Iran and the Boomeranging Cartoon Wars: Can Public Spheres At Risk Ally With Public Spheres Yet to be Achieved?
Author(s)
Fischer, Michael M. J.
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Twelve cartoons, published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005, nine cartoons published in the Tehran newspaperIran in May 2006, and two hundred eighty-two cartoons curated in Tehran in September 2006 provide a useful case study in the experimentation with new and old media in the transnational circuitry.
At stake are the agons, polemos (Greek terms of reference), or luti-jahel-daarvish, “Karbala paradigm,” and jumhuri-ye moral struggles (Persian terms of reference) in Iran and the West over creating and protecting robust public spheres and civil societies. Four perspectives are probed: cultural politics; cultural media histories; the emotional excess (jouissance, petit à) of cultural politics; and the deep play mode of aesthetic judgement formed between the practical and ethical, between political economy and expressive art (including political drama), and between individual self-fashioning on the one hand, and on the other hand changing symbolic and social orders.
Date issued
2009-03Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and SocietyJournal
Cultural Politics: An International Journal
Publisher
Berg Publishers
Citation
Fischer, Michael M.J. “Iran and the Boomeranging Cartoon Wars: Can Public Spheres at Risk Ally with Public Spheres Yet to be Achieved?” Cultural Politics: an International Journal 5.1 (2009): 27-62.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
1751-7435
1743-2197