Botanical Imagination (Paperback)

Jon L. Pitt

ISBN 10: 1501780956 / ISBN 13: 9781501780950

Published by Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2025

About this Item

Paperback. Botanical Imagination explores the complicated legacy and enduring lure of plant life in modern Japanese literature and media. Using critical plant studies, Jon L. Pitt examines an unlikely group of writers and filmmakers in modern Japan, finding in their works a desire to "become botanical" in both content and form. For nearly one hundred years, a botanical imagination grew in response to moments of crisis in Japan's modern history. Pitt shows how artists were inspired to seek out botanical knowledge in order to construct new forms of subjectivity and attempt to resist certain forms of state violence. As he follows plants through the tangled histories of imperialism and state control, Pitt also uncovers the ways plants were used in the same violence that drove artists to turn to the botanical as a model of resistance in the first place. Botanical Imagination calls on us to rethink plants as significant but ambivalent actors and to turn to the botanical realm as a site of potentiality. Explores the complicated legacy and enduring lure of plant life in modern Japanese literature and media. Using critical plant studies, Pitt examines an unlikely group of writers and filmmakers in modern Japan, finding in their works a desire to ""become botanical"" in both content and form. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781501780950

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Botanical Imagination (Paperback)
• Publisher: Cornell University Press, Ithaca
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501780956
• ISBN 13: 9781501780950
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Botanical Imagination explores the complicated legacy and enduring lure of plant life in modern Japanese literature and media. Using critical plant studies, Jon L. Pitt examines an unlikely group of writers and filmmakers in modern Japan, finding in their works a desire to "become botanical" in both content and form. For nearly one hundred years, a botanical imagination grew in response to moments of crisis in Japan's modern history.

Pitt shows how artists were inspired to seek out botanical knowledge in order to construct new forms of subjectivity and attempt to resist certain forms of state violence. As he follows plants through the tangled histories of imperialism and state control, Pitt also uncovers the ways plants were used in the same violence that drove artists to turn to the botanical as a model of resistance in the first place. Botanical Imagination calls on us to rethink plants as significant but ambivalent actors and to turn to the botanical realm as a site of potentiality.

About the Author

Jon L. Pitt is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is the translator of Hiromi Ito's Tree Spirits Grass Spirits.