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Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan
Author(s): Patrick Noonan (Author)
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publication Date: Aug. 19 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 288 pages
- ISBN-10: 0231220480
- ISBN-13: 9780231220484
Book Description
This provocative book uncovers a paradox at the heart of the 1960s: how political disillusionment became the basis for a new form of politics―a politics of the self. Examining aesthetic criticism, popular literature, avant-garde art, cinema, and political theory, Patrick Noonan argues that cultural producers in 1960s Japan cultivated what he calls an “ethos of disaffection” toward revolutionary politics and postwar society. Departing from approaches that define politics as contestation,
Age of Disaffection foregrounds cultivation, or the production of ways of feeling and relating to the world in efforts to redefine the political. It presents an unorthodox account of the 1960s: withdrawal from political activity developed not as the decade ended but as it was unfolding. Noonan reveals how Japanese artists and intellectuals in this period confronted a crucial question that continues to vex efforts at radical change today: transform institutions or alter how people relate to themselves and others?Editorial Reviews
Review
About the Author
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