Anime's Knowledge Cultures: Geek, Otaku, Zhai

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Unlocking the technosocial implications of global geek cultures

Why has anime, a low-tech medium from last century, suddenly become the cultural new cool in the information age Through the lens of anime and its transnational fandom, Jinying Li explores the meanings and logics of geekdom as one of the most significant sociocultural groups of our time. In Animes Knowledge Cultures, Li shifts the center of global geography in knowledge culture from the computer boys in Silicon Valley to the anime fandom in East Asia.

Drawing from film studies, animation studies, media theories, fan studies, and area studies, she provides broad cultural and theoretical explanations of animes appeal to a new body of tech-savvy knowledge workers and consumers commonly known as geeks, otaku, or zhai. Examining the forms, techniques, and aesthetics of anime, as well as the organization, practices, and sensibilities of its fandom, Animes Knowledge Cultures is at once a theorization of anime as a media environment as well as a historical and cultural study of transnational geekdom as a knowledge culture. Li analyzes anime culture beyond the national and subcultural frameworks of Japan or Japanese otaku, instead theorizing animes transnational, transmedial network as the epitome of the postindustrial knowledge culture of global geekdom.

By interrogating the connection between the anime boom and global geekdom, Li reshapes how we understand the meanings and significance of anime culture in relation to changing social and technological environments.