A Comparison of Watsuji’s Fūdo and Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus

What is it about?

This essay aims to cast doubt upon recent, popular approaches that establish an equivalence between Japanese philosophy and Western postmodernism. In these approaches, recourse is often made to the notion of the relationality that exists prior to the subject and object in order to establish this equivalence. Yet, in such comparisons, the discrepancies between these two philosophical traditions tend to be downplayed, especially those concerning concrete relations among humans, or between humanity and the environment. Going against this tendency, this essay compares the theories on relationality and relations in Tetsurō Watsuji’s Fūdo and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, highlighting such discrepancies that have been overlooked in favor of generally assumed similarities between these thinkers’ ideas of relationality. This essay also reveals a sort of Western-centrism within these thinkers’ theories, in spite of arguments to the contrary, and will insist on the necessity of moving beyond the celebration of superficial similarities between Japanese philosophy and Western postmodernism. For, if tacit Western-centrism in these thinkers remains unchallenged, there can be neither respect for cultural others nor true intercultural dialogues with them.

Featured Image