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Autobiographical comics: Life writing in pictures
Abstract
A troubled childhood in Iran. Living with a disability. Grieving for a dead child. Over the last forty years the comic book has become an increasingly popular way of telling personal stories of considerable complexity and depth. In Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures, Elisabeth El Refaie offers a long overdue assessment of the key conventions, formal properties, and narrative patterns of this fascinating genre. The book considers eighty-five works of North American and European provenance, works that cover a broad range of subject matters and employ many different artistic styles. Drawing on concepts from several disciplinary fields-including semiotics, literary and narrative theory, art history, and psychology-El Refaie shows that the traditions and formal features of comics provide new possibilities for autobiographical storytelling. For example, the requirement to produce multiple drawn versions of one's self necessarily involves an intense engagement with physical aspects of identity, as well as with the cultural models that underpin body image. The comics medium also offers memoirists unique ways of representing their experience of time, their memories of past events, and their hopes and dreams for the future. Furthermore, autobiographical comics creators are able to draw on the close association in contemporary Western culture between seeing and believing in order to persuade readers of the authentic nature of their stories. Copyright © 2012 by University Press of Mississippi. All rights reserved.
... The main consideration concerns the physical dimension of comics. Graphic narratives necessarily materialise bodies and bodily interactions between the characters of the stories and with the drawn environment (El Refaie, 2012). Finally, in the case of ethno-graphic novels the researcher may also be physically represented as part of the research field. ...
The aim of this paper is to discuss the comicisation of qualitative sociology, i.e., the use of comics as research methods and analytical tools in sociology, drawing from case studies related to illness and neurodivergence. In the first part, we will pinpoint how comics as qualitative research methods enhance the reflexivity of sociologists themselves in the various phases of their research projects: from the definition of a case study to the choice of research and analysis techniques up to the communication of research outputs. In line with El Refaie’s (2012) concept of pictorial embodiment, we will show how producing drawn versions of the self helps to both enhance extended reflexivity and engage with physicality. In the second part of the paper we will illustrate two research experiences, related to the interdisciplinary research area of the Graphic Medicine (Czerwiec et al., 2010). The selected case studies are particularly meaningful in two respects: first, they show how the use of comics in qualitative sociological research contributes to go beyond standard individualistic epistemologies and helps to highlight meso and macrostructural factors which are crucial to analyse social phenomena. Second, they shed light on how comics provide multiple opportunities to portray embodiment and reflect upon the social and cultural dimensions of embodiment processes, thanks to their language and socio-cultural specificities as a medium and cultural object. We will conclude with some reflections on how graphic narratives may be used in qualitative research to investigate how socially marginalised people experience daily interactions and social conditions.
... However, what sets this particular autobiography apart is its ability to connect personal experiences with universal realities, making it relatable to a broad audience. Unlike the often high-profile lives of famous figures, this autobiography offers a profoundly personal and accessible narrative that resonates with its readers' everyday experiences and struggles (Gooblar, 2008;El Refaie, 2012;Olney, 1980;Turque, 2000;Were, 2020). ...
This autobiographical short book intricately captures the journey of an environmentalist, humanitarian, and knowledge producer, weaving a narrative that is as much about the individual experience as it is about the collective endeavors of countless people worldwide. The protagonist’s journey is a profound personal transformation driven by a deep-seated commitment to environmental stewardship and social justice. This story begins with humble origins, tracing the author’s awakening to the pressing environmental issues and humanitarian crises that plague our world. As the narrative unfolds, readers are introduced to pivotal moments of activism and advocacy, where the protagonist collaborates with like-minded individuals and organisations to champion causes such as sustainable development, conservation, and equitable resource distribution. These efforts are not just portrayed as isolated acts of heroism, but as part of a broader, global movement of dedicated individuals working tirelessly for the common good, inspiring readers to consider their own role in this collective effort. The book’s strength lies in its ability to transcend the personal, making the reader feel part of a larger community of change-makers. The protagonist’s successes and challenges are mirrored in the lives of many others who have similarly devoted themselves to protecting the planet and improving human lives. Through detailed anecdotes and reflections, the book not only highlights the interconnectedness of environmental and humanitarian efforts but also calls on the readers to take action, emphasising that the health of our ecosystems and the well-being of society are inextricably linked and that each individual has a role to play in this interconnected web. Ultimately, this narrative is an inspiring testament to the power of individual and collective action. It invites readers to reflect on their roles in this global mission and to find their place in the ongoing struggle for a more just and sustainable world.
... Elle en rattache les balbutiements à quelques grands noms -Shel Silverstein, Will Eisner, Robert Crumb… -, quand la critique francophone épingle parallèlement le rôle de « reporter-dessinateur » d'un Cabu, notamment, pour ses travaux réalisés à l'aube des années 1970 (Cabu, 2007). Les oeuvres apparues à San Francisco ou à New York partagent avec leurs homologues européennes d'être le fruit d'une contre-culture, alors que la bande dessinée commence à se déployer dans des univers underground de fictions destinées aux adultes (Hatfield, 2005 ;Chaney, 2011 ;El Refaie, 2012). Certes, le reportage graphique a quelques ancêtres notables, dès le XIX e siècle où l'art du dessin sert une forme de documentation (reportage illustré, caricature, etc.) (Chute, 2016) -, mais il accompagne en réalité, précisément au tournant des années 1970, la légitimité sociale croissante des auteurs de bande dessinée. ...
... Sus inicios se remontan a algunos grandes nombres -Shel Silverstein, Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, etc.-, mientras que la crítica francófona también ha destacado el papel de Cabu como «reportero-dibujante», sobre todo por su trabajo en los albores de la década de 1970 (Cabu, 2007). Las obras aparecidas en San Francisco y Nueva York compartían con sus homólogas europeas el hecho de ser fruto de una contracultura, en un momento en que el cómic comenzaba a desarrollarse en el mundo underground como ficción para adultxs (Hatfield, 2005 ;Chaney, 2011 ;El Refaie, 2012). ...
... (Cabu, 2007). As obras que apareceram em São Francisco e Nova Iorque compartilhavam com suas contrapartes europeias o fato de serem fruto de uma contracultura, em uma época em que os quadrinhos estavam começando a se desenvolver no mundo underground como ficção adulta (Hatfield, 2005;Chaney, 2011;El Refaie, 2012). É verdade que a reportagem gráfica tem alguns antecessores notáveis, que datam do século XIX, quando a arte do desenho servia a uma forma de documentação (jornalismo ilustrado, caricatura, etc.) (Chute, 2016), mas na verdade ela acompanhou, precisamente no final da década de 1970, a crescente legitimidade social do(a)s autore(a)s de quadrinhos. ...
... Its beginnings are credited to a few great names such as Shel Silverstein, Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, while French-speaking critics have also highlighted Cabu's role as a "reporter-cartoonist", especially for his work in the early 1970s (CABU, 2007). Works published in San Francisco and New York and their European counterparts have in common the fact that they emerged from a counter-culture at a time when comics were beginning to develop in the underground world of adult fiction (HATFIELD, 2005;CHANEY, 2011;EL REFAIE, 2012). While graphic reportage has some notable ancestors -dating back to the 19th century, when the art of drawing served a form of documentation (illustrated reportage, caricature, etc.) (CHUTE, 2016) -it actually accompanied, precisely at the turn of the 1970's, the growing social recognition of comics authors. ...
... Plato imagines them seated, chained, able to address one another, to "dialectize," to lose themselves in the echoing of voices. 10 Against the logocentric idea that drawing records or gives form to that which is fully available to the gaze, Derrida writes that the draftsman or For Derrida, the trait or drawing, as will be explained shortly, constantly takes leave of itself, appearing only as the absence of itself. draftswoman actually mimics the gesture of a blind person. ...
In this paper, I examine how women graphic memoirists--e.g. Marjane Satrapi, Alison Bechdel, and Roz Chast--attempt to draw that which remains fleeting, absent, and abyssal: the so-called "self." I thus extend Jacques Derrida's critique of what he has called the "metaphysics of presence" in philosophy to autobiographical comics, a popular medium that is heavily prefigured by his analysis of the self-portrait as ruin. I believe this endeavor will help fill the gap in studies about the gendered aspects of Derrida's work "Memoirs of the Blind," as well as the potential of autobiographical comics to illuminate philosophical issues concerning the self. Finally, through my analysis of women's graphic narratives, I hope to point to the possibility of a larger project, that of a feminist Derridean critique of sequential art.
... Research into the female cartoonists of the past has been undertaken by the likes of Robbins and Yronwode (1985), Lisa Tickner (1987), Diane Atkinson (1997), and Macfarlane and Young (2003), among others. The last decade has seen a welcome rise in the publication of research highlighting previously hidden histories relating to girl, women, and LGBTQ+ comics creators, educators, commissioners, and readers (Chaney, 2011;El Refaie, 2012;Gibson, 2015;Aldama, 2020;Streeten, 2020). This includes the pioneering and prolific nineteenth-century cartoonist Marie Duval (Grennan et al., 2018 and. ...
Cartooning and graphic facilitation (the latter of which includes developing visuals in real time with groups) offer increasingly popular yet highly subjective approaches to public engagement, organizational development, communication, research, and research dissemination. Values-based cartooning can provide an ethical framework for those undertaking and commissioning these kinds of practices, and it has been employed by the author as a method for accessing and representing diverse perspectives and experiences for more than two decades. This article is situated within the author’s experience as a practitioner undertaking a range of commissions and partnerships relating to education in the United Kingdom. What follows is a critical examination of three contexts where values-based cartooning has been used to represent women’s leadership within education: within research into women’s experiences of working and studying in a higher education institution, within grassroots movements led by teachers and school leaders, and within broader campaigns that have educational value. This involves negotiation of complex social issues while developing visuals, including how to treat gender, race, and intersectional identities within word/image combinations. Questions are raised about the purposes of visual practice, the roles and responsibilities of practitioners, and the conditions of production, audience, and social media. What are the benefits, limitations, and risks of values-based cartooning in relation to the visual representation of women’s leadership in education? What is the value of portraying the kinds of leadership that exist at different levels, including outside of formal, professional roles and beyond classroom practice and systems leadership? And finally, how should visual practitioners respond to conflicting values, risk, failure, and nuance in relation to women’s leadership, where there is strong desire and need for positive, strengths-based depictions? The author considers her positionality in relation to the type of work undertaken and asks whether this kind of visual practice may in fact represent a particular form of leadership that warrants further inquiry. This article will be of interest to educators, researchers, facilitators, artists, cartoonists, campaigners, graphic and visual facilitators, practice-based researchers, and those who commission and evaluate visual methods.
This article locates the practice of creating autobiographical comics (autobiocomics) as products of autobiographical fiction (autofiction) and imaginary worlds. Autobiocomics is a comics genre characterised by imaginative and subjective representations of the autobiographical self. Autobiocomic stories attempt to convey an emotional truth by depicting the author's authentic reactions to people, places, or events. With this research, we intend to contribute to the existing autobiocomic scholarship by demonstrating that autofiction and worldbuilding theories can deepen the analysis of specific autobiocomics when instrumentalised in tandem. This provides the opportunity to read autobiocomic texts for their shared characteristics and generate insights on the author's relationship to their representations of self and the textual world wherein the self is revealed. In this article, we review autobiocomics, providing a brief chronological overview and identifying relevant concepts to position the analysis and discussion thereafter. The analysis suggests future research into the implications of the authors' embodiment of their textual avatar and how they inhabit the textual world. Three autobiocomics are read, discussed, and analysed to demonstrate the characteristics of the medium as it pertains to both these theories: Drieman (2020) by Wide Vercnocke, La mer à boire (2022) by Blutch, and Fluctuat et Mergitur (2020) by Conrad Botes.
The present study aims to highlight the role that Clément Baloup’s comics, Vietnamese Memories: Leaving Saigon
(Volume 1) and Vietnamese Memories: Little Saigon (Volume 2), play in the creation of an alternate archive that
validates the forgotten tales and the memories of a neglected past. These texts provide an alternate form of
remembrance by materialising the past in the form of images. The two volumes present the unheard experiences of
the Vietnamese diaspora that Baloup recorded during his travels to the different parts of France and the U.S. Such
experiences bring to the forefront memories that are otherwise kept at the margins or suppressed by the dominant
discourse. If not recorded, they will be lost forever. The counter-memory, thus, calls for a reassessment of the idea of
a singular past that denies the marginalised memories. It claims representation and restoration in the cultural
memory. As works of postmemory, these texts form a link between the past and the present through mediation and
give memorability to unremembered accounts. The memories are illustrated, and hence, visual representation
becomes important to the task of postmemory here.
Ageing, an inevitable biological process, is often oversimplified, subjecting elderly individuals to both positive and negative sociocultural stereotypes. Elderly individuals are stigmatised as passive, suffering and asexual, while simultaneously being expected to embody an active, successful and productive approach towards ageing. Departing from these narrow perceptions, this article draws examples from Zidrou and Aimée de Jongh’s graphic narrative Blossoms in Autumn to provide a nuanced perspective on the ageing process. Using the affordances of comics, this essay examines how Blossoms in Autumn addresses unarticulated aspects of ageing, including changing bodily features, sexuality and intimacy, among others. In so doing, this essay challenges the unilateral perceptions of ageing.
"Educação Física e Práticas Corporais: Discussões Emergentes" explora a Educação Física crítica, propondo práticas inovadoras e inclusivas. Com capítulos que abordam desde jogos, TICs, didática, questões étnico-raciais e outros, o livro desafia educadores(as) a repensar suas metodologias. Celebrando a diversidade e a transformação social, esta obra coletiva inspira uma pedagogia dinâmica e reflexiva. É um convite para mergulhar em novas perspectivas, promovendo uma educação que vai além do convencional, comprometida com a equidade e justiça social.
El presente artículo recoge los aspectos más importantes de la investigación Herramientas para evaluar la idoneidad del lenguaje y la narrativa de la historieta autobiográfica. En primera instancia, se seleccionaron las ideas consideradas más significativas de una serie de expertos en el género para proponer un marco teórico que caracterice el fenómeno. La principal especialista, fue la catedrática de la Universidad de Cardiff, Elisabeth El Refaie, autora de Autobiographical comics. Life Writing in Pictures. Posteriormente, con los lineamientos se elaboró un instrumento de evaluación que sirve de guía para que el novel creador de una historieta autobiográfica determine la idoneidad de su obra. Se validó el instrumento aplicándolo al análisis de dos obras pertenecientes al género, comercialmente exitosas y de características marcadamente distintas: Persépolis (Satrapi, 2000) y J’aurais adoré être ethnologue (Motin, 2009). Finalmente, se concluyó que la herramienta comprende los puntos más distintivos que perfilan a la historieta autobiográfica como género: sensibilidad contracultural, centralidad del cuerpo, performance de autenticidad e involucramiento del lector.
Written in 2003, Craig Thompson’s graphic novel Blankets manages to arouse readers’ attention through its complex emotional background that entwines the protagonist’s constant attempts to live a normal, happy life with his psychological instability, as well as his personal coming-of-age and first love with strict religious education and a detachment from his childhood memories. This paper, however, attempts to analyse the concepts of space and time from the point of view of visual representation, the author succeeding in creating the idea of temporal development through constant flashbacks, inner space representations, the novel being retrospectively narrated; at the same time, a series of artfully coined images that symbolise winter’s purity and cleanliness come to oppose the ugliness of the social context (unspoiled versus ravaged outer space) that traps the hero in an impossible universe that annihilates any outbursts of creativity, ingenuity and love.
In this paper, I present a philosophical analysis of the famous manga series, Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) by Keiji Nakazawa, which is the author's quasi-fictional memoir of his childhood as an atom bomb survivor in Hiroshima, Japan. Against the backdrop of larger issues of war and peace, Gen's family struggles with his father's ideological rebellion against the nation's militaristic rule, leading to the family's persecution. The story then chronicles the cataclysmic effects of the bomb, and the fates of Gen and other survivors as they live through the aftermath of the detonation and the hardships of the American occupation. My framework for critique follows Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology, which applies the descriptive method of phenomenology to cultural texts.
The ability of graphic narratives to ensure reader-participation creates
a visual dialogue between the narrative and the readers and
makes them hospitable to the story at hand. The readers become
active participants, which brings in the question of ethics, as the
passive gaze is converted into empathy and identification. Such
a reading encourages a reassessment of the perceived differences
between the ‘I’ and the ‘other’ and aims to reduce such a gap. This
paper, therefore, discusses the idea of empathy and ethics vis-à-vis
the strategies and techniques employed in the graphic narratives to
encourage reader-participation and make them sensitive to the
sufferings of the ‘others’. The texts under analysis include Clément
Baloup’s Vietnamese Memories: Leaving Saigon and Vietnamese
Memories: Little Saigon, representing the migrant stories. Such
experiences require a hospitable audience and the graphic practices
of the texts play a crucial role in making the readers empathic
to the life narratives of the ‘others’.
Partiendo de una concepción del cómic que se aleja de su tradicional definición monosensorial en favor de un acercamiento multisensorial, el objetivo de este artículo es examinar la capacidad del medio para representar la diversidad y los trastornos sensoriales, centrándose para ello en el ejemplo paradigmático de Diagnósticos (2013), de Diego Agrimbau y Lucas Varela. Este volumen de historias cortas independientes conectadas por la presencia de distintas alteraciones sensoriales hace uso de algunos recursos formales del cómic (como la visión holística o los diferentes grados de integración de texto e imagen) para ofrecer el punto de vista subjetivo interior de sus protagonistas, todas mujeres. La obra se analiza a luz de la medicina gráfica, aunque, pese a lo que sugiere su título, se trata de un cómic de ficción que no pretende ser un manual médico. Se examinan, pues, la potencialidad del cómic de ficción con representaciones estereotipadas para generar empatía y otros aspectos relacionados con la diversidad funcional como la identidad y el género. Se concluye así que, a pesar de algunas figuraciones estereotipadas, Diagnósticos constituye un ejemplo único de la representación de la diversidad sensorial en el cómic por su carácter experimental y autoconsciente.
This study aims to explore the political cartoons that highlight the displacement of Palestinians in the village of Sheikh Jarrah. It investigates the way this discourse is portrayed as well as the predominant themes of these cartoons. The data of this study consists of eight political cartoons drawn from Palestinian online newspapers from May to July 2021, featuring the displacement issue of Sheik Jarrah by well-known local cartoonists. Multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) in which language analysis is combined with the analysis of other semiotic resources including colors, gestures, images, etc. for interpreting meaning (O'Halloran et al., 2011), is adopted for the analysis. Visual Social Semiotics of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) is also used as a linguistic framework. The study asserts that understanding the three different aspects of the visual compositions, namely, representational, interactive and compositional, that serve as a semiotic mode of communication, is essential for conveying the intended message of the visual compositions. The study also identifies the predominant themes or messages of the selected cartoons, which mainly focus on two main points: (i) the tyranny and oppression of Israel over Palestinians through eradication and displacement; and (ii) the Palestinians' struggle, steadfastness and resistance in the event of Israel's forced displacement.
En el devenir de la pandemia por covid-19, la literatura constituye una de las tantas formas de agencia para resignificar una emergente cosmovisión gestada a raíz de la megacrisis. Esta dejó al descubierto cambios profundos en las interacciones humanas y sociales, entre ellos, se acentuaron los procesos de otrorización y segregación hacia los inmigrantes y ciudadanos de minorías étnicas. A partir de la relación otredad/pan-demia, este trabajo propone el análisis de dos textos: “You Clap for Me Now”, poema de Darren Smith, y “The Wuhan I know”, autobiografía gráfica de Laura Gao. Partimos de la hipótesis de que en ambos textos, la condición de ser otro emerge como parte del complejo entramado de la crisis pandémica, revelando la tensión entre la perdurable dicotomía de la modernidad “mismidad y otredad”. Concluimos que “The Wuhan I know” humaniza y construye una dimensión identitaria de Wuhan, contraponiéndose a la retórica racista de los regímenes dominantes de representación que surgieron du-rante la pandemia. En tanto, “You Clap for Me Now” edifica un marco social en el que la figura del extranjero se deconstruye a partir de una plataforma metafórica compartida con el virus pandémico.
This article considers three recent graphic memoirs that focus on Italian transnational migration and its legacies: Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s The Inheritance, Joshua Santospirito’s Swallows (Part I), and Pia Valentini’s Ferriera. We adopt the term carto-graphic memoirs (Mitchell 2007 Mitchell, P. 2007. Cartographic Strategies of Postmodernity: The Figure of the Map in Contemporary Theory and Fiction. London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Norment 2012 Norment, C. 2012. In the Memory of the Map: A Cartographic Memoir. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), to describe graphic novels that aim to literally and metaphorically map transnational lives, identities, and memories, through complex artistic processes of autobiographical (re)orientation, drawing, storytelling, and intellectual reflection. Dominant narratives of Italian migration redeem the struggle and shame of migration through individual success, upward mobility, and racial ‘whitening’. These three works challenge stereotypical representations of Italian migration, and Italian hyphenated identities, focusing instead on geographical, historical and autobiographical fragments that come together on the page to sketch provisional and fragile, yet emotionally and intellectually powerful patterns. Such patterns reveal histories and geographies of racism, class exploitation, violence, trauma, but also histories of physical, existential, cultural, linguistic and intellectual resistance, exchange, and creativity. Each of these memoirs locate Italian migrants and their descendants at the intersection of traumatic histories and geographies of nationalism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and class exploitation. In doing so, they provide an extraordinary opportunity to rethink the relationship between transnational histories and individual lives.
The field of comics has undergone palpable shifts in print and digital publishing cultures, from newspaper strips and zines to hardbound graphic novels and works still emerging in the era of Web 2.0. Comics that leave behind the aesthetic trappings of print to embrace digital platforms and media are known variously as digital comics, download comics, hypercomics and webcomics. This paper adopts the term “webcomics” to denote a precise, hybrid medium combining the visual-verbal grammar of comics with the capacious potentials of digitality. Through the case study of These Memories Won’t Last , a webcomic by Australian artist and graphic designer Stuart Campbell (known by his pseudonym, Sutu), I aim to explore the ways Campbell engages sound, animation and other interactive elements alongside drawings that render the lived experiences of his grandfather, who suffers from late-stage dementia. This paper considers how webcomics might transform the stasis of word-and-image to explore and communicate subjects that sit on the outer edges of representation, such as memory, identity and trauma. It responds to a new generation of artists who harness digital technologies to expand and revise the comics form and considers the potential effects of this practice on creating, reading and interpretating life stories.
BiographischeComic-Biographie Comics sind Erzählungen. Diese Feststellung ist nicht so trivial, wie sie auf den ersten Blick wirken mag, denn die Frage, ob bzw. wie Comics erzählen, eröffnet einen komplexen Problem- und Forschungszusammenhang.
This chapter returns to the art-historical methodology of iconography, and the related but distinct concept of iconology, to consider how the visual attributes of comic book characters, in terms of symbolic motifs and stylistic forms, can be identified, categorised and interpreted. Beginning with an overview of art historian Erwin Panofsky’s theories from the first half of the twentieth century it then examines how iconography has been reconsidered as a methodological tool within Art History with the emergence of semiotics as a distinct but related approach to analysing visual signs. It examines the application of semiotics within Comics Studies from the 1970s onwards, highlighting the key theoretical strands used in the field before noting critiques of semiotics by Comics Studies scholars such as Hannah Miodrag and Charles Hatfield. The value of iconographic and iconological approaches is considered through an analysis of Jack Kirby’s depictions of Thor during the 1960s, focusing on the character’s origin story and the visual transformations he undergoes between his human alter ego Dr Don Blake and becoming the god of thunder.KeywordsIconographyIconologyJack KirbyPanofskySemioticsThor
This paper aims to analyze the graphic memoir "The Wuhan I know" (Gao, 2020) published on the WWW and social networks during the first stage of the Covid-19 pandemic. The comic narrates the discrimination towards Asians and, particularly, towards Wuhanese in the United States during the pandemic. The comic is approached from a postcolonial perspective and nodal conceptual concepts such as ideology, identity, and Otherness. Umberto Eco's theory (2008) has been followed to study the structure of the comic as an ideological statement. The analytical reading concludes that in the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, “The Wuhan I Know” acquires epistemic salience in a continuum of discriminatory discourses that it attempts to deconstruct.
The article provides to the problem of identity in autobiographical comics. In the recent years authors of comics have been increasingly addressing the topic of identity search, putting autobiography in the foreground. This study attempts to identify the most distinctive narrative strategies in autobiographical comics and to contextualise them within a new research field, one in which the authors' “experiments” in personal narrative are realised. The focus is on the two main methods of autobiographical storytelling employed in the work of comics. One is structured narrative and the other has more literary references and is similar to literary prose. The comparison of these methods has led to the question of the true identity of the author in the works he creates.
This study examines the visual representation of diegetic time in visual narrative stories, and explores why the invisible diegetic time flow could be expressed through visible elements, and how patterns and textures could be used to specify states of happenings. The study demonstrates that metaphorical relations between time and space are visually realized in visual narratives, leading to the representation of diegetic time and its related concepts on different levels of two-dimensional space. The segmentation of page space and the visual components within panel space are employed to build a diegetic timeline as well as specify temporal aspects of actions and states in visual narrative stories. Neuroscientific evidence which suggests that a common metric is used to compute magnitudes of time and space in the human brain might help explain why time as an abstract concept could undergo visual materialization in visual narratives.
The objective with this study is to shed light upon how international exchanges on the comic art market contribute to democratization processes and renegotiation of hegemonies in the literary field worldwide. The focus is on how the variation in imported comics from a central language, in this case French, to the peripheral space of Sweden, can be observed during the time-period 1900–2020, as well as on which diversity importation of comics has been allowed over time. Theoretically anchored in sociological perspectives in literary studies highly influenced by Casanova’s ([1999]2004) seminal work, this contribution challenges established approaches in the field that depart from central cultural spaces in the world. Instead, this analysis highlights how the periphery gains agency on the international market and challenges relations of domination through translation practices. One hypothesis put forward consists of the idea that Francophone author-illustrators from the global South would be identifiable in the data in 1990’s, as is the case in the literary field. However, in the comics field this change emerges later, and does not appear distinctively until 2005. The change is paired with a promotion of Francophone female author-illustrators in Swedish translations, equally from the global South and the global North. The results also highlight that Sweden positions the Francophone space as hyper-central within the comics field. The specific practices adopted in the importation point to how a periphery creates agency to define a medium and a genre locally and play a role in international cultural exchanges.
El presente artículo recoge los aspectos más importantes de la investigación Herramientas para evaluar la idoneidad del lenguaje y la narrativa de la historieta autobiográfica. En primera instancia, se seleccionaron las ideas consideradas más significativas de una serie de expertos en el género para proponer un marco teórico que caracterice el fenómeno. La principal especialista, fue la catedrática de la Universidad de Cardiff, Elisabeth El Refaie, autora de Autobiographical comics. Life Writing in Pictures. Posteriormente, con los lineamientos se elaboró un instrumento de evaluación que sirve de guía para que el novel creador de una historieta autobiográfica determine la idoneidad de su obra. Se validó el instrumento aplicándolo al análisis de dos obras pertenecientes al género, comercialmente exitosas y de características marcadamente distintas: Persépolis (Satrapi, 2000) y J’aurais adoré être ethnologue (Motin, 2009). Finalmente, se concluyó que la herramienta comprende los puntos más distintivos que perfilan a la historieta autobiográfica como género: sensibilidad del cuerpo, performance de autenticidad e involucramiento del lector.
Autobiography in graphic narrative has been extensively used and studied as a wide concept; however, autofiction, as a liminal form of it, has not received the same critical attention. Despite this, autofictional creations have been present in graphic narrative since its beginnings. Self-representation has not only adopted transcendental intimate stories involving reflective traumatic experiences or confessional involvement but has also allowed sarcastic and parodic performances. This humorous possibility in autofictional practices is the one that Manuel Vázquez Gallego, known as Vázquez, used since 1958 to introduce himself in his stories and create an extravagant graphic double, famous for his fanciful (mis)adventures and crooked illusions. For more than thirty years, Vázquez represented himself in order to establish an imaginary identity and to place himself as a licentious ideal figure. What started as a simple satirical and self-deprecation mechanism became the central motif of his latest publications, to the point of blurring the limits of his fictional enterprises and his daily real life. In this text, I will analyse the way in which Vázquez articulated an absurd and picaresque legend of himself based on the subversion of the intimate story through an autofictional humoristic and fantastic self.
This chapter examines Allison Bechdel’s first graphic memoir, Fun Home (2006), with additional material from its follow-up, Are You My Mother? (2012), and the prologue from The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (2008), arguing that through the use of a queered mode of representation, Bechdel’s autobiographical narratives create queer “houses of memory,” (Jean-Pierre Wallot), as the vantage point from which to reconsider the childhood “fun home.” Her autobiographical narratives queer graphic memoirs specifically, through their visual/verbal hybridity, their non-linear approaches to temporality, and alternative constructions of the narrative around the self. They open a space where the vast archive of one’s life can be explored on the author’s own terms, apart from normative frameworks. The graphic memoir thus materializes a queer/ed home, rooted and mobile, a refuge against the processes of othering, objectification, marginalization, and exclusion endured by the author, a lab where the self is ceaselessly disassembled and recomposed, an archive that articulates the personal and collective aspects of queer and lesbian identities.
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Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006) is an autobiographical work that
depicts in a unique way the identities and relationships of characters
that are difficult to be represented in any other way but as a graphic
novel, consisting of a combination of images and text. Citation of
various texts, including photographs, letters, and newspapers, has
defined the work as a kind of queer archive and, especially, several
literary critics have recognized intertextuality as one of the core themes
of the work. Along with the text, the format of the work, the graphic
novel, in which the image forms an important axis of the work,
suggests that intertextuality works in a different way than in
traditional literary forms where only the text is written. Text and
intertextual images cited from various literary works play an important
role in the relationship between Alison Bechdel, Bruce Bechdel who is
Alison’s father, and Helen Bechdel who is Alison’s mother and Bruce’s
wife.
As such, this paper will briefly outline the intertextuality with Fun
Home and examine the way in which the relationship between the three
characters is represented in the interaction between images and text. The
inherent intertextuality of the imaging of the graphic novel shows the
relationship between Bruce and Allison and mediates it to explore the
process of changing relationships and the possibility of reconciliation
between the two characters. Furthermore, the relationship between
Alison and Helen, which cannot be explained only by intertextuality, is
examined through the writing practices of the two characters. Writing
along with intertextuality serves as a means for Alison and Helen to
escape Bruce's influence and find their own independent identities while
also enabling affinity between the two characters.
In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which created the legal means for the forced removal and incarceration of ca. 120,000 Japanese Americans. They spent many years in ten incarceration camps of the War Relocation Authority. While the incarceration was justified by military necessity, it is clearly based on racism and discrimination. It was only in 1988 that the US government apologized for the incarceration and paid reparations to former incarcerees.
This study focuses on this not well-known topic and deals with the question of how the incarceration is represented in different media of cultural memory nowadays. The incarceration is part of the cultural memory not only of Japanese Americans but has also found its way into the cultural memory of US society as a whole. Through the analysis of graphic novels ("Take What You Can Carry" [Kevin C. Pyle, 2012] and "Gaijin: American Prisoner of War" [Matt Faulkner, 2014]), picture books ("So Far from the Sea" [Eve Bunting, 1998] and "Fish for Jimmy" [Katie Yamasaki, 2013]) as well as paintings and prints by the Japanese American artist Roger Shimomura (1939-), this study shows how the Japanese American incarceration and its trauma is remembered.
Graphic novels, picture books, paintings and prints are here defined as distinct media of cultural memory through which traumata and memories can be represented in a unique way. To decipher the narrative strategies of the media, different theories are combined. Jan and Aleida Assmann’s theory of cultural memory, Astrid Erll’s ideas about media of cultural memory as well as the theory of prosthetic memory by Alison Landsberg (2004) and the theory of postmemory by Marianne Hirsch (1997) build the theoretical framework. Media of cultural memory enable people to remember the past, but also refer to present and future. With the help of the theory of cultural traumata by Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. the incarceration is shown to be a trauma that not only influences Japanese Americans but also US society in general. In addition, the theory of narrative identity (Jerome Bruner, Douglas Ezzy, Margaret R. Somers) is used to show how the story of the incarceration stabilizes identities.
Since this study looks at media of cultural memory produced by both Japanese Americans and non-Japanese Americans, it offers a variety of points of view and a number of narrative strategies. All discussed works use text and visuals as well as fact and fiction, but to a different degree. The analysis establishes how the producers mix facts of the incarceration with personal events in their lives, in which way symbols of the incarceration (e.g. barbed wire fence or guard towers) are depicted visually and how text is used to explain the incarceration experience and to show the recipients the connection between past and present.
The analysis of excerpts of graphic novels and picture books as well as paintings and prints shows that these media of cultural memory have a therapeutic function for both producers and recipients. Through the fragmentation in image and text these media allow producers and recipients to reflect on and work through traumata. Roger Shimomura’s paintings and prints stand out in particular: he spent a part of his childhood in an incarceration camp and places himself in some of his artworks. In this way, he reflects on his own experiences and allows the recipients to gain an insight into his personal trauma.
Furthermore, these media have a didactic function. They do, however, not only give the recipients the opportunity to learn about the incarceration from historical fact but combine fact and fiction. By doing so, the media ask the recipients to reflect on their own position in society. Especially Faulkner’s graphic novel and the picture books show the relationship between the depicted characters in text and image, so that recipients can imagine themselves in the situation of Japanese Americans during World War II. Thus, recipients are encouraged to empathize and show solidarity with the Japanese American community; a feeling of belonging, not only with Japanese Americans but also with minority groups in US society overall, is created.
These media of cultural memory are therefore not simple objects with which the Japanese American incarceration is remembered by; instead, these are objects that warn people about the risks of repeating history. Past, present and future are shown to be intertwined.
Building on growing interest in the development of the ninth art in Spain, this article returns to a foundational work by creator Pere Joan that encapsulates Barcelona’s role in forging the post-dictatorial Iberian comic. Beyond carrying out a close reading of the eponymous comic contained in Passatger en trànsit, it is important also to elucidate the cultural forces shaping post-dictatorial comics in Spain: from the languages of publication, to the legacies of visual style, the relationship between comics and prose literature, and the reemergence of Barcelona as a putative center of the comics industry. Published by Norma Editorial in 1984, the hardback volume arguably reflected the growing expansion of the Catalan-language cultural market specifically and the progressive linguistic diversification of the Iberian comics market in general. The theme, story and comics form of the visual tale – “Passatger en trànsit”, which was adapted from English science fiction writer Barrington J. Bayley’s earlier short story “Man in Transit” – establish a number of the hallmark traits of Pere Joan’s subsequent work: such as contemplative mood; themes of isolation, alienation, interiority and travel; and his characteristic use of landscape panels in page design. The comic’s spatial aesthetics also connects with notions of space, place and nonplace that were receiving renewed attention in 1980s Barcelona.
Esta tesis se centra en el análisis de la producción cultural hispánica contemporánea de autores/as con diversidad funcional para investigar cómo se representan a sí mismos en sus obras y qué medios utilizan cuando cuestionan el discurso capacitista que los margina. Además, se comparan las semejanzas y diferencias que existen entre dichas representaciones y se señala cuál es su valor temático y estético. Mediante el análisis de la interconexión de la diversidad funcional con múltiples categorías como género, sexualidad, raza, edad y clase social, exploro varios tipos de obras –documental, poesía, diario, novela gráfica y ficción juvenil– creadas por un amplio rango de autores de diferentes nacionalidades, edades y funcionalidades diversas −física, mental y sensorial. Así, estudio desde los canónicos Jorge Luis Borges y Frida Kahlo hasta autores menos conocidos como Jessica Martín, Isabel Franc, Raúl Aguirre y David Sánchez. Mi argumento principal es que la producción cultural hispánica de autores/as con diversidad funcional contrarresta el discurso normalizador y capacitista que los margina, no solo mediante la temática de sus obras, sino por sus características formales y por la manera en que se distribuyen y publican sus creaciones. Ahora bien, en algunas de estas obras también se encuentran ciertos aspectos que refuerzan el discurso normativo, como el privilegio social y patriarcal y el uso de un lenguaje no inclusivo para definir a las personas con diversidad funcional. Para el marco teórico, utilizo la teoría española de la diversidad funcional, que estudia la discapacidad como parte de un espectro de experiencias de la realidad humana, enfatizando la diferencia o “diversidad” como un valor positivo que enriquece a la sociedad. También sigo a teóricos relevantes de los estudios de la discapacidad como Benjamin Fraser, Martha Nussbaum y Javier Romañach. Advisor: Professor Iker González-Allende
El siguiente artículo estudia los orígenes del cómic autobiográfico. El objetivo del estudio es contextualizar la aparición de este tipo de cómic en el seno de la cultura del comix underground. Describir un panorama sociocultural y determinar los diferentes factores que posibilitaron el desarrollo de la autobiografía en el cómic. Nos centraremos en la obra de Justin Green, Binky Brown conoce a la Virgen María (considerada la primera obra autobiográfica en la historia del cómic estadounidense) y en las reacciones que causó en los dibujantes de la época. Partimos de la premisa de que, en un contexto de persecución y censura que se cebaba, especialmente, en los cómics, unos autores supieron combinar la sátira con los principios contestatarios heredados de la contracultura, aventurándose a romper tabúes, entre los que se encontraba la autobiografía.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson introduced conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), arguing that human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical. More recently, Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner pointed out the limitation of CMT, that is, the inability to explain emergent meaning, and introduced conceptual integration (or blending) theory (CBT), arguing that by blending, humans improve creation and imagination. Ever since, both CMT and CBT have been regarded as a significant tool for analyzing literary works. However, it has been criticized that previous studies have focused on monomodal literature such as poems and novels. If metaphor and blend are essential mechanism of human cognitive system, they should be applied to multimodal literature which combines image and text, such as graphic novels. This paper sheds light on the way of analysis a graphic
novel, proposing that graphic novels can be analyzed more profoundly by employing CMT and CBT. In order to prove the validity of CMT and CBT, the paper provides an outline of both theories and applies them to the graphic novel New Kid. In particular, this paper attempts to cognitively analyze a variety aspects of racism represented in the work and the growth process of Jordan, the black protagonist who overcomes adversities caused by racism, considering the interactions between texts and images.
El propósito de este artículo es describir las estrategias narrativas que se emplean en “Sátira Latina” de Mariana Paraizo (2015) como un ejemplo de una narración que desorganiza el tiempo histórico teleológico. A partir del análisis del uso de las viñetas y las conexiones intertextuales con los géneros noticiosos y satíricos, se justifica que el cómic presenta una narración experimental con un estilo que más que emplear secuencias problematiza la idea misma de secuencialidad visual al momento de accionar actos de memoria subjetivos que tensionan hechos oficiales.
The self and the world: aspects of the aesthetics and politics of contemporary North American literary memoir by women constitutes an attempt at a selective, but far-ranging analysis of the aesthetics and politics of memoirs written by Canadian and US women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds since 1990. The study focuses on memoirs by experienced writers, consciously deploying in their texts a number of literary, visual and paratextual devices. The aim is to illuminate the ways in which they make sense of their experience and how they endow it with a particular narrative shape, with special focus on the implicit and explicit ideological baggage of the memoirs. An important aspect of the project is the critical reflection on the nature of memory that emerges from the selected texts in connection with both individual and collective history. Special focus falls on configurations of gender and race/ethnicity in the contexts of the two multicultural North American societies, and their influence on the process of self-fashioning.
Much of the focus on truth in critical responses to Fun Home has surrounded the use of archival evidence and the access to truth provided by the graphic medium. This article will explore these issues as well as the relationship to truth established by the text’s metafictional devices and interactions with genre, particularly the genre of the Bildungsroman. This article will analyze the commentary the text provides not just on its own relationship to truth, but the role of truth in autobiographical texts in general, and in women’s and other marginalized groups’ autobiographical texts in particular. In the context of a critical landscape in which the veracity of autobiographical work by women is often subject to skeptical criticism, this article will argue that Fun Home acts, not as an exception to the genre of autobiography, but as a commentary on the gap between the presumed autobiographical pact and the historical, political, and aesthetic reality of autobiographical works.
This article explores how Franco-Cambodian cartoonist Tian’s graphic novel, L’année du lièvre [Year of the Rabbit], represents second-generation postmemory in the form of, what I call, a “Cambodian family album,” or a personal-collective archive. The album serves to convey to subsequent generations: 1) the history of the Cambodian genocide, 2) the collective memories of pre-1975 Cambodia preceding the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh, and 3) the Cambodian humanitarian crisis and exodus of the 1970s-1990s. The conceptualization of the family album is derived from the literal translation, from Khmer into English, of the term “photo album” – “book designated for sticking pictures.” The translation of the term emphasizes the fragmentary and creative nature of postmemory, or the second-generation’s experience of their parents’ trauma. This article begins with an analysis of L’année du lièvre as family album and moves beyond the comics medium to show how Cambodian identity is being reshaped and renegotiated through 1.5- and second-generation Cambodian genocide survivors’ contributions to film, dance, and the literary-arts.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
The tailed balloon is one of the most defining visual conventions of the comics medium. One needs only to insert a stereotypical balloon-with-tail into an image – whether an advert, a photograph, a film still, or even a piece of high art such as a reproduction of the Mona Lisa or a picture of Rodin’s Le Penseur – to turn that image into a comics panel. In this chapter we propose to examine the conventions of the balloon in more detail. Our main aim is to present a provisional blueprint of the visual variables governing balloonic information, and thus to contribute to comics scholarship. Such a blueprint will, first, be a useful tool in the analysis of comics, allowing for a comparison of styles and the identification of idiosyncrasies. In an extended sense, quantifying variation among balloons sheds light on how visual elements can be meaningful at all. Third, we will hypothesize that at least some balloon variables display somehow “natural” processes of representation rather than being governed by arbitrary convention. Finally, the approach adopted here allows us to discuss some instances of how the “standard” balloon can be adapted in the service of creative play.
The conceptual metaphor program launched by Lakoff and Johnson [Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980] attempts to chart and describe the Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs) that govern human thinking. The manifestations of these models studied hitherto, however, are almost exclusively verbal ones. In the interest of enriching insights into ICMs, non-verbal and multimedial representations need be investigated as well. In turn, picture theory can benefit from instruments developed in the cognitive linguistics paradigm.Kövecses [Metaphors of Anger, Pride and Love, Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1986; Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 2000] has demonstrated that verbal expressions and idioms used to describe emotions can be traced back to a limited number of conceptual metaphors. This paper investigates non-verbal manifestations of anger in the Asterix comics album La Zizanie in the light of Kövecses’ findings. It is argued that (i) the representations of anger found here are, at the least, compatible with the most dominant anger metaphor found by Kövecses, ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER, and are probably motivated by it; and (ii) the medium of comics may privilege aspects of ICMs that are less dominant, or even absent, in its linguistic manifestations. Furthermore, the method of analysis employed is reflected on, since it is intended to be applicable beyond the questions addressed here.
This article exposes some of the weaknesses of the social semiotic concept of ‘visual modality’ in analysing the perceived truthfulness of images, by contrasting it with the more productive notion of ‘authenticity’. Using three autobiographical comics as examples, I argue that Kress and van Leeuwen's notion of modality is unable to capture adequately the complex relations that can pertain between images and reality, as it places too much emphasis on picture-immanent stylistic markers and neglects the performed element of truthfulness. In the case of autobiographical comics, ‘producer-oriented’ forms of authenticity seem to play a more important role than stylistic features in determining whether or not visual representations are likely to be seen as truthful.
This paper uses the example of 25 young people's responses to a Daily Mail cartoon on the subject of gay marriage in order to explore the pragmatics of humor reception. The results indicate that the enjoyment of a multimodal joke depends to a large extent on the background knowledge, values and attitudes of the individual. If, for instance, a cartoon is too threatening to someone's core sense of identity, it is likely to create anger and alienation rather than amusement. Humor appreciation is also shown to depend on the broader socio-cultural context in which the cartoon is encountered.
The aim of this study is to investigate how reading experiences intertwine fiction and life and how such experiences change over time. Twelve reading autobiographies of young, motivated readers (age range twenty-two to thirty-two; six men, six women) were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The theoretical framework that served as the point of departure for the content categories was a model of identification in which different types of wish identification, similarity identification, dissimilarity, and empathy were distinguished. Other content categories were derived from different objects of identification and from different kinds of cognitive and emotional effects. Three major results are presented and discussed. One outcome was the difference in autobiographical style between the two earliest periods of life (childhood and adolescence) and the last, most recent period (young adulthood). The readers described their reading experiences in the latter period in a more general and abstract way, whereas the earlier memories had a more "recollective" character. We discuss this finding in relation to general knowledge and theories about autobiographical memory. The second result was a difference in reported reading behavior and reading experience between female and male readers. Male readers tended to a certain favorite genre, such as, for example, science fiction, or to a favorite author throughout their lives, whereas female readers wrote more about their changing ways of reading. Also, the female readers reported more than twice as many identification
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experiences. In a third finding, we observed a developmental pattern in identification: the transition from childhood to puberty and adolescence manifested a shift from wish to similarity identification. This pattern matches earlier studies about the development of readers and can be understood in relation to general developmental characteristics. However, together with some additional observations about parallel shifts in the objects of identification from characters and events to abstract themes, a more detailed and complete picture of the changing functions of reading fiction can be drawn.
Using a small-scale pilot study of readers' responses to three British newspaper cartoons as an example, this article explores the ways in which readers make sense of these multimodal texts. The findings of the study, which also included interviews with the three creators of the cartoons, suggest that interpreting cartoons is a complex process that requires people to draw on a whole range of different literacies. These include a broad knowledge of past and current events, a familiarity with the cartoon genre, a vast repertoire of cultural symbols, and experience of thinking analytically about real-world events and circumstances.
This study demonstrates how semiotic theories can be used to understand typography. Starting from the assumption that typography represents a mode/code in its own right, which interacts with all other textual signing modes, the article outlines a typographic `grammar' as a structured set of networked resources. The analytical toolkit is then illustrated with the help of two sample texts. Based on some general semiotic reflections about the nature and operations of the graphic sign, this article also attempts a concise account of typographic meaning making and its communicative effects.
This article explores the contradiction between the way journalism appeals to photographic indexicality in support of its claims to professional objectivity, while use of the news photograph includes violations of realism and the projection of multiple levels of connotative meaning. The article argues that in its drive to show as well as tell, the press routinely employs visual symbolism to supply photographic validation that it does not possess, even for abstract qualities that cannot be validated visually. Three classifications of photographic symbolism in the press are offered: temporal, in which time frames are evoked and utilized within the newspage; metaphorical, where analogical associations are employed; and synthetic, representations that entail gross distortions of reality. The study charts the codes and conventions that the press employs to create these levels of symbolism, and discusses examples of the way moving beyond the referential creates visual illusions that can frame and mislead.
Lynda Barry's "autobiofictionalography" One! Hundred! Demons! (2002) and Marjane Satrapi's memoir Persepolis (2004) recast the visual and narrative conventions of comics to provide critical commentary on issues ranging from the social construction of gender to the forces subtending forms of prejudice. The works literally as well as figuratively draw out the ways in which the transition from childhood to adulthood becomes overdetermined by narratives of development that set gendered roles, articulate racial demarcations, inscribe religious differences, and authorize imperialist vision; they also highlight the ways in which figures resist, subvert, and capitulate to forces of social coercion and normative visions.
As we think about autobiography, it becomes necessary to broaden our ways of thinking about texts. In order to do so, we need to consider how creators of autobiographical comics use words and images to produce meanings at the intersection of multiple modal systems—meanings unavailable in either pictures or words alone. Working through the theoretical and practical connections between multimodality and theories of autobiography, this article explores the ways in which questions of autobiography are addressed in the comics form through an examination of Joe Matt's Peepshow, an autobiographical comic that has been published at varying intervals since 1992.
This article challenges the strong presumption that narrative, capable as it is of expression in different media, is constituted by a medium-independent content. It draws upon Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics series in order to interrogate the role of the medium in narrative, and the foundational narrative concept of the event, and elaborates a concept of narrative as a cognitive faculty. This approach to narrative facilitates a rhetorical model of its medium-contingency, and occasions an exploration of the narrative quality of dreams, which emerge as proto-fictions, and as the paradigm for a rhetoric-driven model of fictionality.
Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic takes place in the tiny, rural town of Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, and meditates on her closeted father's suicide in 1980 (a few months after Bechdel herself came out as lesbian). It provoked an enormous critical response upon its publication in June 2006. The book also received the kind of public admiration that few literary graphic narratives since Maus have garnered: Fun Home earned a spot on the New York Times bestseller list, and two separate, rave book reviews from the Times. It is sure to soon become an important reference point in academic discourse on graphic narrative.
Fun Home takes on as thematic and narrative filters Albert Camus' A Happy Death (the book Bruce Bechdel was reading when he died), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Henry James's Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady, Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning," Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, Oscar Wilde's TheImportance of Being Earnest, and Colette's Earthly Paradise, among other literary references and allusions. Before Fun Home, Bechdel was best known for her ongoing serial Dykes to Watch Out For (1983–present). Here she talks about her research, her methodology, and her influences.
CHUTE: What did you think of the Times review by Sean Wilsey ["The Things They Buried," June 18, 2006]? He actually drove to Beech Creek, visiting places you drew, and he reports on how accurate your drawings are.
BECHDEL: The really weird thing is I've heard from two other people who have gone [to Beech Creek] since the book came out. So it wasn't just that Times reviewer. I think that's partly the result of the fact that I put maps in the book—you really can go see it. One thing Sean Wilsey said that I really liked was that if this book had been fiction—if I had made this story up—it really would be meaningless. The whole allure of the book, the reason it's interesting, is because these things really happened. So to have maps, and an actual place you can verify, is kind of cool.
And Fun Home is very much about place: this particular part of rural central Pennsylvania, on the edge of the Allegheny Front, where Route 80 got blasted through the isolated valleys in the sixties and seventies. The construction of the interstate during my childhood felt kind of mythic. It was just over the ridge from us, and it ran from New York to San Francisco. Of course I didn't think then of New York and San Francisco as gay poles, but now I see that was part of it.
CHUTE: Can you tell me about the research you did for the book?
BECHDEL: I did all kinds of research. A lot of reading in particular. I haven't talked so much about that; people are interested more, I think, in the image research. One whole strand of the book is my father's love of literature, and the particular novels and authors that he liked. As I worked on the book I found this material creeping more and more into what I was writing. I was quoting Camus and Fitzgerald and eventually I realized that the book was sort of organizing itself around different books or authors; each of the chapters has a different literary focus.
That meant doing a lot of reading. Re-reading things I had read before, like Portrait of the Artist or Ulysses; those are big sources for Fun Home. The first and last chapters reference Joyce, like bookends. I read a lot of biographies of the people my dad admired: Camus, both Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Wilde—a great biography of Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann—and a great biography of Proust. I never actually read all of Proust; I just skimmed and took bits that I needed. I really liked doing all this wandering about in books. My dad pressured me a lot to read certain things when I was growing up and I had always resisted it. In some ways I felt like he ruined literature for me, so this was...
This article uses young people's responses to a newspaper cartoon as a way of exploring the concept of multimodal literacy. The discussion draws on data from a study which aimed to elicit the geopolitical views of 16–19-year-olds in a multi-ethnic British city by using cartoons as a way of encouraging them to talk about their thoughts and feelings towards recent political events. We argue that, contrary to popular perceptions, political cartoons are complex and polysemous and require a particular form of literacy. This not only encompasses the ability to read visual grammar, but also an understanding of the cartoon genre and how it is constructed, with a view to conveying particular meanings within a specific social and cultural context.
L'A. porte son attention sur les relations intersubjectives etablies par l'intermediaire des reseaux de communication informatique. Il s'efforce de comprendre, a partir de la theorie freudienne, les processus identitaires lies a l'etablissement de communication «en ligne» entre differents individus. Il analyse la notion de personnalite multiple. Il presente un certain nombre de donnees collectees aupres de participants a des communautes virtuelles sur le reseau internet
This article offers new perspectives and theoretical tools to interpret and appreciate the complex relationships that can exist between words and pictures. The spectrum of text/image interaction is laid out and analyzed, and several picturebooks from different countries are explored to uncover a number of intriguing dynamics ranging from the simple to the highly elaborate. Text/image interaction may give rise to significant ambiguity, and the article points to future opportunities for dual audience research in this field. The article offers a taste of Nikolajeva and Scott's How Picturebooks Work (Garland, 2000).
Humor serves a wide range of functions at work, one of which is to foster collegiality. An analysis of interactions in New Zealand workplaces showed that one of the most important functions of humor was the construction and maintenance of good relations with fellow workers. Such workplace collegiality is often constructed and maintained through extended sequences of humor. This paper examines some of the ways in which humor is used to construct collegial relations at work, with particular attention to the dimension of gender in the workplace.The analysis identifies three factors, which may contribute to the construction of gender identity in extended jointly constructed humor sequences. Firstly, the pragmatic force of contributions is relevant: a distinction between supportive as opposed to contestive humor sequences proved useful. Secondly, the discursive effect of contributions to such sequences must be considered: a distinction is made between a maximally and minimally collaborative contribution (i.e. a cohesive contribution to a single shared floor vs. an independent often more competitive contribution to the floor). Finally, the content of three examples of specifically ‘gendered’ sequences is examined in some detail, illustrating how, on occasion, gender may become the explicit focus of workplace humor.
In this study, I explored the complex multimedia performances of an interactive computer-mediated community. Through the frameworks of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical perspective and Dell Hyme's ethnography of communication, I explored the patterns of multimedia performance of a virtual community called the Palace. The findings demonstrate how virtual architecture, visual context, virtual space/proxemics, and avatars can be used in social interaction in communities on the World Wide Web. More importantly, the analysis represents the multimedia communicative processes that serve to foster and sustain virtual communities. These communication patterns of the multimedia chat community represent a form of virtual dramatic performance in contemporary communication. Based upon the findings, conclusions, implications, and future directions for scholarship are explored in detail.
This Introduction to the Biography Special Issue on "Autographics" maps a field of texts and critical practices which are emerging in the rapidly changing visual and textual cultures of autobiography. Beginning with a survey of current thinking about the comics, it argues for autographic criticism as a practice that engages with new modes and media, such as graffiti and online social networking, where autobiographical narrative proliferates through fusions of the visual and the textual.