Hiroki Azuma, Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals
Week 16
In his book "Otaku: Japan's Database Animals, Azuma Hiroki is producing this theory of otaku culture which he claims has universal applications. The models he describes help us to understand the world in which we live today and understand the politics in our time because so much of our politics is still governed by grand narratives. Azuma is saying that we need to escape these narratives and the reason for that is because we are living in a database.
One way to understand the importance and significance of this analysis of otaku culture is to look at Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegelian thought. Kojève talked about what modes of existence were likely after the end of Hegelian history, and discovered the first one in America, which he termed a return to animality, i.e. the consumer behavior which lives in harmony with “nature” instead of struggling against it. We've reached a point in history where that old desire to overcome nature or to master our own drives or our own wants, i.e. that whole struggle has come to an end because we live in a consumerist society. Kojève’ is saying that American society has become a society where people have become animals in the sense that they live to fulfill their basic desires and they are totally under the control of their wants. In a world of immense consumerism, that old struggle to master nature and to master nature within yourself and to engage in a battle with other people for the sake of ideology and for the sake of revolution has come to an end. This was further corroborated on by Francis Fukuyama in 1991 who said that there is no point in thinking about communist revolutions, socialist revolutions or any kind or revolutions for tht matter because now you have the market and on the market everyone is either a consumer or a user or a producer. You live your life and work hard in the market and that's all you need to worry about. This is where the grand narratives associated with modernity start crumbling. Even the grand narratives surrounding capitalism, i.e. of capitalism being a sign of progress, collapse because now even the idea of progress has come to an end.
The grand narratives of modernity all have an origin and this origin is determined and knowable through different kinds of ontological or metaphysical theories or programs. The origin can be determined and the grand narratives precisely revolve around or circulate around explaining what was there at the origin so on that basis we can figure out what is happening now. For example there are many religious discourses that have this idea that there is this origin and that at the origin xyz happened definitely and that from that xyz a series of events sprung up. At the origin point of progress, for example, you had human beings living in a state of nature then moving on to capitalism and industrialism and so on. Now what happens in the postmodern view, which is that they otaku have reached this realisation that there is no grand narrative and in place of the origin you have the database. there is no purity at the point of origin and no grand narrative to explain what happened at that point. So the fundamental reality is the database and the database is immensely differentiated but its not something that has a specific kind of centre or core. There's nothing underneath the database; no foundation. That's the reality. The deep inner layer of the database is the Freudian unconscious. It is not articulated but you want to work to articulate it. This is what pushes the kinds of various drives and desires we have and is what we would call the collective unconscious but it appears as an ephemeral kind of void. Why is this the grand non-narrative? According to various kinds of grand narratives, if you are trying to understand history or society or politics after a series of steps, going through genetic analysis you can reach the point of origin and determine it. That's what all kinds of theories that abide by the metaphysical ontological outlook say. However, the database is a non-narrative in the sense that there is nothing fixed or stable- it's all very fuzzy in the deeper layer.
This book is not just about computers or a specific subculture, rather, it really helps us understand our reality. The database requires one to move through it sideways because historical forms of ontology and metaphysics have this idea that one needs to go deep or that there is this interiority. In the database, information is not in a stack, it is not layer upon layer and there is no hierarchy. We live in a world of hyperflatness and we're all part of the database. There is nothing outside of the database. This flat model is a good model to understand reality because the other conceptual alternatives like the depth model with its interiority and exteriority are completely breaking apart.
