece was Seo-Young Chu’s “I, Stereotype: Detained in the Uncanny Valley,” about the similarities between Orientalist stereotypes and the concept of the uncanny valley—more human than human is not quite human. Among other things, Chu points out that it’s probably not accidental that a couple of white actors who played Fu Manchu also played monsters: Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee.
Book preview
Techno-Orientalism - David S. Roh
2^ book_preview_excerpt.html }ےG寤iYDLmde@f HU^=i?`f>a^?/s="(5cc6*̸xw?C6o}nړw]Ue_g /}җɞԾ+sq1Ec[~+-/px^C=ξ7e^fnnٟw}9fޏ6ug~\ׯM6Y>p⋕φqkl
8]j-\xv-aUI?Ǽgϱ@YYskn
e_g6yPs3+_bյwwf}!(~]ctٕv1j;Wp
/ޣoy۴5u=6Iγwl㺡O]À3b ?\v=a˱ÊvY&cU&[hv?fٺ1nVn<puvSK4Wԋr5Nhɺ=)z96ٻKW8waEY2·]l,{^A{3wU<ЮgS?;Ⱦu~pٓyuv C.6>A_;.םMѿf<Ր.,ҵ}M6>[͞vcor/q!n.~].:(gxa}HٜE|1_Yk'kkN5fu!ٸJ^/7=PG8S%fBmr;Mt'ԧoG_=r/Ww|