Scattering Space and Time: The Posthuman Subject in Ito Sei's _Streets of Fiendish Ghosts_

• Main Author: Porterfield, Aubrey Kimball
• Other Authors: Mark Wollaeger
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: VANDERBILT 2010
• Subjects: English
• Online Access: http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07222010-131444/

This thesis analyzes the representation of dispersed subjectivity in Ito Seis 1937 novella, Streets of Fiendish Ghosts, paying special attention to the ways in which Itos depiction of a scattered, externalized selfhood prefigures later twentieth century concepts of the posthuman. The argument contextualizes Itos work within the overlapping discourses of Japanese modernism, British modernism (of which Ito was a translator), and international Futurism, all of which have resonances in the surreal and dreamlike world that Ito describes. Through acknowledging these multiple contexts, I endeavor to read Itos work as a site of cultural intersection rather than as a belated reaction to British modernist masterpieces. Itos expressions of a subject spread across space and time complicate the models of spatial and temporal organization that made possible hegemonies of center over periphery, or imperial metropolis over provincial outpost. In this way, Itos work both gestures toward notions of the posthuman and questions whether the preference that the post gives to the future over the past is not a sign of misplaced ideological optimism.