A Fictional Commons

Michael K. Bourdaghs

ISBN 10: 1478013699 / ISBN 13: 9781478013693

Published by Duke University Press, US, 2021

About this Item

Modernity arrived in Japan, as elsewhere, through new forms of ownership. In A Fictional Commons, Michael K. Bourdaghs explores how the literary and theoretical works of Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), widely celebrated as Japan's greatest modern novelist, exploited the contradictions and ambiguities that haunted this new system. Many of his works feature narratives about inheritance, thievery, and the struggle to obtain or preserve material wealth while also imagining alternative ways of owning and sharing. For Soseki, literature was a means for thinking through-and beyond-private property. Bourdaghs puts Soseki into dialogue with thinkers from his own era (including William James and Mizuno Rentaro, author of Japan's first copyright law) and discusses how his work anticipates such theorists as Karatani Kojin and Franco Moretti. As Bourdaghs shows, Soseki both appropriated and rejected concepts of ownership and subjectivity in ways that theorized literature as a critical response to the emergence of global capitalism.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781478013693

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Fictional Commons
• Publisher: Duke University Press, US
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1478013699
• ISBN 13: 9781478013693
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 476 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Modernity arrived in Japan, as elsewhere, through new forms of ownership. In A Fictional Commons, Michael K. Bourdaghs explores how the literary and theoretical works of Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), widely celebrated as Japan's greatest modern novelist, exploited the contradictions and ambiguities that haunted this new system. Many of his works feature narratives about inheritance, thievery, and the struggle to obtain or preserve material wealth while also imagining alternative ways of owning and sharing. For Sōseki, literature was a means for thinking through—and beyond—private property. Bourdaghs puts Sōseki into dialogue with thinkers from his own era (including William James and Mizuno Rentarō, author of Japan’s first copyright law) and discusses how his work anticipates such theorists as Karatani Kōjin and Franco Moretti. As Bourdaghs shows, Sōseki both appropriated and rejected concepts of ownership and subjectivity in ways that theorized literature as a critical response to the emergence of global capitalism.

About the Author

Michael K. Bourdaghs is Robert S. Ingersoll Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, coeditor of Sound Alignments: Popular Music in Asia's Cold Wars, also published by Duke University Press, and author of Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop.