The Cultural Career of Coolness : Discourses and Practices of Affect Control in European Antiquity, the United States, and Japan

Cool is a word of American English that has been integrated into the vocabulary of numerous languages around the globe. Today it is a term most often used in advertising trendy commodities, or, more generally, in promoting urban lifestyles in our postmodern age. But what is the history of the term “cool?" When has coolness come to be associated with certain modes of contemporary self-fashioning? On what grounds do certain nations claim a privilege to be recognized as “cool?" These are some of the questions that served as a starting-point for a comparative cultural inquiry which brought together specialists from American Studies and Japanese Studies, but also from Classics, Philosophy and Sociology. The conceptual grid of the volume can be described as follows: (1) Coolness is a metaphorical term for affect-control. It is tied in with cultural discourses on the emotions and the norms of their public display, and with gendered cultural practices of subjectivity. (2) In the course of the cultural transformations of modernity, the term acquired new importance as a concept referring to practices of individual, ethnic, and national difference. (3) Depending on cultural context, coolness is defined in terms of aesthetic detachment and self-irony, of withdrawal, dissidence and even latent rebellion. (4) Coolness often carries undertones of ambivalence. The situational adequacy of cool behavior becomes an issue for contending ethical and aesthetic discourses since an ethical ideal of self-control and a strategy of performing self-control are inextricably intertwined. (5) In literature and film, coolness as a character trait is portrayed as a personal strength, as a lack of emotion, as an effect of trauma, as a mask for suffering or rage, as precious behavior, or as savvyness. This wide spectrum is significant: artistic productions offer valid insights into contradictions of cultural discourses on affect-control. (6) American and Japanese cultural productions show that twentieth-century notions of coolness hybridize different cultural traditions of affect-control. Introduction / Ulla Haselstein And Irmela Hijiya-kischnereit -- [part] I: Coolness In Antiquity -- Emotionally Challenged, Wisely Detached, Or Incredibly Cool? On Stoic Apathy / Catherine Newmark -- Roman Cool / Daniel L. Selden -- [part] Ii: American Cool -- The Cultural Career Of Coolness / Ulla Haselstein -- Kinds Of Cool: Emotions And The Rhetoric Of Nineteenth-century American Abolitionism / Catrin Gersdorf -- The Mask Of Cool In Postwar Jazz And Film Noir / Joel Dinerstein -- Cool Revenge: Kill Bill And The Female Warrior / Sophia Frese -- [part] Iii: Japanese Cool -- Is Japan Cool? / Irmela Hijiya-kischnereit -- Hot And Cold And Cool: Toward A Climatology Of Japanese Culture / Jens Heise -- Cold Norms And Warm Hearts: On The Conception Of Etiquette Rules In Advice Books From Early Modern And Modern Japan / Michael Kinski -- Iki As A Mode Of Japanese Coolness / Elena Giannoulis -- The Domestication Of The Cool Cat / Paul Roquet -- Marketing National And Self Appearances: Cool And Cute In J-culture / Aviad E. Raz -- [part] Iv: Global Cool -- Cool Capitalism At Work / Jim Mcguigan -- About The Authors. Edited By Ulla Haselstein, Irmela Hijiya-kirschnereit, Catrin Gersdorf, Elena Giannoulis. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Contents 6 Introduction 8 I: “Coolness” in Antiquity 14 1 Emotionally Challenged, Wisely Detached, or Incredibly Cool? On Stoic Apathy 16 2 Roman Cool 30 II: American Cool 66 3 The Cultural Career of Coolness 68 4 Kinds of Cool: Emotions and the Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century American Abolitionism 88 5 The Mask of Cool in Postwar Jazz and Film Noir 116 6 Cool Revenge: Kill Bill and the Female Assassin 134 III: Japanese Cool 160 7 Is Japan Cool? 162 8 “Hot” and “Cold” and “Cool”: Toward a Climatology of Japanese Culture 188 9 Cold Norms and Warm Hearts: On the Conception of Etiquette Rules in Advice Books from Early Modern and Modern Japan 198 10 Iki: A Japanese Concept of Coolness? 222 11 The Domestication of the Cool Cat 244 12 Marketing National and Self Appearances: Cool and Cute in J-Culture 258 IV: Global Cool 268 13 Cool Capitalism at Work 270 Index 282 About the Authors 292 Today, coolness is a term most often used in advertising trendy commodities, or, more generally, in promoting urban lifestyles. The Cultural Career of Coolness explores the history of the term as a metaphor for affect control and aesthetic detachment, charts various cultural practices of coolness in the United States and Japan, and links them to the rationalization of intimate relations and an incorporation of disaffection in modernity