• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.40
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• pp.111-131
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• 2015

An unusual success engendering loyalty among cult fans in the United States, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 cyberpunk anime, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) revolves around a female cyborg assassin named Motoko Kusanagi, a.k.a. "the Major." When the news came out last year that Scarlett Johansson was offered 10 million dollars for the role of the Major in the live action remake of GITS, the frustrated fans accused DreamWorks of "whitewashing" the classic Japanimation and turning it into a PG-13 film. While it would be premature to judge a film yet to be released, it appears timely to revisit the core achievement of Oshii's film untranslatable into the Hollywood formula. That is, unlike ultimately heteronormative and humanist sci-fi films produced in Hollywood, such as the Matrix trilogy or Cloud Atlas, GITS defies a Hollywoodization by evoking much bafflement in relation to its queer, posthuman characters and settings. This essay homes in on Major Kusanagi's body in order to update prior criticism from the perspectives of posthumanism and queer theory. If the Major's voluptuous cyborg body has been read as a liberating or as a commodified feminine body, latest critical work of posthumanism and queer theory causes us to move beyond the moralistic binaries of human/non-human and male/female. This deconstruction of binaries leads to a radical rethinking of "reality" and "identity" in an image-saturated, hypermediated age. Viewed from this perspective, Major Kusanagi's body can be better understood less as a reflection of "real" women than as an embodiment of our anxieties on the loss of self and interiority in the SNS-dominated society. As is warned by many posthumanist and queer critics, queer and posthuman components are too often used to reinforce the human. I argue that the Major's hybrid body is neither a mere amalgam of human and machine nor a superficial postmodern blurring of boundaries. Rather, the compelling combination of individuality, animality, and technology embodied in the Major redefines the human as always, already posthuman. This ethical act of revision-its shifting focus from oppressive humanism to a queer coexistence-evinces the lasting power of GITS.

• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.50
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• pp.89-120
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• 2013

The concept of virtue seems to be one of the rare cases where the European and the Chinese traditions coincide. The meaning of the Latin word virtus and of Greek $aret{\acute{e}}$ seems to be similar to the Chinese $d{\acute{e}}$德. Most striking in virtue is that it is a capacity for self-realisation through action which is unique to man. On the other hand, there is something physical about it. It is the strength to do something. This strength overcomes the resistance of what is naturally given, it transforms the world, turns the natural world into a human one. In the Chinese tradition, $d{\acute{e}}$ 德, i.e. virtue, is therefore always connected with $da{\grave{o}}$ 道, the totality of natural forces. In the Chinese tradition, as opposed to the European one, virtue is itself considered to be a natural force that is present in man. This force sustains man's connectedness, unity and harmony with the surrounding world. Things exist through the unity of principle理 and ether氣. But the knowledge of this unity is due to principle. Moral and legal norms are shifted totally to the sphere of principle. Therefore their have found the final dissolution from a heroic models. Above all the classical Confucians, but also the other schools, would reply to this that there is nothing more precise than a concrete successful action. Its result fits the world perfectly. The difference is due to the differing interest of ethical thought. In the case of the Confucians the path is more direct. The actor establishes a precise pattern for other actions. Education therefore lies in detailed knowledge about forms of behaviour, not so much in conceptual differentiation. It is quite possible that generalisation may be a methodical prerequisite for success in this endeavour. That problem, too, is discussed. But the success of conceptualisation lies in the successful performance of individual actions, not in shaping actions in accordance with normative concepts.