Fairies, Ghosts, and Santa Claus

Investigating the politics of seeing and its effects, this book draws on Slavoj A iA ek's notion of fetish and Walter Benjamin's notion of the optical unconscious to offer newer concepts: 'tinted glasses', through which we see the world; 'unit-thinking', which renders the world as consisting of discrete units; and 'coherants', which help fragmented experiences cohere into something intelligible. Examining experiences at a Japanese heritage language school, a study-abroad trip to Sierra Leone, as well as in college classrooms, this book reveals the workings of unit-thinking and fetishism in diverse contexts and explores possibilities for social change.