A Challenge from" the Cultural Studies of Genius Loci": Immunity, Taboo, and symptom/ Marking Action on Borderline

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24652075
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Literatures/Literary theories in other countries and areas
• Research Institution: Saga University
• Principal Investigator: MAKOTO Kihara 佐賀大学, 文化教育学部, 教授 (00295031)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 免疫のしるし / 記憶と徴候 / 供犠 / 無縁 / アジール / 異化 / ゲニウス・ロキ / マーキング作用

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of my study was to show a new idea on culture from the perspective of the poetics of “genius loci” on the hypothesis of community as a cultural body keeping its own identity through the marking effect intrinsic in marginal place as cultural immunity―the effect of collective memory to the dead, the sacrificed person(or ethnic trauma of breaking taboo). The key is to be found in the cultural functions of asylum, the same etymological meaning of immunity―antonym of community. As each representative of Orient and Occident, the two area were elected; the subject area of the East(or Orient) was focused on Toukeiji in Kamakura, the earliest refuge of monastery(asylum) in Japan and the West on Lough Darg' s cloister(known as the birth place of purgatorial myth) in Donegal Ireland, the representative of Occident(the most western point of Europe) .

Free Research Field

アイルランド文化