“Hang On, So That Thing’s a Loki Too?” Mimetic Materialities, Variants, and Villainy (Poster 5)

• In Event: Teaching Villainification in Social Studies: Pedagogies to Deepen Understanding of Social Evils

Abstract

Animated by Deleuze’s assertion that “the writer is on the lookout[...] so is the philosopher” (Boutang, 2011, 38:12) and that “science fiction allows us to consider hypothetical situations, which do not exist (yet) in the real world” (Levinson & Jandric, 2019, p. 213), this presentation looks to universes outside social studies (e.g., Marvel Comic Universe [MCU]) as a way to further unsettle “the creation of single actors who become the faces of systemic harm” (van Kessel & Crowley, 2017, p. 428). We are specifically interested in what educators might be able to learn from the notion of more-than-human variants and the role they play in understanding how (anti-)villianification comes into being and is understood across/beyond educational contexts. We do this with the understanding, following Giroux and McLaren (1992), that “pedagogy occurs wherever knowledge is produced, wherever culture is given the possibility of translating experience and constructing truths, even if such truths appear unrelentingly redundant, superficial, and commonsensical” (p. xxiii).

In particular, we put the notion of variants in conversation with the theoretical concept of mimesis (Lawtoo, 2021, 2022; Taussig, 1993). Mimesis, in this sense, is an analytical category for engaging with the intersectional slippages that occur between registers of duplication and replication. Our discussion of variants and mimesis serves to underpin a curricular history relating to prevailing pieces of contemporary phenomena (and its variants): the United States flag and the contestations over the $20 bill. We maintain that Loki invites viewers to consider the ambivalence of villainy and variance by suggesting that mimetic entities are deserving of our attention and can be used to interrogate how sociopolitical materialities are mis/understood and registered from different perspectives. Through Loki, social studies educators, students, and researchers can begin to consider how various variants comprising the material-discursive world can be used to unveil unnoticed angles of inquiry.

Authors

• Bretton A. Varga, California State University - Chico

• Erin Adams, Kennesaw State University