‘가와이이(カワイイ)’의 미학과 표상의 정치: 일본 대중문화의 정치미학적 독해를 위한 시론

Abstract

This study aims to interrogate the dynamics between national imagination and public culture of contemporary Japan, with a political viewpoint on the aesthetics of Kawaii(可愛い; カワイイ) which represents contemporary japanese public culture and constitutes its external image. It is not only a cultural phenomenon of public consumers society, rather related closely with the politics of representation, the way that the nation japan tries to express itself. And also it is about the politics of identity and difference. Because the representation of its identity outside is constituted by invisiblize the difference inside. That is, kawaii as the positive object of japanese enthusiasm, moral, national identity, must be treated with the relation of nation and aesthetics. In this study, kawaii, as an ideologically appropriated word that intermediates japanese national imagination, refers the technique of identity subject that enables expression of itself good and unharmful, also objectification of internal others. On this point of view, this study will criticize that the aesthetics of kawaii, which pursues political indifference such as unintentional, unvoluntary, unconcious unharmfulness, conceives totalitarianism when it comes to national aesthetics.