Geopolitics of humour: The Muhammed cartoon crisis and the kaltio comic strip episode in Finland

Geopolitics

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 729-749

  Ridanpää, Juha ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OULU   (Finland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GEOPOLITICS; INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT; ISLAMISM; MASS MEDIA;

EURASIA; EUROPE; FINLAND; NORTHERN EUROPE; SCANDINAVIA;

EID: 70749104862     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650040903141372     Document Type: Article

References (107)

1. S. Lockyer and M. Pickering, 'You Must Be Joking: The Sociological Critique of Humour and Comic Media', Sociology Compass 2/3 (2008) p. 808.
2. E. Berg, 'Some Unintended Consequences of Geopolitical Reasoning in Post-Soviet Estonia: Texts and Policy Streams, Maps and Cartoons', Geopolitics 8/1 (2003) p. 114.
3. L. Hutcheon, Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony (London: Routledge 1994) p. 10.
4. G. Ó Tuathail, Critical geopolitics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996).
5. J. Dittmer and K. Dodds, 'Popular Geopolitics Past and Future: Fandom, Identities and Audiences', Geopolitics 13/3 (2008).
6. G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby, 'Introduction: Rethinking Geopolitics', in G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London: Routledge 1998) pp. 4-5.
7. See J. P. Sharp, 'Hegemony, Popular Culture and Geopolitics: The Reader's Digest and the Construction of Danger', Political Geography 15/6-7 1996.
8. M. Power, 'The Scripting, Staging and Projection of 'Popular' Geo-political Discourse', Geopolitics 8/2 (2003).
9. J. Dittmer, 'Captain America's Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post-9/11 Geopolitics', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95/3 (2005).
10. M. Power and A. Crampton, 'Reel Geopolitics: Cinemato-graphing Political Space', Geopolitics 10/2 (2005) p. 195.
11. K. Dodds, 'Licensed to Stereotype: Popular Geopolitics, James Bond and the Spectre of Balkanism', Geopolitics 8/2 (2003) pp. 126-127.
12. E. Berg and S. Oras, 'Writing post-Soviet Estonia on to the world map', Political Geography 19/5 (2000).
13. D. Purcell, M. C. Brown, and M. Gokmen, 'Achmed the Dead Terrorist and Humour in Popular Geopolitics', GeoJournal (2009), published online 31 January 2009.
14. Berg (note 2) p. 117.
15. K. Dodds, 'Enframing Bosnia: The Geopolitical Iconography of Steve Bell', in G. Ó Thuthail and S. Dalby (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London: Routledge 1998) p. 174.
16. M. Diamond, 'No Laughing Matter: Post-September 11 Political Cartoons in Arab/Muslim Newspapers', Political Communication 19/2 (2002) p. 252.
17. C. Hardy and P. Nelson, 'No Joking Matter: Discursive Struggle in the Canadian Refugee System', Organization Studies 20/1 (1999) p. 13.
18. K. Barbe, Irony in Context (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company 1995) p. 94.
19. Ibid., p. 96.
20. M. Kuus, 'Švejkian Geopolitics: Subversive Obedience in Central Europe', Geopolitics 13/2 (2008).
21. In her paper, Kuus interestingly utilises the fictive character of Josef Švejk, from Jaroslav Hašek's novel The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War (1923), as a lens through which the agency of the margins and modern power relations can be discussed.
22. In Hašek's humoristic novel Švejk is a good-hearted, half-witted imbecile in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, who at the end turns out to be the only loyal Czech in the Austrian army. A peculiar kind of passive ironic resistance to the political machine is dispensed through Švejk's endless praise of the empire. This reference to Hašek's novel enables Kuus to adopt the concept of 'Švejkism' as a profession of exaggerated political loyalty which at the same time has the ambiguous effect of making the whole venture laughable. Kuus finds an analogy between the irony of political discussion that has surrounded NATO accession in Central Europe and Jaroslav Hašek's ironic fictive character, and notes that for "political geography, the focus on the absurd anti-hero of Švejk offers an additional reading on popular geopolitics and resistance: not of serious oppositional activism but of absurdly docile over-compliance", p. 259.
23. Hutcheon, Irony's Edge (note 3) p. 27.
24. A. Tunç, 'Pushing the Limits of Tolerance: Functions of Political Cartoonists in the Democratization Process: The Case of Turkey', Gazette 64/1 (2002).
25. G. Kleeman, 'Not Just for Fun: Using Cartoons to Investigate Geographical Issues', New Zealand Geographer 62 (2006).
26. Hutcheon, Irony's Edge (note 3) p. 15.
27. Barbe (note 16) p. 89.
28. Hutcheon, Irony's Edge (note 3) pp. 40-43.
29. L. Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (New York: Routledge 1989) pp. 95, 101.
30. L. Hutcheon, '"The Pastime of Past Time": Fiction, History, Historiographic Metafiction', Genre 20 (1987) p. 286.
31. See J. Ridanpää, 'Laughing at Northernness: Postcolonialism and Metafictive Irony in the Imaginative Geography', Social & Cultural Geography 8/6 (2007).
32. Lockyer and Pickering (note 1) p. 811.
33. See W. L. Benoit, A. A. Klyukovski, J. P. McHale, and D. Airne, 'A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Political Cartoons on the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr Affair', Critical Studies in Media Communication 8/4 (2001) p. 378.
34. Barbe (note 16) p. 5.
35. A. J. Hussain, 'The Media's Role in a Clash of Misconceptions: The Case of the Danish Muhammed Cartoons', The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 12/4 (2007) p. 118.
36. Lockyer and Pickering (note 1) p. 809.
37. Dodds, 'Enframing Bosnia' (note 13).
38. Barbe (note 16) p. 4.
39. Hutcheon, Irony's Edge (note 3) pp. 17-18.
40. Ibid., p. 18.
41. P. Sturges, 'Limits to Freedom of Expression? Considerations arising from the Danish cartoon affair', IFLA Journal 32/3 (2006) p. 187.
42. Tunç (note 20) p. 47.
43. Barbe (note 16) pp. 89-90.
44. G. Dijkink, 'When Geopolitics and Religion Fuse: A Historical Perspective', Geopolitics 11/2 (2006) p. 206.
45. B. N. Bonde, 'How 12 Cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed were Brought to Trigger an International Conflict', Nordicom Review 28/1 (2007) p. 40.
46. E. W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Routledge 1978).
47. Ibid., pp. 5, 42-46.
48. H. Bhabha, Location of Culture (London: Routledge 1994).
49. Bonde (note 40) p. 37.
50. See R. Post, 'Religion and Freedom of Speech: Portraits of Muhammad', Constellations 14/1 (2007) p. 73.
51. Lockyer and Pickering (note 1) p. 812.
52. S. Lægaard, 'The Cartoon Controversy: Offence, Identity, Oppression?', Political Studies 55/3 (2007) p. 490.
53. Barbe (note 16) p. 94.
54. Hutcheon, Irony's Edge (note 3).
55. The Satanic Verses controversy has been regarded as the first international political crisis caused by a fictional novel. The common interpretation among Muslim readers was that the work was blasphemous and ridiculed Islam. Salman Rushdie became the target of fierce and aggressive criticism which culminated in a fatwa, or death sentence, pronounced upon him by the Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini. Although the work itself attempts to grapple with the realities of contemporary cultural hybridity, The Satanic Verses became, contrary to the author's intention, a symbolic marker of the juxtaposition of 'the West' and modern Islam. See J. Sharp, 'Locating Imaginary Homelands: Literature, Geography, and Salman Rushdie', GeoJournal 38/1 (1996).
56. M. Keith and S. Pile, 'Introduction Part 2: The Place of Politics', in M. Keith and S. Pile (eds.), Place and the Politics of Identity (London: Routledge 1993). It turned into a signifier of the spatialised politics of identity, "a work that prompted a crisis at the very heart of liberalism, on the ground where free speech and mutual tolerance become mutually irreconcilable".
57. M. Keith and S. Pile, 'Introduction Part 1: The Politics of Place.', in M. Keith and S. Pile (eds.), Place and the Politics of Identity (London: Routledge 1993) p. 20.
58. For a more detailed discussion, see S. Adamo, 'The Legal Position of Migrants in Denmark: Assessing the Context around the "Cartoon Crisis"', European Journal of Migration and Law 9/1 (2007).
59. Bonde (note 40).
60. S. Dahlgren, 'The Middle East Amongst Us', Anthropology News 48/4 (2007).
61. S. Carter and D. P. McCormack, 'Film, Geopolitics and the Affective Logics of Intervention', Political Geography 25/2 (2006) p. 230.
62. Ibid., p. 231.
63. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso 1983).
64. C. S. Browning, 'The Region-Building Approach Revisited: The Continued Othering of Russia in Discourses of Region-Building in the European North', Geopolitics 8/1 (2003);
65. A. Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons 1996) pp. 132-133.
66. M. Kuus, 'Europe's Eastern Expansion and the Reinscription of Otherness in East-Central Europe', Progress in Human Geography 28/4 (2004).
67. E. Burke, 'Orientalism and World History: Representing Middle Eastern Nationalism and Islamism in the Twentieth Century', Theory and Society 27/4 (1998) p. 501.
68. D. Tuastad, 'Neo-Orientalism and The New Barbarism Thesis: Aspects of Symbolic Violence in the Middle East Conflict(s)', Third World Quarterly 24/4 (2003).
69. D. Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (Cambridge: Blackwell 1994).
70. G. Rose, 'Spatialities of 'Community', Power and Change: The Imagined Geopolitics of Community Art Projects', Cultural Studies 11 (1997).
71. See Lægaard (note 47) p. 482.
72. P. Hervik, 'The Predictable Responses to the Danish Cartoons', Global Media and Communication 2/2 (2006) pp. 227-228.
73. Lægaard (note 47).
74. Post (note 45) p. 84.
75. T. Olesen, 'The Porous Public and the Transnational Dialectic. The Muhammed Cartoons Conflict', Acta Sociologica 50/3 (2007) p. 305.
76. Ibid., p. 296.
77. Dijkink, 'When Geopolitics and Religion Fuse' (note 39).
78. Dijkink, 'Geopolitical Codes and Popular Representations' (note 65) p. 294.
79. C. S. Browning, 'Coming Home or Moving Home?: 'Westernizing' Narratives in Finnish Foreign Policy and the Reinterpretation of Past Identities', Cooperation and Conflict 37/1 (2002) p. 50.
80. A. Murtovaara, 'Vilkuna hyvässä ja pahassa', Viikko Kaleva, 5 March 2006.
81. P. C. Adams, 'The September 11 Attacks as Viewed from Quebec: The Small-Nation Code in Geopolitical Discourse', Political Geography 23/6 (2004).
82. Paasi (note 55).
83. Adams (note 69) p. 768.
84. Ibid., p. 769.
85. Ibid., p. 788.
86. See D. Newman and A. Paasi, 'Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography', Progress in Human Geography 22/2 (1998) p. 196.
87. N. Götz, 'Norden: Structures That Do Not Make a Region', European Review of History 10/2 (2003) pp. 337-340.
88. S. Moisio, 'Back to Baltoscandia? European Union and Geo-Conceptual Remaking of the European North', Geopolitics 8/1 (2003).
89. See J. Ridanpää, '60 vuotta, mutta mitä Kaltio on saanut aikaan?', Kaltio 2005/2.
90. R. Valta, Muhammed, Kaltio ja mediastrategia: Ville Rannan sarjakuvasta noussut kohu helmikuussa 2006 (Jyväskylä: Kopijyvä 2007) pp. 29-31.
91. P. Laukka, 'Isot ilmoittajat jättivät Kaltion. Kulttuurilehti julkaisi internet-sarjakuvan Muhammedista ja säikäytti isot yritykset', Kaleva, 24 Feb. 2006.
92. Valta (note 77) p. 41.
93. Cf. E. Aho, 'Muhammed-sarjakuvakiista ylitti uutiskynnyksen myös ulkomailla. Ville Rannalta tilatun kuvitustyön peruuttaminen ei ole Oulun kaupungin virallinen kannanotto', Kaleva, 26 Feb. 2006.
94. H. Eerikäinen, 'Suomi poikkeaa Euroopan sananvapauslinjasta', Kaleva, 26 Feb. 2006.
95. H. Eerikäinen, 'Onko Suomessa vitsit vähissä?', Kaleva, 3 March 2006.
96. O. Truc, 'Suomalaislehden päätoimittaja erotettiin, koska hän julkaisi Muhammed-sarjakuvan', Kaleva, 1 March 2006.
97. P. Laukka, 'Itsesensuuri pahentaa liekkejä. Islamilaisen ääriaineksen myötäily muistuttaa suomettuneisuus', Kaleva, 25 Feb. 2006.
98. G. Dijkink, 'Geopolitical Codes and Popular Representations', GeoJournal 46 (1998) p. 294.
99. O. Nyytäjä, 'Eurooppa Oulun horisontissa', Kaleva, 3 March 2006.
100. B. Szerszynski, 'The Post-Ecologist Condition: Irony as Symptom and Cure', Environmental Politics 16/2 (2007) p. 341.
101. J.-J. Rekinen, 'Journalistiliitto: Vilkunan potkut selvitettävä', Kaleva, 28 Feb. 2006.
102. Valta (note 77) p. 35.
103. P. Laukka, 'Rantaa pyydetään takaisin Snellman-kuvittajaksi', Kaleva, 2 March 2006.
104. A. Kilponen, 'Oulun opetusvirasto pahoitteli hätiköintiään Ville Rannalle', Kaleva, 9 March 2006.
105. See Aho (note 80).
106. Valta (note 77) p. 25.
107. Lockyer and Pickering (note 1) p. 809.