Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing: Studies in Comics and Cartoons
Autor Esra Mirze Santessoen Limba Engleză Paperback – 12 sep 2023
Recent decades have seen an unprecedented number of comics by and about Muslim people enter the global market. Now, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing offers the first major study of these works. Esra Mirze Santesso assesses Muslim comics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of seeing and representing daily lives within and outside of the homeland. Focusing on contemporary graphic narratives that are primarily but not exclusively from the Middle East—from blockbusters like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis to more local efforts such as Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi—Santesso explores why the graphic form has become a popular and useful medium for articulating Muslim subjectivities. Further, she shows how Muslim comics “bear witness” to a range of faith-based positions that complicate discussions of global ummah or community, contest monolithic depictions of Muslims, and question the Islamist valorization of the shaheed, the “martyr” figure regarded as the ideal religious witness. By presenting varied depictions of everyday lives of Muslims navigating violence and militarization, this book reveals the connections between religious rituals and existence in warscapes and invites us to more deeply consider the nature of witnessing itself.
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| Ohio State University Press – 12 sep 2023 | 809.70 lei 6-8 săpt. |
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814258842
ISBN-10: 0814258840
Pagini: 220
Ilustrații: 27 b&w images
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.34 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Studies in Comics and Cartoons
ISBN-10: 0814258840
Pagini: 220
Ilustrații: 27 b&w images
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.34 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Studies in Comics and Cartoons
Recenzii
“Santesso’s Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on comics about and by Muslim people.” —Adrienne Resha, International Journal of Comic Art
“Santesso’s analysis gives a meaningful range of experiences and achieves both breadth and specificity. ... Rigorously researched and documented, sound in its reasoning and conclusions, well written and clear ... this excellent work of scholarship significantly contributes to many sub-disciplines of literary and cultural studies.” —Susan McKay, Rocky Mountain Review
“Santesso offers an astute analysis ... This book would be an engaging addition to a literature or media studies course on graphic narratives by expanding the types of stories that are told about the Muslim experience.” —Kristin M. Peterson, Nova Religio
“A book like this, which gives the representation of Muslim lives in comics the critical attention it deserves, is long overdue. Santesso’s sophisticated close readings and remarkable range of scholarship make Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing an essential addition to the field.” —Kate Polak, author of Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics
Notă biografică
Esra Mirze Santesso is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia.
Extras
Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing focuses on contemporary graphic narratives, primarily but not exclusively set in Muslim nations, offering new approaches to representing local and global Muslim identities. The book revolves around two key concepts, reflected in the title, both of which require some initial unpacking. The first is Muslim identity. “Muslim” is a complicated signifier; it has come to designate a “socially constructed racial category used to simplify and define a diverse number of racial and ethnic groups with an Islamic association”. Bringing forth the plurality and underscoring the heterogeneity of this faith group is one of the goals of this book. The flattened, stereotyped image of the Muslim has long dominated Western comics; increasingly exhausted by reductionist depictions, Muslim artists/authors are depicting a vast number of “Muslim identities” across multiple nations, ethnicities, races, and linguistic groups, as well as religious subtraditions. It would be naive to assume that the type of religion promoted by the theocratic state in Iran (as we see in Amir and Khalil’s Zahra’s Paradise) is somehow identical to the creed practiced in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon (as featured in Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi). At the same time, Muslim comics artists are increasingly exploring the transnational, transcultural aspects of Islam, especially in the context of the global ummah—Muslims bound together worldwide under shared practices and rituals. Hence, while these artists resist the Western habit of lumping all Muslims into one oppositional group, they are equally determined to recognize and analyze the connections between diverse Muslim communities in a global framework.
Considering the plethora of potential religious subjectivities and communities included under the umbrella of Islam, when I use the term “Muslim” in this book, I mean nothing more than an identity defined by an attachment to basic Islamic tenets—regardless of how loose such an attachment may be. My emphasis on religious identity is a gesture toward a postsecular examination of subject constitution—an important and urgent academic inquiry into the revitalization of religion with all its political and ideological implications. Postsecularism—which requires “a re-engagement with, but not necessarily a re-affirmation of certain kinds of religious thought and discourse”—allows us to examine the variety of loyalties that situate the Muslim in relation to complex local, national, and global networks. In addition to the discussion of Muslim identity, I will be referring to a group of contemporary graphic narratives as “Muslim Comics.” A more detailed explanation of what the term “Muslim Comics” means and how it can be useful will follow in the next chapter. For now, it should suffice to say that the category of Muslim Comics describes any graphic narrative that features three-dimensional Muslim characters and foregrounds Muslim experiences in relation to various power structures inside and outside the Muslim homeland.
The other central concept of the book is one I have already touched upon: warscape—what I and other critics define as a civilian-occupied environment marked by prolonged “disruptions and instabilities” generated by political uncertainty and military involvement. For many in the West, Islam has come to be associated at least in part with struggle, tension, and unrest. I do not intend to engage too closely with sensationalist and often xenophobic rhetoric about the “aggressive roots of Islam” or the ostensibly natural connection between Islam and terrorism. Instead, I want to reframe this conversation by considering the varying effects of violence on Muslim subjects around the globe. “Warscape” helps me shift the focus from the Muslim perpetrator to the disaffected Muslim. As a term, “warscape” alludes to topographies of violence that do not necessarily designate an active warzone: As opposed to the conventional rules of battlefield engagement, where “regular armed forces” with “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance” attack each other, a warscape refers to a civilian space in which different factions are participating in asymmetrical struggles, transforming a familiar, everyday terrain into a defamiliarized, politicized, and sometimes (but not always) overtly militarized space. As will become evident in the ensuing chapters, war itself is not necessarily a precondition of a warscape; indeed, the use of “warscape” as a category underscores the prolonged effects of violence as opposed to the finality denoted by “war.” Just as importantly, “warscape” indicates a territory marked by anticipation of violence, especially in the context of unconventional and volatile forms of hostile engagement (contested borders, civil unrest, racial and cultural tensions). In this regard, the warscape becomes an uncanny site, where individuals feel “out of place in their homes” due to sporadic, ongoing, and unpredictable violence. From the university campuses and public squares of Iran to the checkpoints of Palestine, from the shattered cities of Syria to the border territory of Kashmir, warscape is an ominous and oppressive space that represents a “crisis of transition.”
Considering the plethora of potential religious subjectivities and communities included under the umbrella of Islam, when I use the term “Muslim” in this book, I mean nothing more than an identity defined by an attachment to basic Islamic tenets—regardless of how loose such an attachment may be. My emphasis on religious identity is a gesture toward a postsecular examination of subject constitution—an important and urgent academic inquiry into the revitalization of religion with all its political and ideological implications. Postsecularism—which requires “a re-engagement with, but not necessarily a re-affirmation of certain kinds of religious thought and discourse”—allows us to examine the variety of loyalties that situate the Muslim in relation to complex local, national, and global networks. In addition to the discussion of Muslim identity, I will be referring to a group of contemporary graphic narratives as “Muslim Comics.” A more detailed explanation of what the term “Muslim Comics” means and how it can be useful will follow in the next chapter. For now, it should suffice to say that the category of Muslim Comics describes any graphic narrative that features three-dimensional Muslim characters and foregrounds Muslim experiences in relation to various power structures inside and outside the Muslim homeland.
The other central concept of the book is one I have already touched upon: warscape—what I and other critics define as a civilian-occupied environment marked by prolonged “disruptions and instabilities” generated by political uncertainty and military involvement. For many in the West, Islam has come to be associated at least in part with struggle, tension, and unrest. I do not intend to engage too closely with sensationalist and often xenophobic rhetoric about the “aggressive roots of Islam” or the ostensibly natural connection between Islam and terrorism. Instead, I want to reframe this conversation by considering the varying effects of violence on Muslim subjects around the globe. “Warscape” helps me shift the focus from the Muslim perpetrator to the disaffected Muslim. As a term, “warscape” alludes to topographies of violence that do not necessarily designate an active warzone: As opposed to the conventional rules of battlefield engagement, where “regular armed forces” with “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance” attack each other, a warscape refers to a civilian space in which different factions are participating in asymmetrical struggles, transforming a familiar, everyday terrain into a defamiliarized, politicized, and sometimes (but not always) overtly militarized space. As will become evident in the ensuing chapters, war itself is not necessarily a precondition of a warscape; indeed, the use of “warscape” as a category underscores the prolonged effects of violence as opposed to the finality denoted by “war.” Just as importantly, “warscape” indicates a territory marked by anticipation of violence, especially in the context of unconventional and volatile forms of hostile engagement (contested borders, civil unrest, racial and cultural tensions). In this regard, the warscape becomes an uncanny site, where individuals feel “out of place in their homes” due to sporadic, ongoing, and unpredictable violence. From the university campuses and public squares of Iran to the checkpoints of Palestine, from the shattered cities of Syria to the border territory of Kashmir, warscape is an ominous and oppressive space that represents a “crisis of transition.”
Cuprins
Preface Muslims in Comics Introduction Chapter 1 Muslim Comics: Politics and Aesthetics Chapter 2 Reluctant Witnesses in Prison Camp Narratives Chapter 3 Vulnerability, Resistance, and False Witnesses Chapter 4 Shaheed and Border Witnesses Chapter 5 Surrogate Witnesses and Memory Conclusion The Future of Muslim Comics
Descriere
As the first major study of comics by and about Muslim people, explores how graphic narratives from within and outside the Middle East articulate Muslim subjectivities.