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The Ghost in the City and a Landscape of Life: A Reading of Difference in Shirow and Oshii's Ghost in the Shell

2008; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1068/d458t

1472-3433

Giorgio Hadi Curti,

Spatial and Cultural Studies

In this paper I demonstrate how an ontological perspective variously informed by Spinozan and Deleuzian philosophy and the (Shinto-influenced) work of Japanese artists Masamune Shirow and Mamoru Oshii offers an approach to landscape which decenters human position(s) and allows an exploration of landscape on its own terms. Through an empirical exploration of this approach, I analyze the animated Japanese science fiction film Ghost in the Shell (1998 [1995]), and discuss how its imagery, ideas, and philosophies can elucidate and aid in an understanding of landscape, not as a separate or passive entity but as a relational living and endeavoring thing.