Politicizing motorcycles: Racialized capital of technology, techno-Orientalism and Japanese temporality

Esperanza Miyake

No 9mprd, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This article politicizes the racialization of motorcycles and critically examines the representation and material consumption of Japanese raciality and technology through motorcyclic discourses. First, referring to online discourses surrounding Harley-Davidson and Japanese motorcycles, I argue that these essentialize and racialize motorcycles, which in turn, through their material consumption, become a technology for classifying, racializing and organizing sociocultural systems of western cultural hegemony. I suggest the term racialized capital of technology as a way of examining and politicizing the ideological-material intersection of racialized technology. Second, through an analysis of Honda’s contemporary advertising discourse (United Kingdom, United States, Japan, World websites), I focus further on the racialization of technology by exploring the ways in which Japan is temporalized through technology. I re-think techno-Orientalist ideas on the future and technology as being ‘Japanized’ and, instead, explore the Japanization of the past through technology, or the historicization of Japanese technology. I argue that Honda’s dual connectivity to the past and the future marks a destabilization of techno-Orientalist discourses of Japan and technology, providing a counter-narrative against western cultural hegemony. However, I am also critical of such discourses and consider some of the historical and ontological tensions surrounding the representation of Japan and technology, relating these to Japanese temporal imperialism and capitalism.

Date: 2016-06-30
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:9mprd

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/9mprd

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