退屈さとの闘争,衝撃へのノスタルジー : W.ベンヤミンと村上龍をめぐって

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In this article I investigate the relation of boredom to the experiences of "shock" and "nature" (or "naturalization") in Walter Benjamin and Murakami Ryu. Nature is the semblance of timeless givenness in a taken for granted order of things, whereas shock is the break-up of this natural order. Just as shock is an ambivalent experience - not only destructive but also liberating - so naturalization gives rise to conflicting strategies. In this article I seek to throw light on these strategies by focusing on the role of boredom, first in the "shocking" modernity depicted by Benjamin, then in the "naturalized" modernity in Murakami Ryu. Benjamin depicts modernity as a "hell" characterized by a "dialectic of the new and eversame" in which people develop a "heightened consciousness" that serves as a "protective shield" against the shocks of everyday life but which also leads to the disintegration of "aura". Benjamin describes the boredom that springs from the experience of a world drained of aura as "spleen". Spleen, in other words, is not a boredom that stems from the absence of shocks or of stimuli, but on the contrary a boredom that is fuelled by an excess of shocks. In this respect it is similar to the bored indifference of what Simmel calls the "blase attitude". Although Benjamin regards modernity as a "hell", he rejects the nostalgic attempt to resurrect the aura - as seen above all in fascism - since such an attempt would be caught in the "law that effort produces its opposite". Thus fascism is driven towards war, the greatest shock of all. Benjamin choses instead a strategy of "waiting", a "tactile" getting used to the shocks and the reification of the nightmare of modernity in order to discover the dialectics of awakening within it. The boredom seen in much contemporary fiction is of a fundamentally different kind, springing not from a shocking but a naturalized world. This boredom can be affirmed, as in Okazaki Kyoko, Yoshimoto Banana or Murakami Haruki. Murakami Ryu, however, "wages war on boredom" (Shimada Masahiko) in the attempt to resurrect the experience of shock. Although his fiction abounds in seemingly shocking or nauseating episodes, these shocks are never simply given as part of experience itself, as the shocks characteristic of the modernity depicted by Benjamin, but consciously produced in order to resist naturalization. The paradox of this attempt to resurrect shock, however, is analogous to that of resurrecting the aura : the effect produced is the opposite of the intended. Thus Murakami Ryu enables us to study how the efforts to combat naturalization themselves become naturalized, i. e. part of the boring everyday. In Murakami Haruki, we can see a diametrically opposed strategy resembling Benjamin's attitude of "waiting" and passively immersing oneself in the experience of the present-the one significant difference being that while this experience was shock for Benjamin it is rather naturalization for Murakami Haruki. If Murakami Haruki represents a basic acceptance of naturalization that still seems to be waiting for something new, then Murakami Ryu represents a basic revolt against naturalization that acknowledges its own futility. In the former, we see the mute expectation that new shocks will arise through his affirmation of nature. In the latter, the grim foreboding that he will get mired down in nature through his pursuit of shock.
2001-12-25

退屈さとの闘争,衝撃へのノスタルジー : W.ベンヤミンと村上龍をめぐって

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