In a timely note, DKellis posed and explored a fascinating question: Could Nanoha refuse to join the TSAB?

Join the TSAB! Travel to exotic, distant worlds, meet exciting, unusual people and *befriend* them.

My initial reaction was: Why the heck wouldn’t she join?

I agree with the first part of DKellis’ reasoning, that:

The TSAB provides substantial support and resources, as well as a convenient way for the protagonists to meet and work together as a team: because they are ordered to.

The TSAB gives Nanoha and her merry band the legal right and the logistical might to go out and blow stuff up for great justice. But I disagree with the latter part and call on his analogy between the TSAB and Star Trek’s Federation because it seems to me that, like the Federation, the heroes seem to have a lot of autonomy; they don’t seem overly worried about being outright insubordinate which is normally a military death penalty offence in times of civil emergency or war.

This wasn’t really an issue in the first season; then Nanoha and Yuuno were civilian associates. Or in A’s; Lindy would always cover for them. But the issue comes into its own in StrikerS where there’s some pretty lovely bureaucratic politicking between the group led by Chibi-Tanuki Hayate, Carim and Chrono (Church/Navy) vs Regius (Army), the subtlety of which I have not seen since the second season of Stand Alone Complex. Hayate’s relentless quest for the truth ruffles the feathers of some pretty big shots, uncovering conspiracy and corruption all the way to the top of the TSAB. Take that, Section 31!

It seemed to me that the cast wanted to Do The Right Thing and were willing to go against the higher-ups of the TSAB in order to save the values that the TSAB was supposed to stand for. The series was weighed down by huge expectations, cast bloat, problematic pacing, dodgy art and animation (in the TV broadcast), the howling of lolicons (LOLOLOL) and Not Enough Signum-neesan but, together with NxF, this aspect of the series really endeared itself to me.

To pose DKellis’ question more generally: Can magical girls refuse to be militarized?

The standard Weberian definition of the state is an polity that is able to claim the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. From this perspective, magical girls have to either keep their identities secret or to get some sort of credentials from the state’s organization for the deployment of the legitimate use of force, that is, the military. I suppose Nanoha could have remained a civilian associate (but still licensed by the Main Office nonetheless); it was a bit harder for Fate and Hayate because of how they were performing military service as penance for their criminal records.

Or this was just a brilliant excuse to dress up magical girls in exquisite combat costumes and sexy military uniforms. Just look at Signum-neesan in the No.5J and overcoat in one of my rotating banners. FWOAR.

No real conclusion but in another timely note, the Mar 2009 theme for the Touching War series of seminars is "Women: Armed and Dangerous?"

Full announcement:

TOUCHING WAR: MARCH EVENTS

The Touching War activities I am directing at Lancaster University with the Politics/IR department, under IAS and LU Film Society sponsorship, continue. March’s theme is Women: Armed and Dangerous? Join a new
generation of feminists in international relations to reconsider issues of war and masculinity and the war question for feminists. Events are open to all.

For the schedule through April 2009, see the Touching War website:

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/touchingwar/

Professor Christine Sylvester, Politics/IR

I. ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION AND DEBATE: RECONSIDERING WAR AND MASCULINITY
Thursday 19 March, 4:00-6:00, IAS room 2/3. Wine reception following.
Sponsored by IAS

War has long been viewed by feminists as the ultimate masculine arena of international relations, one that involves women and children mostly as victims of violence, sometimes as combatants, rarely as perpetrators.
This roundtable introduces the theme of Women: Armed and Dangerous? by featuring a mostly new generation of leading international relations analysts interested in probing, challenging, enlarging, and reframing the war and masculinity equation in ways that bring in “women’s” agency and politics.

Participants:

Megan MacKenzie (Women in Public Policy, Harvard). Has interviewed women soldiers in Sierra Leone about their war and post-war experiences. Author of “Securitization and De-securitization: Female Soldiers and the
Construction of the Family,” Security Studies (2009), “De-Securitizing Sex: War Rape and the ‘Radicalization’ of Development in Sierra Leone,” Feminist Journal of International Politics (forthcoming), and co-author
of “Silent Identities: Children Born of War in Sierra Leone” in Charli Carpenter ed. Born of War: Protecting Children Born to Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones. (2007).

Cristina Masters (Politics, Manchester). Interested in feminism, masculinity and practices of (in)security in international politics, with special attention to the US military and the role of technology in war and security practices. Author of several articles related to this month’s theme, including Femina Sacra and the War on Terror,” Security Dialogue, 2009), and “Bodies of Technology II: Cyborg Soldiers and Militarised Masculinities,” in Rethinking The ‘Man Question’ in International Relations: Sex, Gender, and Violence in International Relations, eds. Jane Parpart and Marysia Zalewski (2008).

Elina Penttinen (Tampere Peace Research Institute). Interested in experiences of war, security, and insecurity as dailiness in women’s lives, and feminist theory about the body and subjectivity. Author of
Globalization, Prostitution, and Sex-Trafficking: Corporeal Politics (2007), “Providing Security: White Western Feminists Protecting “Other” Women,” in Mark Haugaard and Howard Lentner, eds, Hegemony and Power:
Consensus and Coercion in Contemporary Politics (2006), and “Whose Voices Matter: Feminists Stretch the Boundaries of the International Relations Discipline,” in Subhash Durlabhji, ed., Power in focus: Perspectives from Multiple Disciplines (2004).

Laura Sjoberg (Political Science, Virginia Tech). With both a PhD and a JD, she is interested in gender justice in wars, violent women, and gender and international security. Authored Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq (2006) and co-authored Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics (2007). General editor of the Gender and Political Violence book series from New York University Press, and
author of “The Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle: Why Gender Analysis Needs Feminism,” International Studies Quarterly (2006) and “Gendered Torture? Feminist Insights into Abu Ghraib and Gender in the 21st Century,” International Feminist Journal of Politics (2007).

Professor Christine Sylvester (Politics/IR), Seen as raising the war question for feminism and pursuing it in “The Art of War/the War Question in Feminist IR, Millennium: Journal of International Studies (2005). Author of two theory books in the Cambridge series on International Relations, two books on the political economy of Zimbabwe, and lately Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (2009). Author of War, Feminism, and International Relations and editor of Major Works in Feminist International Relations (four volumes), both forthcoming with Routledge.

II. WORKSHOP: THE WAR QUESTION FOR FEMINISM
Friday, March 20, 9:30-5:30, IAS room 2/3. Sponsored by IAS

Many feminists have been disinclined to study the social institution of war, because to study war has seemed to mean accepting it or even endorsing it over feminist goals of peace and war protest. The neglect
of war studies even in feminist international relations is changing rapidly with the advent of a new generation of feminists researching war without necessarily supporting it. This workshop showcases their
thinking about the war question for feminism and enables us to see realms of politics, agency, emotion and physical violence that have been whispered about in the past, or sensationalized in the media, more often
than researched.

9:30-10:00 Christine Sylvester, “Introducing The War Question for Feminism: What Are The Issues?”

10:00-10:30 Elina Penttinen, “The Possibilities of Finding Joy Through Feminist Research on War”
What happens to us as feminist IR writers and researchers when we choose to focus on life, joy and empowerment in places usually seen through feminist lenses as victimizing for women, such as war? I will talk about what I call hopeless feminist problem-making in regard to the war question and look for solutions.

10:30 Break for coffee

10:45-11:15 Discussion led by Megan MacKenzie

11:15- 11:45 Laura Sjoberg “Women’s Sex Crimes in War”
Addresses questions of women’s participation in sexual violence in wartime, particularly their participation in and instigation of genocidal rape. It looks at theoretical and legal implications of women’s sexual violence as well as media and scholarly reactions to those acts.

11:45-12:15 Cristina Masters “Does Homo Sacer have a Sex? Women, the Feminine and War”
An attempt to provoke critical feminist inquiry into the figure of homo sacer in Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy, and reveal how the category may serve to obscure the modalities through which practices of war render
women as bare life in particular ways.

12:15-1:00 Discussion led by Christine Sylvester

1:00-2:15 Lunch

2:15-2:45 Corinna Peniston-Bird (History, Lancaster), Co-author of Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (2007), and co-editor of A Soldier and a Woman; Sexual
Integration in the Military (2000).

‘”I’ll be Part and Parcel of the Great British Army”: Women’s Constructions of Service in the ‘Good’ War.”
Takes as its starting place women’s retrospective personal testimony on serving in the British Armed Forces in the Second World War, a periodisation which permits examples to be drawn from the experiences of
female conscripts and volunteers, but as construed from a contemporary perspective.

2:45-3:15 Megan MacKenzie, “Women: Armed and Dangerous in Sierra Leone”
Insights and stories of over fifty female soldiers in Sierra Leone are the foundations of this presentation, which challenges fundamental assumptions about what women “do” during and after conflict.

3:15-3:45 Swati Parashar (Politics/IR Lancaster), Author of “Feminist International Relations and Women Militants: Case Studies from Sri Lanka and Kashmir,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs (2009) and
co-author with Christine Sylvester of “The Contemporary ‘Mahabharata’ and the Many ‘Draupadis’: Bringing Gender to Critical Terrorism Studies, in Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda (2009), eds.
Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth, and Jeroen Gunning. She edited Maritime Counter Terrorism: A Pan Asian Perspective(2007) and co-edited Terrorism in South East Asia-Implications for South Asia (2006).

“Militant Women in South Asia: Case Studies from Sri Lanka and Kashmir”
Women as perpetrators, planners and patrons of violent militant activities in the conflicts in Sri Lanka and Kashmir.

3:45-4:00 Break

4:15-4:30 Discussion led by Laura Sjoberg

4:30-5:30 Theorizing the War Question for Feminism -Sylvester, Sjoberg,
MacKenzie, Penttinen, Masters

For information on these and future Touching War events, contact
Professor Christine Sylvester: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

The Nanoha franchise would be sooo ripe for some discourse analysis. Likewise for Strike Witches. And Simoun.

©2012 hontou ni sou omou?. All Rights Reserved.

Got wind of this seminar, organized by the Creative Industries Observatory, via Anime Infatuation, and popped by Strand Poly yesterday. A quick rundown of my main takeaways and reflections on the presentations.

Extract from Andrew Osmond‘s abstract: ‘In American and Britain, Japanese animation has often been presented as something completely different from “cartoons”; darker, more adult and transgressive… [but] anime and Western cartoons have always inspired and mirrored each other.’ He showed several clips from older anime – you knew that they were really old because they were on VHS tapes – that showed how some anime had influenced even Disney as well as significant American and French influences in the apprenticeship works of Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon. My favourite was the Anne of Green Gables OP clip which Osmond said was more popular, in Japan, than Ghost in the Shell or Akira.

Dr Rayna Denison was having a field day filling a huge gap in the academic literature on anime in English (e.g. by Susan Napier, Steven Brown (?), Antonia Levi, Sharon Kinsella etc.) which she claimed was largely concentrated on texts (the anime itself), consumption and fandom but almost nothing has been written about production, the studios and the industry in Japan. A great reminder that anime isn’t just a medium, style or genre but also an economic and industrial activity that needs to make a profit in order to survive. Point that aroused the most interest from the audience was how amateur cosplay was banned at TAIF and all cosplayers were professionals hired by the studios, an interesting dynamic of how industrial players have been able to tap into fan activity and transform it into professional activity.

Dr Yoko Ono‘s paper made pretty big claims about how the popularity of disaster, catastrophic and apocalyptic anime reflected the alienation of Japanese youth from adults and extended it by claiming that its popularity outside Japan reflected resonance of other countries’ youth with distrust of adults who are no longer seen as mentors or models, who are no longer willing/able to care for nor guide the youth. I haven’t read the paper itself but it might suffer from problems of causal inference e.g. how do you prove that popularity of dystopian anime is caused by ideological/cultural identification rather than, say, marketing? Also, there’s a problem of selecting on the dependent variable; the prophecies of Nostradamus, which she cited a lot as an influence in anime and popular culture, was thoroughly parodied in the popular Keroro Gunso which is hardly a dystopian anime/manga. Dr Ono is obviously an Evangelion fan and drew the majority of her references from the TV series; I was also itching to ask her about her views on Rebuild but there wasn’t much time for Q&A in her slot.

Emma Hayley of SelfMadeHero talked about how she had worked with UK-based Japanese and non-Japanese artists to produce manga Shakespeare that was well received by teachers of English literature, particularly those working with young children, as well as British government agencies like the DTI and the British Council as well as winning recognition from the Japanese MFA whose otaku minister Taro Aso had created a prize for international manga. However a British employee with the Japanese Embassy gave a more cynical take on the warm bureaucratic/political reception was because the Brits were happy to be associated with something cool and fashionable and the Japanese were pleased at the seeming success of their cultural imperialism. LOL There was a Shakespeare purist in the audience who regarded this as sacrilege; Hayley’s comeback was (1) Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed and watched, not to be studied in the classroom; (2) the manga could serve as an entry point for children to get into the full text. Someone should have asked the old fuddyduddy to watch GONZO’s R&J (see jpmeyer’s take) – bet he’ll be well and truly frothing at the mouth. LOL A pointed question from a member of the audience was: ‘What are you doing to do when you run out of Shakespeare plays? There’s not that many popular ones.’ Thankfully, there are lots of other classics of English literature to adapt. And, if I might add, whose copyright has expired.

Which leads nicely on to Dr Hye-Kyung Lee‘s paper on scanlation which went into a lot of ethical debates related to fansubs that anime bloggers will be familiar with. This was backed up by impressive interview work with scanlation group founders and leaders as well as those working in the manga publishing industry. Clear difference between music filesharers (an ethic of resistance and industry hostility) and scanlators (an ethic of ‘love of manga’ and ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with industry that saw it as a means of promotion, marketing). Points from the audience included points about copyright law (not a clear case of infringement because of (non)licensing in jurisdictions where the scanlation takes place as well as fair use provisions), the influence of Japanese otaku culture (to buy lots of stuff is a way to show love) and scanlation being one case within a wider phenomenon of ‘user-led innovation’ (cf. Eric von Hippel) that has been observed in fan communities of kite flyers, surf boarders, inline skaters etc who innovate to fulfill desires that commercial entities are unable to address well and/or speedily enough as well as the validation of Bourdieu‘s concept of ‘the economic world reversed’ (see the 1983 Poetics article or the first chapter of The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, 1993). ‘Everyone OTL’ moment when someone quipped: ‘So the French are right after all.’ orz

Overall, from my academic POV, IMHO Dr Denison’s paper was strongest in terms of locating it within a theoretical literature, Dr Ono’s made the strongest claims about the applicability of her analysis to wider socio-political phenomenoa, Dr Lee’s was the strongest methodologically.

On the one hand, DEKKAI JEALOUSY that all of them really seem to enjoy doing research into this area (3 out of 5 having jobs that is mainly about studying, writing, teaching about anime in a university FTW); on the other hand, I’m not sure that I could do this kind of research because it’s like making a hobby into work. A really fun and interesting and (one of those rare and magnificient creatures) truly multidisciplinary seminar.

©2012 hontou ni sou omou?. All Rights Reserved.

Given my current love affair with working from the middle of Sartori’s ladder of generality, I also found myself disaggregating the missing mom category into a finer grained taxonomy:

Mommy ga miteru:

Wagaya no Oinarisama: Remember, Touru, the Fox will be with you. Always.

• Evangelion 1.01: Shinji misses Yui, love-hates Gendou; but Yui is close to him in one two ways. This case overlaps with the following set.

Oedipus Complex:

• Code Geass R2: Must defeat father to avenge mother and possess sister.

Parents KIA for the Precious:

• Kamen no Maid Guy: For the sake of Grandpa’s fortune (but with GAR meido man rather than Pretty Boy Butler) dazou!
• Nabari no Ou: For the sake of the White Devil of Miracle Gro nano!
• xxxHOLIC Kei: For the sake of the son who is oh so tasty to the hungry ghosts.

Which brings me back to Wagaya no Oinarisama. I’ve not made time to post about it regularly but the Miyako angle has really raised the series in my estimation. The antics of fox and miko in the city are fine too but the touching exploration of Miyako’s relationship with her family via Kuu and Kou have added an x-factor to a series that threatened to devolve into a mundane ‘monster of the week’ anime.

I’m sure that there’s some psycho-analytic theory-type explanation via Freud or, Haruhi help us Lacan, about the wider significance of how the aching gap left by the missing and missed mother feeds the element of fantasy that these stories are built on (au contraire, see Pan’s Labyrinth, which also happens to be the best film I’ve seen in recent years). But I’m just enjoying how this thread is enhancing the enjoyment of my animu this spring.

©2012 hontou ni sou omou?. All Rights Reserved.