"Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan deals a lot with the dynamics of visibility and invisibility, the idealization of darkness (the 'underground' arts) and the many ways artists tried to reach a deeper 'sight' or insight. Everyone’s favorite chapter in my book is chapter 3, 'Blindness and the Visuality of Desire,' which unpacks the philosophical ramifications of an early 1970s play in which audience members lit matches to illuminate the parts of the performance they most wanted to see, and made visible their own faces and desire in the process. Kaja Silverman’s sharp discussion of Heidegger and Lacan in this book gave me new frameworks to understand what was really happening there."

Recommended by Miryam Sas, Professor of Comparative Literature and Film & Media and author of Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan.