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

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.