Seeing (With, Through, and As) Monsters: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Christian Beyer; Juliane C. Bockwoldt; Emil Lundedal Hammar; Holger Pötzsch

doi:10.7557/13.5001

Authors

Christian Beyer Torghatten Buss and UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Juliane C. Bockwoldt UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Emil Lundedal Hammar UiT The Arctic University of Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2640-5949
Holger Pötzsch UiT The Arctic University of Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5533-5014

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5001

Keywords:

Manufacturing Monsters

Abstract

We believe that the representation, construction, manufacture, and exclusion of monsters across genres and media is an increasingly pressing issue for individuals and civil societies on a global scale. The widespread use of exaggerated frames presenting a variety of others as mere threats has deadly consequences for many people—worldwide. And, ‘Western’ liberal democratic elites urgently need to acknowledge their own role in such processes as the current construction of ‘Monster Assad’ as a Hitler-esque tyrant intending to ‘gas his own people’ or the continuing framing of Iran as ‘a nuclear threat to world peace’ lead by ‘nuke-building, apocalyptic mullahs’ are equally irresponsible and dangerous acts as the presentation of ‘non-normative’ persons as a menace to cultural and societal stability or the assumption that certain people are simply born as terrorists. We believe that as researchers, students, employees, workers, pupils, retirees, and others—in sum: as citizens—, we must be aware of such discursive moves of othering and exclusion and learn to identify these, connect them to underlying interests, and then resist and subvert them to avoid more killings in our or others’ names. This is our responsibility especially as contemporary global crises intensify bringing with them the need for ever new scapegoats to explain away the real contradictions underlying these relentless challenges.

Author Biographies

Christian Beyer, Torghatten Buss and UiT The Arctic University of Norway

is a bus driver at Torghatten Buss where he drives beautiful people and big packages between Nordland, Finnmark and Lapland. As a searcher and re-searcher, he came across questions of political philosophy and power politics in places such as Tehran and Hamadan, Murmansk and Belgrade, Qazvin and Qom. After having been a doctoral research fellow at UiT, he continues to work as a part-time lecturer at the Department of Language and Culture where he teaches the course ‘Manufacturing Monsters’ together with Holger, Juliane and Emil. Chrill considers as quite fascinating: epistemology, the manufacture of knowledge, and the grotesque carnival of academia. Regional focus: Syria, Iran, and the wider axis of resistance.

Juliane C. Bockwoldt, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

is a PhD candidate in Media and Documentation Studies at UiT researching the mediation of the story of the German battleship Tirpitz in British, German, and Norwegian documentary and exhibitions. Research interests are in cultural memory, visual anthropology, museology, and polar history.

Emil Lundedal Hammar, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

is a PhD candidate in Game and Memory Studies at the Department of Language and Culture at UiT The Arctic University of Norway under the supervision of Dr. Holger Pötzsch. He holds a cand.it in Games Analysis from the IT University of Copenhagen and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Copenhagen. In 2016 he won first prize with a personal essay on the relation between being a citizen of a former slave nation of Denmark and playing contemporary digital games dealing with the 18th-century Caribbean slave system in the essay contest ‘Digital Lives’ organized by the Norwegian cultural organization Fritt Ord. He currently coordinates the international ENCODE research network at UiT and is part of the WAR/GAME research group. Together with Dr. Souvik Mukherjee, Emil also co-edited a special issue on postcolonial perspectives in game studies for the Open Library of Humanities. His research interests include game studies, memory studies, critical race theory, the political economy of communication, critical and materialist approaches to media, and postcolonialism.

Holger Pötzsch, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

is Associate Professor of Media and Documentation Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His main research interest is the intersection between media and conflict. He has published on war films, war games, memory and conflict, the politics and economy of digital networks, and border culture and technology. He currently coordinates the research networks ‘Manufacturing Monsters’ and WAR/GAME.

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