This issue contains two articles on East Asian culture. Herbert Plutschow‘s article, his third for Anthropoetics, is based on his ongoing historical research into the sacrificial aspect of Japanese culture. His striking confirmation of Girard’s victim->deity model may surprise those of us who function within the Western monotheistic paradigm. Cecily Hurst‘s article is an elaboration of her paper for last Spring’s GA seminar, which discusses, again as a culture shock to Westerners, an intricate vision of language based on an anthropology that lacks a “state of nature.”
Raoul Eshelman‘s article offers a friendly challenge to the notion of the “post-millennial” that also identifies a kindred spirit in GA and the dynamic of post-postmodern art. Mark Featherstone‘s article, based on a graduate seminar paper, suggests an interesting rapprochement between Paul Virilio’s work and that of René Girard.
About our Contributors
Herbert Plutschow was born in Zurich, Switzerland and was educated in Switzerland, England, Spain, France and the U.S.A. He received his PhD in Japanese Literature from Columbia University and teaches in the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures at UCLA. His major publications are Chaos and Cosmos – Ritual in Early and Medieval Japanese Literature (1990); Japan’s Name Culture (1995); Matsuri – The Festivals of Japan (1996); Portraits of Japanologists (2000, in Japanese). Another book, The Tea Master, is scheduled for 2001.
Cecily Hurst is doing doctoral work in the UCLA Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures.
Raoul Eshelman (b. 1956) is an American Slavist living in Germany. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Constance (1988) and his Habilitation at the University of Hamburg (1995). He is the author of Early Soviet Postmodernism (1997) as well as numerous articles on modern and postmodern Russian and Czech literature. As of Winter Semester 2000-2001 he is teaching as a Privatdozent at the University of Regensburg.
Mark Featherstone has recently completed a PhD in Social Theory at Staffordshire University. His thesis “Knowledge and the Production of Non-Knowledge” is forthcoming at Hampton Press. Apart from his doctoral work, he has also written on contemporary science fiction cinema and published several articles on the logic of conspiracy theory. He currently teaches social theory and anthropology at Keele University, UK.