Thomas Lamarre: An Introduction to Otaku Movement - Arts @ Brunel

EnterText 4.1
Mario Tronti calls a “strategy of refusal.” 22 The non-quantifiable work of otaku poses a
challenge to received organisations of labour. When faced with their inability to direct or
harness otaku movement, corporations call it theft or piracy.
On the other hand, the kinds of work associated with otaku seem already subject
to constitutive power in the workplace. Collecting, exchanging, translating manga and
anime, which commonly entails downloading, posting, converting files—aren’t these
sorts of activities already codified in the workplace, as a form of communicative labour?
In this respect, otaku movement appears as part of a general postmodernisation of
society, as part of those transformations in the labour process that have been discussed in
such terms as post-Fordism, flexible accumulation or cultural economy. “Essentially,” to
quote John Kraniauskas, such changes in processes of production “involve the
technological harnessing of the superstructure by the economic base, a ‘cultural turn’ in
production putting entertainment, the symbols and electronic syntax of the information
highways, social knowledges and affect to work.” 23 In sum, the so-called unofficial work
associated with otaku hovers between strategies of work refusal and the postmodern
harnessing of communicative labour. Otaku movement arises with the historical
transformation of processes of production and labour, and maybe serves as a site of
articulation between economies. Otaku movement—as unofficial work—is at once labour
and not labour.
Otaku no Video offers both possibilities at once, by stressing the oscillation
between discipline and self-cultivation. The statistical information that accompanies each
portrait of an otaku, for instance, not only gives the impression that otakudom is far more
pervasive than anyone suspects (thus implying the otaku activities are already eroding
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