Dialectics without Synthesis explores Japan’s active but previously unrecognized participation in the global circulation of film theory during the first half of the twentieth century. Examining a variety of Japanese theorists working in the fields of film, literature, avant-garde art, Marxism, and philosophy, Naoki Yamamoto offers a new approach to cinematic realism as culturally conditioned articulations of the shifting relationship of film to the experience of modernity. In this study, long-held oppositions between realism and modernism, universalism and particularism, and most notably, the West and the non-West are challenged through a radical reconfiguration of the geopolitics of knowledge production and consumption.
"
"Dialectics without Synthesis is a valuable addition to film studies and should be of interest not only to Japanese film specialists but to film and media theorists more broadly."
" - The Journal of Japanese Studies
"Exceptionally meticulous archival research, humanity-driven methodologies, and special attention to historical context. . . .Dialectics without Synthesis is a step forward toward a future in which the chasm between Western and non-Western theory is significantly narrowed." - The Velvet Light Trap
"Well-researched and persuasively argued." - Screen
