Hypermodern addictions: the otaku culture

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of Jacques Lacan’s, Miller’s and other authors’ works regarding the subject of the Japanese culture in order to account for a particular post-modern subjectivity that is gradually becoming universal and has an impact on current clinical presentations.

Starting from Miller’s developments (2016), who intends to consider the Otaku phenomenon, and recommends to aim at adolescence for analysis in order to picture the future of the clinical practice, the work with teenagers enables us to verify how often Pret a porter solutions are adopted by patients and, in particular, how Japanese ones are becoming more prevalent. We are witnessing an exponential promotion process of identifications that deployed in a whole market, results in new addictive practices and by which they become popular, subjectivities with new names that are being included in the general category of the Otaku culture (Azuma, 2001). Numerous clinical experiences show the use the so-called Otakus make of such identifications to solve the problem of their relation with the body and sexual identity, as well as the bond to the “Other” when the aid of the traditional discourse is missing. There, gathered in the small universe that support them and upon which they depend, they establish each interim tying in a permanent fashion.

Nowadays, within Japanese policies to extend its cultural empire, the phenomenon around the manga industry, known as anime, stands out, as well as TV series and videogames, all of which make their mark on the western world. To some extent, we are facing a globalization of the fanaticism for these products, expressed through new technologies and the mass media. But we should also mention the part concerning those subjects who are part of the mass of fans, as they acquire from it a series of practices that cover a whole range of possible manifestations: from multiple mass interventions in the social space to those reaching the maximum singularity and reveal themselves in very private spheres, including solitary places, until they reach the analytical device.

Thus, taking these phenomena into consideration, this paper seeks to analyze their structural conditions in the light of what Lacan (1972) calls ‘the Japanese thing’ (Miller, 2018), concept about which he provided valuable indications, and to explore the hypothesis that there is a subjectivity that is becoming universal as certain conditions covered in those indications are becoming widespread. The first condition is the absence of a unary trait as a fundamental identification, one that would just furnish the subject with a particular style. Lacan (1972/ 2012) rather finds a constellation, a plurality of identifications that are based on an organization supported by the writing. Likewise, the Otaku life is organized on the basis of codes and scripts that constitute modes of relation which seek to be inscribed within a common language. The second condition is the absence of a unary trait as a transcendental identification, which makes the Japanese subjectivity more elastic and looser to copy and adopt models and identify itself with that found as moving. This is the snob position, which is against keeping a style. Additionally, this paper aims to analyze the very analytical experience from the Otaku response and its characteristics.