기조강연1 : Undoing Cool Japan

Purpose : Critical review of the rise of “Cool Japan” as cultural policy and nationalistic discourse to promote narrowly focused national interests

  • what people do with media culture beyond one-way flow
  • How texts matter : (self)representation of & negotiation with identification - gender, LGBT/SOGI, nation, race..
  • Political economy, production, digital capitalism
  • Cultural globalization process : uneven connectivity and contextualized web of P/R/D/C

covid-19’s impacts on media culture

  • shifting function of media culture
  • democratizing potentials to foster mutual care and respect for diversity, equity
    • public critique of racism, sexism, xenophobia
    • promotion of diversity movements (BLM, anti-sexism)

Cool Japan policy..uncool and ineffective

  • Opportunistic policy to enhance Japan’s image in the world
    • one-way image projection, not promoting mutuality, by disseminating globally appealing “national” cultures
    • unengaged with the enhancement of creativity & the improvement of labor conditions
    • neglecting significant cultural questions
  • Cultural complexity neglected
    • different kinds of politicization of culture and engagement with power
    • sub/cultural politics, negotiation and resistance obscured by the focus on “national form” and the promotion of “nation branding” and “soft power”
    • dynamic process of cultural flows & connections under uneven de/re-centering globalization processes
  • Dialogic potentials of media culture connections
    • depending/complicating the understanding of Japan and Korea
    • self-reflexive rethinking of one’s own identity, life, society and historically constituted relationships
    • mutuality and dialogue beyond “I love Japan”?
    • overcoming=obscuring historical issues?
    • Inter-nationalized promotion of cultural diversity?
      • diversity within borders disregarded/discouraged?

Nation branding & re-nationalization

  • External projection & internal governance
    • “branding reinterprets national identity in market terms and provide new narratives for domestic consumption”(Jansen, 2008)
    • “the mundane practices of nation branding serve to perpetuate the nation form… Because they perpetuate a conversation about what the nation is for in a global context”
  • Commercial nationalism
    • reproduction of nationalism in market terms through a paired advancement

Imploding Cool Japan to advance cultural policy proper

  • critical studies of media culture : cultural complexities and cross-border dialogue under uneven globalization processes
  • re-orienting cultural policy
    • cultural citizenship diplomacy : promoting greater mutuality & engaging with domestic publics
      • not just know about “others” but unlearn about “ourselves” & “self-other” relations
    • national interest beyond narrowly focused goals
      • national interests cannot be sustainably enhanced with unless they serve wider public interests domestically and internationally
  • engaging with diversity
    • beyond business-drive inter-national promotion of diversity that does not engage with structured inequality and discrimination
    • representation/consumption of “diversity”
  • designing public pedagogy
  • beyond the object of research, into collaborative intervention towards the democratizing uses of media/otaku culture