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- Convenors:
-
Yasmine Musharbash
(Australian National University)
Geir Henning Presterudstuen (University of Bergen)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Life on Earth
- Location:
- NIKERI KC2.208
- Sessions:
- Thursday 24 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks ethnographically grounded papers analysing how monsters and humans are mutually constitutive in the context of planetary crises. Starting our analyses from the monsterbiome we encourage papers that engage with processes of change and transformation through creative theorisations.
Long Abstract:
"Just as the microbiome opens up an avenue for thinking about biological selfhood through the invisible agents that define it, so too the monsterbiome allows us to take into account invisible forces that effect and define who we are." (Foster 2020:224)
We seek ethnographically grounded papers and presentations that consider the lessons humans may learn from monsters about dealing with, thriving in, despairing of or overcoming existentially challenging times. Building on the premise that monsters are "embodiments of cultural moments" (Cohen, 1996), we look for contributions that specifically engage with monsters of this current cultural moment of planetary crisis (or any of its constitutive elements from wars, via ecological disasters and mass extinction, to pandemics). We encourage analyses that engage with/draw on conceptualisations of the paths monsters may take in contexts of social change and transformation: emergence, adaptation, appropriation, amalgamation, extinction, and succession (Musharbash and Presterudstuen 2020); and we especially invite creative theorisations of different paths monsters may take.
Situating the panel's ethnographic analyses in the monsterbiome enables comparison of the many ways monsters and humans are "not only symbiotic but mutually constitutive" (Foster 2020). In this vein, we are also interested in contributions exploring the human experience of life in the monsterbiome. Ultimately, the panel's aim is to examine how human-monster relationships are articulated and experienced in times of crisis - and what kinds of life support lessons might be gleaned from this exercise.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 November, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This is a short introduction to the panel, panelists, and panel context.
Paper long abstract:
This is a short introduction to the panel, panelists, and panel context.
Paper short abstract:
While industrial capitalism was stalked by its characteristic monsters – vampires, zombies, and ghosts of dead labour – what might we learn from the monsters dwelling in a financialised ecumene? This paper offers a bestiary of Guaraní monsters that appear in Paraguay's financial/agribusiness biome.
Paper long abstract:
While industrial capitalism was stalked by its characteristic monsters – vampires, zombies, and the ghosts of dead labour – what might we learn from the monsters dwelling in a financialised ecumene? And further, from the monsterbiomes specifically devastated by financial instruments, arrangements, and ways of apprehending the world? In this paper, I offer a bestiary of Guaraní monsters that appear in the Paraguayan countryside amidst the rise of commercial export agriculture, growth of crops such as sesame and chia that depend on a complex economic life support system to survive in a hostile environment, and arrival weather insurance written onto drought conditions. This is the financialised biome in which farmers encounter the monstrous offspring of Taú and Kerana such as the Jasy Jatere and the trickster Pombero and live to tell the tale. Following Frederick Luis Aldama’s (2023) usage of “ethnohorror” to describe the narrative conventions of Paraguayan sesameros as they recount their meetings with these creatures, I suggest that their appearances offer strategic pauses in the speculative imagination and narrative dominated by finance (Komporozos-Athanasiou 2022). The narrative pause arising from ethnohorror – that is, collective experience of the peoples (ethno) devastated by the traumas (horror) of environmental devastation and capitalist rapacity – creates an alternative speculative imagination, with alternative tempus oriented towards the deep past rather than the financial temporality of pressing the future into the present for profit.
Komporozos-Athanasiou, Aris
2022 Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World. University of Chicago Press.
Paper short abstract:
Yuru-kyara are cute and quirky mascots representing regional areas in Japan. I show that yuru-kyara can also be understood as monsters, or yōkai, transformed through processes of domestication. Exploring monster domestication offers insight into the entangled nature of human-monster relationality and how this shapes the monsterbiome – and the planet.
Paper long abstract:
Translated as “loose characters” or “mascots”, yuru-kyara are most often understood as cute and quirky public relations personnel for towns, prefectures, government bodies and businesses throughout Japan. However, this understanding obscures how yuru-kyara are highly agentive monsters, or yōkai. This paper first looks at the historical adaptations and transformations of yōkai, examining how these changes have been shaped by human social contexts. It then goes on to suggest how yuru-kyara are a subspecies of yōkai who have emerged through the process of domestication. I suggest that the analytic of domestication is fundamental to understanding the very particular change that yōkai undergo to become yuru-kyara. Domestication has shaped yuru-kyara bodies and behaviour and resulted in the ferocious, wild, and scary being replaced with the cute, pleasing, and useful. Like other examples of domestication, the domestication of yuru-kyara is intended to meet human needs and desires. Yuru-kyara have become valuable and beloved commodities, and are used to shape public discourse, attitudes and beliefs. Ultimately, this paper aims to show how exploring monster domestication offers insight into the entangled nature of human-monster relationality and how this shapes the monsterbiome – and the planet.
Paper short abstract:
By persisting as a ghost tracked by humans determined to prove its existence, the thylacine has overcome its own alleged extinction. In a mutualistic relationship, its human trackers document it and advocate for the conservation of its habitat, to alleviate both extermination guilt and ecoanxiety.
Paper long abstract:
At a time of global biodiversity crisis, the human-monster relationship allows human believers in the ghost thylacine to deal with their historical contribution to exterminations, and allows the thylacine to overcome its own alleged extinction. Together with dozens of other native Australian animals, the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) was driven to extinction by the effects of European land use change, competition, and hunting. Although the last scientifically documented thylacine died in 1936, sightings continue, and people who believe that thylacines still exist form organisations dedicated to proving their existence. As a participant-observer, I explored the relationship between the members of one such organisation (TAGOA) and the ghost thylacines that they document. Members’ activities are driven by the wish to prove the thylacine’s ongoing existence, undoing “the mistakes of the past”, and preserving habitat for the ongoing conservation of it and other species. Without the ghost thylacine, the members’ activities - and the organisation’s very existence – would be meaningless; conversely, the ghost thylacine would not exist without its trackers (even though other ‘thylacines’ might). Trackers and thylacines share part of each other’s lifeworlds mutualistically, overlapping in their physical, biological, and spiritual environments; the loss of either would leave the other badly impoverished. As an embodiment of members’ anxieties, the ghost thylacine facilitates discussion and management of aspects of extermination guilt and ecoanxiety.