General Intellects Quotes

“In Japan itself it seemed as if theory had been absorbed the same way Japanese media culture absorbed everything else—by turning it into a spectacular subcultural style.”
― McKenzie Wark, General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the 21st Century

“Evangelion is not so much an original as itself already a copy of popular anime elements, “an aggregate of information without a narrative” or a “grand non-narrative” (O38). This results in part from industrial changes. By the ’90s, any product can spawn all the others: a series of stickers or a company logo could bloom into a series of manga, TV or film anime, games and more. By now “the narrative is only a surplus item”
― McKenzie Wark, General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the 21st Century

“The preferred worlds to simulate were either sci-fi or Edo-period Japan, as if the two breaks of the Meiji restoration (1868) and the occupation (1945) had not happened. Azuma links simulation to the practice of détournement or the fan-based making of derivative works, which “official” products then borrow from in turn: “the products of otaku culture are born into a chain of infinite imitations and piracy” (O26). Simulacra thus float free from both the notion of an historical time and from the authoring of original works.”
― McKenzie Wark, General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the 21st Century