Machinic Eros: Writings on Japan by Félix Guattari (review)

Reviews 279 point out that not all environmental reform is motivated by reverence for nature; proponents for green cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example, were often driven by social reform and public health concerns. This debate will be familiar to scholars of environmental history in the United States, and Ford situates French attitudes toward the environment to contemporaneous movements in Europe and the United States. Of particular note is Ford’s ability to provide historical context for environmental rhetoric and research. She frequently reminds her readers that anxiety over the human impact on the environment is not unique to twenty-first-century society, and that state and civil approaches to environmental disaster in the nineteenth century laid the groundwork for contemporary environmental policy. In this way, Ford bridges the gap between past and present, creating a compelling and unique portrait of the emergence of contemporary French attitudes toward the environment. Ithaca College (NY) Rachel Paparone Guattari, Félix. Machinic Eros: Writings on Japan. Ed. Gary Genosko and Jay Hetrick. Minneapolis: Univocal, 2015. ISBN 978-1-937561-20-8. Pp. 156. $25. This concise collection brings together eleven eclectic works in translation written by Guattari in the 1980s, alongside two critical essays authored by the editors of the volume. Chosen in light of their central theme, modern Japan, the eleven primary documents demonstrate a vast diversity in terms of scope, style, and length. Ranging from a one-page poem to a few short essays, the book also includes interviews with Guattari, as well as photographs of the French scholar taken by Keiichi Tahara. As explained by editor Jay Hetrick, Guattari traveled to Japan in the 1980s as a result of his growing disenchantment with politics and intellectual life in France. In his article, which would have better served as the editors’ preface for the book, Hetrick defends Guattari’s work against accusations of Orientalism by proposing a different nomenclature to define the French philosopher’s work: “critical nomadism” (138). Unlike many of his predecessors, Guattari did not attempt to “speak for” the Other in his works, but rather, he wished to encounter the Other and, through dialog with the Other, reach a better understanding of the mechanics of the world. The texts gathered in this collection are the result of such dialogs (hence the critical inclusion of three interviews), reflections resulting from a dialectical methodology rather than distant observation and Manichean comparisons between a foreign culture and one’s own. Furthermore, Guattari’s goal in these essays is by no means to“save”the Other from himself, or from his oppressive society; on the contrary, Guattari seeks to save the West from the pitfalls of capitalism by seeking alternatives elsewhere. In Japan, Guattari discovers that avantgarde architecture rejects the “cult of the norm” (15) by blurring the line between the inside and the outside, or through the use of revolutionary techniques such as “ruptures of symmetry” (82), “the fitting together or nesting of decentered forms” (83), or“abyssal openings”(84).Architecture is but one example of the kind of artistic liberation that has allowed Japanese artists to invent new forms and functions for both art and thought, as well as to decenter the subject by putting its place into question both spatially and conceptually. Furthermore, despite the influx of Western culture, ideas and consumer products, Japan does not seem to suffer from the “the wave of Judeo-Christian guilt that feeds our ‘spirit of capitalism’” (14), thus providing a potential resolution to the ills that ail the rest of the Integrated World Capitalism (138). Japan’s central role in the development of technology also explains Guattari’s interest. Guattari accurately imagined how new technologies would permit the greater subjugation of the labor force (particularly through tele-communications), and pondered how machines (computer programs for instance) would change the nature of discourse and enunciation.While a glossary of terms would have made this otherwise fascinating book much more approachable to a diverse audience, this collection will quench the curiosity of any reader interested in Guattari’s interpretation of Japanese modern dance, architecture, urbanism, avant-garde photography or plastic arts. Georgia Southern University Virginie Ems-Bléneau Jones...