Cinema at the Crossroads

Nation and the Subject in East Asian Cinema

Hyon Joo Yoo

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2012
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739175354
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Asian Art

In Cinema at the Crossroads: Nation and the Subject in East Asian Cinema, Hyon Joo Yoo argues that East Asian experiences of colonialism and postcolonialism call for a different conceptualization of postcoloniality, subjectivity, and the nation. Through its analyses of Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese cinemas, this engaging study of cinema and culture charts the ways in which national cinemas visualize colonial and postcolonial conditions that derive from the history of Japanese colonialism and the post-war alliance between Japan and the United States.

What does it mean to rethink postcolonial studies through East Asian cinema and experience? Yoopursues this question by bringing an East Asian postcolonial framework, the notion of film as a manifestation of national culture, and the methodology of psychoanalysis to bear on a failed hegemonic subject. Cinema at the Crossroads is a profound look into how cinema and national culture intertwine with hegemony and power.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction What’s in a Name? Postcolonial East Asia
• Chapter 1 The Other Empire: Japan and the Pornographic Imagination of East Asia
• Chapter Two Can the Subaltern “See”? The Subaltern Vision and Looking Otherwise
• Chapter Three Transnational Cultural Production and the Politics of Moribund Masculinity
• Chapter Four When Is It Postcolonial? Time-Space in East Asian National Cinema
• Epilogue