Dr Michiko Oki

Biography

Dr. Michiko Oki is a researcher and writer in art history (avant-garde and modernism studies), critical theory and cultural anthropology. Her research explores the representation of violence and power in allegory and fiction in modern/contemporary art, culture and literature. Her interdisciplinary writings, drawn from art history/theory, critical theory, philosophy, intuition and emotion, approach the question: What is the nature of aesthetic experience in perceiving the darker side of reality? What is the constructive effect of the 'endarkening' imagination on the human psyche and society? Her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Art (University College London, 2014) examined the representation of the violence of normative power in contemporary biopolitics and its allegorical expressions in the art and literature of Théodore Géricault, Otto Dix, Charlotte Salomon, René Magritte, and Franz Kafka, with reference to the critical theories of T. L. Adorno, G. Agamben, W. Benjamin, J. Butler, and M. Foucault.
Her recent research explores the non-Westernised narratives behind the reception of avant-garde spirits in non-European countries, exemplified by the case of Japan. In particular, it investigates the peculiar historical event, 'ee ja nai ka' (the carnivalesque popular riots that swept the country in 1867-1868), and its relationship to the mass cultural movement of the 1920s and 30s 'ero guro nansensu' (erotic, grotesque, nonsense). She is currently launching a new interdisciplinary and transcultural research project, exploring the polytheistic perception of the world that remains underneath contemporary culture and religion, and its hedonistic manifestation as a form of resistance, with a particular focus on Japan, Spain, and the UK.