Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network – East Asian Studies
Episode: Reginald Jackson, “Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls”
Host: Carla Nappi
Guest: Reginald Jackson
Air Date: March 1, 2026

The episode features an in-depth conversation with Reginald Jackson about his 2018 book, Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls. Jackson and Nappi discuss how the book explores the intersection of reading and dying, legibility and mortality, and how mourning operates not just as personal grief, but as a textual, embodied, and critical practice. The book is celebrated for its transdisciplinary approach, rich visual analysis, and critical engagement with medieval to contemporary Japanese texts and art.

Main Themes and Purpose

• Intersections of Literature, Art, and Death: The book explores connections between reading, calligraphy, and mortality through The Tale of Genji and its handscrolls, extending to their 21st-century exhibitions.
• Modes of Mourning: Mourning is theorized as both an individual and textual phenomenon, with mourning positioned as positive, critical work rather than solely loss.
• Transdisciplinarity: The work bridges Japanese literature, art history, performance studies, and wider humanities debates.
• Apprehensive Reading: Jackson introduces a multimodal, embodied approach to reading, emphasizing humility, slowness, and the acceptance of limits.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Jackson’s Academic Journey

[05:07]

• Serendipity and Guidance: Jackson describes his unplanned path into Japanese studies, beginning with failing a Spanish placement test and being assigned Japanese ("it was really a complete fluke").
• Mentorship: Key teachers and experiences, especially studying in Japan, shaped his passion for literature and the shift from modern to Heian-era works.
• Influences: “It was because of [my Japanese teacher] that I decided to stick with Japanese. […] by the time I finished high school, I knew I really liked literature and Japanese.” – Reginald Jackson [07:09]

Project Genesis & the Role of Midare (Tangle, Disruption)

[10:13]

• From Dance to Death: Originally focused on performance (especially “midare” or disrupted modes in art and dance), pressures to create a more “legible” project led Jackson to focus on calligraphy.
• Embodiment Stays Central: Despite dropping dance, “there’s so much about movement and body and gesture... that doesn’t feel like a loss.” – Carla Nappi [15:24]

On Transdisciplinarity: Challenges and Costs

[17:45]

• Material & Institutional Barriers: Doing research across fields is costly and institutionally resisted, especially when visual materials are central.
• Publishing Realities: “People kind of headed for the exits when I said, ‘I want to take this transdisciplinary thing seriously, but this is what it means... it means money has to be paid to get these images in here.’” – Reginald Jackson [22:40]
• Gratitude for Support: Jackson credits University of Michigan Press and Christopher Dreyer for taking risks on the ambitious, visually rich project.

Theoretical Innovations

Apprehensive Reading

[26:37]

• Against Comprehensiveness: Jackson argues against the “positivist” academic stance that values total mastery, instead advocating for humility in reading—both materially (touching, handling scrolls) and intellectually.
• Materiality & Embodiment: “The idea behind apprehensive reading was about a couple things. One was about trying to take the materiality of the actual object of a handscroll seriously.” – Reginald Jackson [27:55]
• Generative Uncertainty: “What happens if we can never know everything, but we still have to move forward? What does reading look like then?” [31:25]

Decompositional Aesthetics

[33:27]

• Calligraphy and texts are “alive and dying”—the book invites readers to embrace the instability, decay, and sensory experience of reading, rather than seeking textual “wholeness” or mastery.

Close Reading: Genji Scrolls and Mourning

Kashiwagi and Illegibility

[37:00]

• Death, Writing, and Self-Mourning: Jackson analyzes Kashiwagi’s deteriorating calligraphy as both a metaphor for and embodiment of his dying. “He’s compell[ed] to write first of all, and then he’s forced to look at his writing as a reflection of his own limitations, his own inability to communicate. He’s kind of emasculated in that moment.” [38:00]
• Bodies and Texts as Intertwined: “If this text has now become in some ways a figure of his decomposing body, then we have to read that too.” [41:23]
• Reading Illness: Calligraphy itself can be “ill”—the book gives readers tools to interpret illness through the visual and material qualities of writing.

Genji, Murasaki, and Melancholia

[46:34]

• Melancholy as Failed Mourning and Productive Force: Building on Freud, Jackson discusses how Genji’s traumas and inability to mourn shape his relationships, especially his destructive “melancholic pedagogy” with Murasaki.
  • “All the energy of that pedagogical enterprise is coming out of this loss, this really, really traumatizing, frankly, loss that he’s experienced.” [50:22]
• Genealogy vs. Lineage: The book explores non-linear, tangled transmission of trauma, attachment, and aesthetics.

Contemporary Contexts and Museum Critique

Genji Scrolls Reborn: The Politics of Resurrection

[56:49]

• Modern Displays Omit Loss: The 21st-century exhibition tries to “sanitize” the discomfort, opacity, and material loss inherent in ancient objects. “All the generative darknesses and opacities… are kind of taken out…to make the object as transparent as possible.” – Carla Nappi [56:49]
• Labor & Gender: Jackson interrogates gendered divisions (male scientists/female artists) in the restoration process.

Imagined Exhibition: Embracing Opacity

[59:27]

• Patina Japonica—Time Worn Opacity Embracement: Jackson proposes a speculative exhibition that would “value” loss, black spots, and conversation over the display of perfect objects.
  • “Let’s take the losses and the opacities and not treat them as the kind of evil redheaded stepchildren, and actually try to value them. What would it mean to give these things value as opposed to just trying to eradicate them?” [60:24]
• Salon-like Engagement: Encourages spaces for communal reading, discussion, and playful interaction with loss and incompletion.

Mourning as Critical Practice: Dwelling with the Dead

[65:54]

• Against “Everlasting Life” Fantasies: The book calls for confronting mortality and limits rather than striving for resurrected wholeness.
  • “Dwelling with the Dead...is about trying to slow down and look more inward in a less narcissistic way in order to read better and to understand the world in a less fascist way effectively.” [66:18]

Political Resonances and Conclusions

Mourning and Thriving Amid Loss

[68:29]

• Repurposing Loss: “To mourn is not merely to experience loss. Rather, mourning names a process of making legible the circumstances surrounding, infusing and even demanding mortality. This grants the possibility of grappling with loss by learning to repurpose it as injury perhaps, but also as a resource for thriving.” – Carla Nappi (quoting book, 277) [69:11]
• Contemporary Relevance: Jackson connects mourning and decompositional aesthetics to current issues like 2016 elections, white supremacy, and modern crises:
  • “I wanted the book to, to the extent that it could...make a gesture towards being worldly...to really try to take that seriously and find a way to connect these things [past and present], which is really hard to do.” [71:09]
• The Need to Move Forward Differently: “It’s about trying to take loss seriously and not just try to move past it and then therefore miss, in some ways, a lot of the lessons that can be taken.” [73:12]

Notable Quotes

• “Apprehensive reading...is about pushing against the aspirations for being comprehensive...and to not presume that comprehension or comprehensiveness—as opposed to apprehensiveness—to be superior.” (Reginald Jackson [29:48])
• “What happens if we can never know everything, but we still have to move forward? What does reading look like then?” (Reginald Jackson [31:25])
• “His writing has disintegrated into this kind of chicken scratch, effectively, where writing is everything... You don't see the person you're courting, you see their calligraphy.” (Reginald Jackson on Kashiwagi [38:44])
• “Melancholia is...it sucks, it's painful, much like mourning, but it's also incredibly productive...what he does in terms of playing with dolls and teaching her how to write and work on her poetry and so forth, grooming her...to fill all these holes in himself.” (Reginald Jackson [50:22])
• “Let’s take the losses and the opacities and not treat them as the kind of evil redheaded stepchildren, and actually try to value them.” (Reginald Jackson [60:24])
• “Dwelling with the Dead...is about trying to slow down and look more inward in a less narcissistic way in order to read better and to understand the world in a less fascist way effectively.” (Reginald Jackson [66:18])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:07] – Jackson’s “accidental” path to Heian Japan and literary studies
• [10:13] – Transition from performance and midare to a focus on calligraphy and mortality
• [17:45] – Challenges and costs of transdisciplinary research and publishing
• [26:37] – Introduction and explanation of “apprehensive reading”
• [33:27] – Decompositional aesthetics; reading as a lively, embodied, material act
• [37:00] – Analysis of Kashiwagi’s illegibility and decomposition in Genji Scrolls
• [46:34] – Mourning, pedagogy, and melancholy in Genji/Murasaki relations
• [56:49] – Critique of modern museum exhibitions and the erasure of loss/opacity
• [59:27] – Description of the imagined Opacity Embracement exhibition
• [65:54] – Dwelling with the Dead as mourning and critical practice
• [69:11] – Mourning as a resource for thriving; contemporary political relevance

Final Thoughts and Next Projects

[77:27]

• Jackson mentions his next book, Approximate Remove: Queering Intimacy and Loss and the Tale of Genji, and projects on dance and slavery/performance in premodern Japan.

For Listeners New to the Book

Textures of Mourning challenges how we approach reading, history, and art by advocating for humility, embracing death, loss, and failure as generative. It resists the academic fantasy of mastery, instead celebrating the beauty of what is partial, ambiguous, and decaying—in texts, art, and human relationships. The book’s innovations in method and its connections to contemporary politics make it urgent and broadly relevant, even as it works through millennium-old texts and art objects.

For further engagement:

• Listen for the generous, dialogic tone between host and guest
• Delve into the materiality of texts, the politics of museum exhibitions, and the value of mourning as a way of thriving, not just surviving.
• Don’t miss the conclusion’s resonances with today’s challenges of privilege, precarity, and white supremacy.

“To mourn is not merely to experience loss. Rather, mourning names a process of making legible the circumstances surrounding, infusing, and even demanding mortality. This grants the possibility of grappling with loss by learning to repurpose it as injury perhaps, but also as a resource for thriving.” (277)