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Call for articles – Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationSpecial issue on ‘Iconic figures, publics, and politics in the Middle EastGuest editors: Daniella Kuzmanovic, associate prof. modern Turkey studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Sune Haugbolle, associate prof. global studies and sociology, Roskilde University, DenmarkThe presence of iconic figures in context of Middle East political life is well-known, most notably through the presence of innumerous ‘charismatic leaders’ and ‘media personalities’. Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to move beyond those iconic figures par excellence, which we have usually focused upon in our studies, in order to enrich our understanding of the interplay between mass- mediations, ideological and affective politics in a Middle East context. Persons as iconic figures often capture public imagination, generate collective aspirations, and configure the political by crafting the contours of the political field itself as part of persuading persons to move with a collective in a given direction. Such configurations by way of iconic figures are closely linked to the continuous development of mass-mediating techniques. Mass-produced commodities as well as various kinds of mass-media facilitate the wide accessibility and circulation that allow many to forge affective ties to an iconic figure. Icons thus have the potential to subjectively ground and animate ideological commitment to a cause or a movement. Ideology, in this view, is produced through everyday consumption of cultural production that, over time, allows for a condensation of sensibilities, or what Raymond Williams has called ‘structures of feeling’.This special issue aims to explore the role of iconic figures as a distinct social technique that generates collective aspirations, merges ideological and affective politics, and produce shifting configurations of the political in the Middle East. We therefore welcome proposals for articles that deal with specific iconic figures, and that investigate the institutional, material, technological, socio- historical, and political-economic framings and trajectories through which the particular configurations of meaning and structures of feeling that make up specific iconic figures are produced. We thus among other ask: What kinds of mass-mediated collectives are formed around iconic figures? What kinds of media and/or aesthetic forms are employed? What kind of political activities does the iconic figure enter into? What kinds of sensibilities are displayed around it? How do prominent features of the various collectives generated around amd iconic figures relate to significant institutional, socio-historical, political-economical, material, and technological characteristics of the context of the iconic figure?Deadline for abstract: 1 June 2014 Deadline for submission of article: 15 July 2014Please send tentative title and abstract (300 words) to Daniella Kuzmanovic (daniella@hum.ku.dk) and Sune Haugbolle (suneha@ruc.dk)