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The Unconscious is semiotic, not linguistic, and its productions only jump out when you read between the lines.

Do you remember, back in 1997, when 600 kids had epileptic shocks whilst watching Television—the Pokémon Shock? This might sound strange at first, but Lucas Ferraço Nassif theorises that, contrary to the claim that this was caused by oscillations of blue and red light alone, it could have been caused by microperceptions and intensities within narrative. As Porygon takes Ash and friends into the digital world, the immanence of unconscious assemblages drags viewers in, too.

Such is the haptic and imagetic nature of this book. Using several design and editorial strategies, and a particular mode of writing, the author attempts to elaborate on their work on the Unconscious by recreating a similar possibility—where book, language and reader collapse into a composition, an assemblage or a haecceity. Unconsciousness operate as the multiplanar compositions of Japanese Anime do, so this book has been organized accordingly—different texts, different temporalities, different voices—and like the Japanese concept of Ma (negative space), or even like CoreCore, something jumps out of the breaks, the gaps in between the layers, and therein lies, for this book, a departure point for elaborating on not just one, but many, Unconscious(es). 

The book is dedicated as such because the author is responding to certain groundwork which is laid by Lamarre, who authored two books on Anime, and who inspired Lucas to break out of Western Psychoanalytical discourse by studying Japanese Animated Television. Television is different to Cinema, because it is in-the-middle of everything, it has a body, it emits warmth: the author reminds us of the image of Godard hugging the television. Like in Lamarre’s work, Unconscious/Television holds high value in the “limited-animation” found in Animé which refers to multiplanar compositions, this technique of combining still and moving images. The author takes a special interest in the “in-between” of the layers when elaborating on concepts like the Unconscious, the Lamella, and the Thalassa. 

The book is experimental in form, as the six-texts that is it composed of have been cut-up and re-ordered, and then split once again into four parts with three dynamic intersections. We have folded the form of the book back in on the text itself, to create a demonic fusion, which, as we see in Devilman CryBaby, can become weapons against the Symbolic.

ISBN: 978-9925-647-08-8 EPUB version: November 2025