Karl Andersson

Anthropologist

Week 51: 16-22 December 2019

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There will be an event in Japan in February that I want to participate in, as in having my own desk and sell my work, but in order to do so I need a Japanese address and bank account. All my attempts to contact the organisers failed – I think they might have blocked contact attempts from outside Japan. In the end I contacted my closest research participant again and he volunteered to register for me. So he’s now officially a member of my “circle”, and although we haven’t got confirmation yet (they tweeted that they were already 90 percent full at the time we registered), I count on being approved. That means I’ll have to create my first dōjinshi (yes, I’ve finally switched to “Revised Hepburn” for romanisation after reading up on it and especially checking CMOS; previously I used to write “doujinshi”). And that feels amazing, although I’m so very short on time. It’s good to be forced to do this though, cause otherwise I’d never do it. I’ve spent hours and days this week drawing, disappearing into the world of the character I’m developing. It’s truly embodied research.

Three dinners: Traditional goose with my colleagues and S at Café Einstein on Tuesday, delicious fryroll at Vietbowl with A and S on Friday, and a home dinner with S at F&E’s place on Saturday – a very lovely dinner that went on into the early morning.

I finished Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, which I think was brilliant and enlightening, but more than anything enraging.

And I started reading Patrick W. Galbraith’s Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan, which came out this month and which is highly relevant for my research. I like how he brings in Gabriella Coleman, bell hooks, W.J.T. Mitchell, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Anna Tsing already in the introduction. All except Kosofsky Sedgwick have featured in various courses in this programme. Only the other week I read Mitchell’s “What Do Pictures ‘Really’ Want”, which Galbraith cites, for Artistic practices unit 4 (although I seem to have forgotten to enter it into the study diary), and really liked it. This is on top of all the obvious names for a work like this. But most of all I like Galbraith’s own research and his analysis. A book to devour! I bought the print copy for identity reasons, and because I hate Kindle.

I managed to repair the flushing system in the studio by buying an identical flusher for 30 euro and exchange only the broken parts.

And I gave S and myself an early Christmas gift. I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve already on Tuesday. Time for a short break!

Book chapters

  • Eddo-Lodge, Reni. 2017. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race.
    • 6: “Race and Class”, pp. 118–30.
    • 7: “There’s No Justice, There’s Just Us”, pp. 131–37.
  • Galbraith, Patrick W. 2019. Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan. Durham: Duke University Press.
    • Introduction: “‘Otaku’ and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan”, pp. 1–19.
    • 1: “Seeking an Alternative: ‘Male’ Shōjo Fans since the 1970s”, pp. 20–48.
    • 2: “‘Otaku’ Research and Reality Problems”, pp. 49–75.

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