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• Office Fiction Studies

• Posthuman Studies

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Published Papers 【 display / non-display 】

• The Sciences and Beyond: On Nonhumanity in Moby-Dick

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan ( The American Literature Society of Japan )  22   1 - 18   2024 [ Peer Review Accepted ]

  Type of publication: Research paper (scientific journal)

• The Will to Matter: Captain Ahab, the Cyborg

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  Studies in English Literature ( 日本英文学会 )  61   21 - 35   2020.03 [ Peer Review Accepted ]

  Type of publication: Research paper (scientific journal)

  　View Summary

  The present study aims to cast fresh light on the cyborg-fiction aspects of Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, Moby-Dick. In so doing, it presents the novel as archetypal of cyborg fiction featuring those with artificial limbs. A specific focus is placed on the will-to-matter embodied by Captain Ahab. His prosthetic leg made of a whalebone has more often than not been viewed as an external manifestation of his monomaniacal nature. While his hostile challenge to the white whale as an inscrutable object demonstrates how emotionally-driven he has become since his last voyage, it is an idiosyncratic challenge to the longstanding domination of spirit over matter. When it comes to this complex figure with an acute consciousness of the inorganic part of his organic body, overemphasizing the power of spirit leads to deemphasizing the will to matter. Ahab’s human battle with the great white whale is closely associated with his posthuman/transhuman desire for self-enhancement. This paradoxical desire finds expression in his cyborg manifesto in which he envisions himself as a complete man—an augmented being with an enlarged brain but no heart. Ahab’s body—both disabled and imagined—is thus suggestive of how deeply humanity is interwoven with technology. His will-to-matter that exemplifies humanity-as-technology manifests itself finally in the Pequod. If Ahab is a cyborg, this whaleship is also a cyborg as an amplified projection of himself. Among the most central subjects in cyborg fiction is the transcendence of the limits of corporeality, and Ahab meets his fate when he attempts to immortalize himself by becoming something other than himself, something of an Ahab. This other-directedness is where the cyborg diverges from other posthuman/transhuman entities. The cyborg is not an autonomous being, and neither is Ahab. Moby-Dick is ultimately about his fatal journey to live immortally as the other.

• Bartlebys: Gothicizing Office Fiction

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  Palgrave Communications ( Palgrave Macmillan )  4   1 - 6   2018.11 [ Peer Review Accepted ]

  Type of publication: Research paper (scientific journal)

  　View Summary

  Gothic fiction is in essence about the power of place, particularly of house. If this obsessive focus on the house is found in other genres of fiction, Gothic fiction can certainly expand its realm of representation; namely, the extensive capacity of this genre can be illustrated by unveiling the Gothic nature of the seemingly non-Gothic. Herein lies why special attention is given to the office as an idiosyncratic kind of house in office fiction: fiction featuring such characters as clerks, civil servants, and company employees. In Gothicizing office fiction, Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” draws parallels with Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” These classics of nongenre fiction have hardly been considered the classics of office fiction. The primary emphasis of this study is on the international kinship between Melville’s Bartleby and Kafka’s Samsa: Bartleby’s occupation of the law office turns the place into a house, and Samsa’s transformation into the monstrous vermin turns his apartment into an office. These dual settings render each protagonist uncanny and ghostly. The discovery of parallels between the protagonists who embody work-life integration stems from incorporating not only elements typical of the Gothic, such as supernatural happenings and closed-room settings, but also other elements, especially work-life balance. This focus on work-life issues allows an exploration of another classic office-fiction story about an Asian Bartleby. Thus, cultivating an environment in which Bartleby’s transnational cousins are rediscovered as Bartlebys lends itself to extending the scope of the Gothic. After all, Gothic fiction is an expanding universe in which the walls come tumbling down between office and house, between work and life, and even between the Gothic and the non-Gothic. The findings of this study highlight how every sphere of life, including work life, is potentially Gothicized.

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• Work in an Age of Post-Work: Ted Chiang and the Meaning of Life

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  Kyushu American Literature ( The Kyushu American Literature Society )  64   15 - 30   2023.11 [ Peer Review Accepted ]

  Type of publication: Research paper (scientific journal)

• Do the Electric Things Have Their Lives, Too? Philip K. Dick on Post-Humanity

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  American Research Journal of English and Literature ( American Research Journals )  5 ( 1 ) 1 - 11   2019.08 [ Peer Review Accepted ]

  Type of publication: Research paper (scientific journal)

  　View Summary

  What does it mean to be human? In his best-known novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick addresses this fundamental question through drawing parallels between natural and artificial beings. While conceiving humanity in relation to technology as an integral part of the posthuman condition embodied in human-machine relations, the novel sets in perspective the post-human condition under which post-modern technology actualizes viable machine-machine relations. Special attention is thus paid to the android characters, possibly including the bounty hunter protagonist, mass-produced by high-tech corporations as post-modern Prometheuses. With in mind the novel’s film adaptations that underscore its post-human aspects such as corporate personhood, this study affords insights into the author’s science fiction not only by providing an exploration of humanity, but also by expanding the universe of discourse of post-humanity

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Books 【 display / non-display 】

Books 【 display / non-display 】

• The Multiverse of Office Fiction: Bartlebys at Work

  Masaomi Kobayashi ( Part: Single Author )

  Palgrave Macmillan  2022.11

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• Professor of the Year

  2014   University of the Ryukyus  

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• Ahabs, or Aspects of the Posthuman

  Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(C)

  Project Year: 2020.04  -   

  Investigator(s): Masaomi Kobayashi 

  Direct: 1,300,000 (YEN)  Overheads: 390,000 (YEN)  Total: 1,690,000 (YEN)

  　View Summary

  This research project aims at: ・Discovering a variety of posthuman characteristics of Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick. ・Exploring a variety of American fiction and films featuring posthuman characters as Ahabs. ・Offering a variety of possibilities for future studies in posthuman discourse.

• Bartlebys, or Aspects of Office Fiction

  Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(C)

  Project Year: 2016  -  2020.03 

  Investigator(s): Masaomi Kobayashi 

  Direct: 1,600,000 (YEN)  Overheads: 480,000 (YEN)  Total: 2,080,000 (YEN)

• Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists(B)

  Project Year: 2010  -  2012 

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