Danyael Dedeles

This magazine article explores the ethico-aesthetic revisualization of Tanizaki's shadows in his work 'In Praise of Shadows'. By elaborating the aesthetic tension between the interiors of Starbucks Ninenzaka and consumerist advertising, I propose in this essay that the Japanese aestheticization of shadows acts as a strong criticism against the neoliberal compulsion for both consumption and production. The Japanese aesthetic principles mono no aware, wabi, and yugen are construed as embodiments of nature via the Oriental sensibility, as defined in the paper. Thus, an Oriental conceptualization of nature (shizen), in contrast to the Western representation of nature, is expressed in this paper as the primary quality essential in Tanizaki's shadows and traditional Japanese interior design that serves as a promising critique of consumerism.

The Nietzschean master-slave philosophy is reduced by neoliberal capitalism into the dialectic of mediocrity and excellence. The slave is represented as the underachieving subject who evades the struggles of institutional growth, while the master is portrayed as the one whose authority and nobility emerge from productivity and achievement. Contemporary society consequently equates master morality with high performers and ruling elites who naturally dominate slaves due to their elevated positions of power. However, this perspective fails to consider how neoliberal capitalism’s logic of power, based on achievement and perpetual optimisation, is inherently reactive. Thus, I propose that this logic establishes an organised framework operating on slave morality. By redefining the master and slave dynamic not as permanent positions but as active and reactive forces that can manifest at any locus, I perform a critique against the reduction of the master-slave into simplistic dialectical relations. Hence, I argue that the neoliberal notions of the master and the slave are both based on slave morality. My critique is achieved by exploring the complex relationship between rest and struggle—showing how each can embody either active or reactive forces in a Deleuzian sense.