Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

BLURRED BORDERS AND SOCIAL INTEGRATIONS 109a future eventually tied to science and technology.The highly observed ability of the Japanese to absorbtechnology and feel a sense of intimacy with it 9 isactually manifest in many scifi materials. For example,in the manga Chobits by Clamp, personal computers inthe future have really lived up to the term ‘personal’since they have become humanoid companions,dubbed ‘persocoms,’ that each person can possibly haveand choose to have over ‘real’ people. Standing in sheeropposition to Chobits’ benevolent and often servilepersocoms is a dark and pessimistic imagining of afuture beset with man-made humanoid cyborgs and AIsgone berserk, such as the anime Parasite Dolls by KazutoNakazawa, in which androids develop unforeseenglitches akin to irrational, even psychotic behavior thatproves to be a threat to their human companions.It is fair enough to say, judging from the materialsincluded in the study, that Indonesian scifi is notsimilar to the Japanese texts in its level of depicting ahighly techno-idyllic future. However, in the scifis ofIndonesia, the representation of the future as history isallowed more prominence.It is interesting to note that many of the Indonesiantexts are preoccupied with the theme of time travel. 10Lorong Waktu featured a time machine, PertualanganErasmus portrays the tale of a child, Erasmus, andhis journey to the future to meet a dictator and hisnamesake only to find out that the despot is actuallyhis alter-self, and Transpondex brings us yet again tothe future of Indonesia that serves as the juncture forthe mythical characters of the Mahabharata and actualhistorical figures. The interest in time travel perhapsgoes beyond a penchant for recycling scifi clichés butimplicates the very cliché in a particular utility thatencourages a more conscious political and ideologicalengagement or confrontation with personal andshared histories that are constantly reviewed, revisitedand revised. Through the aforementioned texts, webear witness to the ineluctable bond between historyas past (even as we concern ourselves) with history asfuture—be it an articulation of faith and its wider roleas a catalyst of social, political and cultural change andbringer of hope, or the intersection of the personaland social in self-actualization and the realization ofa destiny, or the assertion of indigenous cosmologicalnarratives in a largely restrictive dominant purview ofcertain legitimizing institutions of knowledge.This re-articulation of marginalized views of the future asnot solely techno-idyllic but also historically consciouscould be the conceptual foundation that shores upanother representation of the future that is youth. Inboth the Japanese and Indonesian texts, the youngergeneration is usually represented as the rightful ownerof the future. From Zidane in Lorong Waktu and theteenage techno-geniuses of Inside to the highly evolvedbattle suit pilot Amuro Ray in Gundam and the kids whochoose to stay in the ruins of a once-exalted modern cityof Aphrodite, they prompt us to revise our understandingof the future as circumscribed by materiality and insteadsee it as a new breed of consciousness that will inheritthe earth. Transcending the innate emptiness of a tabularasa, to represent the future as youth is to invoke at oncea fresh and open but at the same time an informed andevolved consciousness that is prepared to go beyond thelimits and traps of outmoded ways of understandingthe world and generating knowledge (see for example,how in the series Mobile Suit Gundam by YoshiyukiTomino, a story about space colonies and mobile battlesuits, the quotidian routine of space exploration triggersan evolution of consciousness and sensibility unboundby a tiresome terrestrial domain).Perhaps, one of the greatest problematics that theproblematization of Asian scifi brings is the extentto which it reinforces or challenges the images andimaginations of science, technology and the future thathave been constructed by the (dominant) West. We havealways been fascinated by the spectacle that science andtechnology may bring to tomorrow. Now is the time toquestion the imagination created by the domination ofcertain ideological formations. Japanese and Indonesianscience fiction as discussed above certainly proclaim thevital role of acknowledging that an active relation withscience and technology is not the sole entitlement ofthe West. From a post-colonial take on science andtechnology, it is beckoning the developing and non-Western world to challenge a prefigured subjectivityof scientific and technological subjugation, and todismantle the confinements of (our own) imaginings.NOTES1For a listing of the titles of the texts included in the study,please refer to the Appendix.2Takayuki Tatsumi’s full discussion on the science fictionalityof Asia can be found in the article entitled “Japanese andAsian Science Fiction” in Seed (Ed.) (2005).3This statement should not be construed as accurate by anyscientific measure. It stems from general observations Imade while gathering materials in the country. Thoughby no means can it be accepted as a statistical truth,the observation is actually supported by local scholars,Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows