Spaces of Puppets in Popular Culture: Grotesque Geographies of the Borderscape

This book explores the geographical engagement with puppets in contemporary popular British culture, examining how they are used in diverse cultural media and how they are constructed through those uses. It unearths distinct puppet spatialities, identifies the socially critical potential of puppets, rescales geo/bio-politics at the interpersonal level, and highlights the potential of puppets within posthuman debates about the status of the human.

Format: Hardback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 01 June 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This first book-length exploration of geographical engagement with puppets delves into the constructions of puppets in contemporary popular British culture, examining the diverse ways in which puppets and humans are unified in various cultural media. Organized around themes of metaphorical, performative, and transformational puppets, the work explores how puppets are utilized in diverse cultural media, including fiction, music, television, film, and theatre, and how they are constructed through these uses. It also examines both puppets as generalized forms (bodily, relational, or ideational) and specific puppet characters (such as Mr. Punch, Pinocchio). Building upon existing associations between puppets and the grotesque, the volume extends understandings of the puppet by elaborating on borderscaping strategies through which puppets are constructed and offering an alternative perspective on the uncanniness of puppets. Geographically, the work unearths distinct puppet spatialities, identifies the socially critical potential of puppets, rescales geo/bio-politics at the interpersonal level, and highlights the potential of puppets within posthuman debates about the status of the human.

This work will be of interest to anyone fascinated by puppets, as well as those in fields such as geography, anthropology, cultural and media studies, and those interested in the grotesque, posthumanism, and/or non-representational scholarship.

Weight: 600g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032103419