2026/01/23 by Shoko Yoneyama, Anna Szörényi, Melissa Nursey-Bray · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Japanese History and Culture #Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature #Jungian Analytical Psychology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09555803.2026.2613809
openalex publication_date 2026/01/23 · openalex created_date 2026/01/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
How can we rethink the human-nature relationship in the Anthropocene? Posthumanist approaches offer a critique of anthropocentrism, but often implicitly appropriate spiritual approaches, and explicitly dismiss one of these - animism - as premodern, negating the theoretical possibility of exploring the human-nature relationship charged with animistic imagination. We argue that films by Miyazaki Hayao and Shinkai Makoto can work as a medium to transcend these limits of posthumanism and offer a pathway for understanding humans’ connection with nature. Specifically, the imagery of the shrine gate, positioned as a cultural reference available to a global audience, can stimulate what Lyotard calls ‘paralogy’: enabling encounters with ‘not the known, but the unknown’, thinking the ‘unthinkable’. In the films torii act as portals to realms where humans and nature are intimately connected, grounded in animistic worldview. The films offer a popular version of posthuman connectedness that allows for the paralogical mystery of spirituality.