ERIC Number: EJ1392203
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1468-1366
EISSN: EISSN-1747-5104
The Brutality of Normalcy: Schooling in "My Friend Dahmer"
Saul, Roger
Pedagogy, Culture and Society, v31 n4 p633-645 2023
This article considers "My Friend Dahmer" as a pedagogical document of educational critique. A graphic novel memoir, "My Friend Dahmer" depicts the teenage life of Jeffrey Dahmer in the years before he gained notoriety as a serial killer. One of the memoir's central tensions is that at Dahmer's school, even a serial-killer-in-the-making struggles to be seen, in fact fails at it, instead becoming an unexceptional feature of its landscape. Focusing on three factors -- invisibility, exclusion, and alienation -- the article interrogates how normalised schooling structures can represent a series of hidden brutalities that are far more common, pervasive, and socially consequential than the exceptional, sensational, and thus more easily dismissible notion of brutality that Dahmer himself embodies. It suggests that "My Friend Dahmer" contributes to our cultural understandings of education to the extent that it helps to locate these hidden brutalities and render them visible in graphic novel form.
Descriptors: Cartoons, Novels, Adolescents, Educational Environment, Peer Relationship, Social Isolation, Violence, Social Bias, Behavior Standards, Interpersonal Relationship, Bullying
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A