Summary of SEAA Reads, session 12 from February 1, 2025
Akiko Takeyama 2023 Involuntary Consent: The Illusion of Choice in Japan’s Adult Video Industry https://www.sup.org/books/anthropology/involuntary-consent Our book club discussion was co-hosted by Amy Borovoy and Chris Yano and began with readers briefly introducing themselves and giving a single word or phrase about the book. After the first 60 minutes of discussion the author joined in and many of the readers’ remarks and questions were addressed in an extended and thoughtful way. The free association of short impressions offers a kind of distilled droplet of the rich reading: precarity, illusions, “middle voice”* [chudou-tai; neither completely coerced nor completed consensual; hence the book’s title, “involuntary consent”], moving & well-written, liminality [between choices, none of which are good], intimacy problematics, methods [such rich dialogue like a “fly on the wall”; rapport; notetaking?], dignity in all interviewees, free choice ~ agency in critical light. Taken ...