Reconstruction Vol. 12, No. 3

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“To Find Places to Draw”: Comics‘ Resistance to Insecurity / Pedro Moura

Keywords: Comics, resistance, representation, reclaiming, voice

<1> To a certain extent, it is slightly easier today to navigate through the overwhelming and diverse production of comics if we choose a particular thematic principle. The label “9/11 comics”, for instance, is used for the collective creation of internet lists, Amazon wishlists and Wikipedia pages, which can be excellent points of departure for research. This paper wishes to argue that within this medium we can find creative gestures which are both “post-9/11 comics” and creations that argue against the insecurity discourses that have emerged under the shadow of that event. Positive and constructive contemporary works such as Edmond Baudoin and Jean-Marc Troubs‘ Viva la Vida! (2011), among others, make up an alternative to the more troubled and troubling, and therefore perhaps more visible works. To some extent, the intertwining of the individual and the historical is also attempted in the titles we will focus on, but it is the more personal, expressive approach that becomes a different paradigm in dealing with the portrayed crises. These works do not attempt to become “sites of memory” (as Art Spiegelman‘s or Marjane Satrapi‘s works do, for instance) but they do, in a way, work against “the danger of a single story.” (Adiche 2009) By reaching beyond the layers of representation conveyed by the more usual and more conventional media outlets (whether informative or entertaining, or even infotaining) and through their own means and transgeneric paths—i.e., fiction, reportage, travelogue, autobiography -, they construct a distinct image of their encounters and negotiation with the Other and, in this manner, offer an alternative take, a resistance if you will, to the discourse of insecurity.

<2> Comics are mainly constituted by a corpus of published work, meaning texts that penetrate the public sphere. Witnessing, reportage, voice (re)claiming, or resistance to hegemonic discourses are all an integrant and fundamental part of this public sphere, even if we are within a media ecology and a genre economy that does not always allow comics to share the same cultural and critical reception space of other expressive and artistic languages and disciplines. (cf. Groensteen 2006, Maigret 2012) This has changed significantly in the past decade, not only in the United States but in some European countries as well, whether due to the presence of comics in the review pages of newspapers, or due to the organization of exhibitions in major visual arts institutions, the attribution of literary awards to graphic novels, not to mention the proliferation of academic assessment of comics, via monographs, essay collections, call for papers, and so on.

<3> As should be expected, within that public sphere we will always find works that are different and that act contrarily to hegemonic representations. Mark McKinney, addressing a judicious group of comics-production (French-speaking bande dessinées by contemporary French-Arab authors), speaks of an “alternative public sphere, in which history is debated and political positions are staked out” (2008: 162). The works I wish to discuss fall within the spectrum of works that discuss contrasting representations of the commonly accepted realities. Moreover, as already pointed out, they articulate personal memories and fiction, historical memory and its contestation: Edmond Baudoin and Troub‘s (Viva la Vida!) by giving voice to Mexico‘s poorer population; Maximilien Le Roy (Faire le Mur) by re-presenting the personality of a young Palestinian man; and Chantal Montellier (L’inscription) by addressing contemporary socio-political concerns through her fiction. All of them arrive thus to that precious and precise “public use of reason” which Kant discusses in Beantwortung der Frage: Was its Aufklärung? (1784). Instead of something close to what is usually called “public opinion” (which would entail the emergence of a new “tutelage”), it is a use that, according to Maurizio Borghi (who discusses Kant‘s text) assumes a truthful pedagogical (paideia) role that will contribute towards the emancipation of human beings (Borghi 2005-2006)[1].

<4> While not responding directly to the events of 9/11 or even to the mesh of military-political feedback associated with its causes and consequences, these books do work within a broader framework that contemplates 9/11 as an organizing principle or axis. I do not believe that for simply having been published after September 2001 these should be considered immediately “post-9/11 comics”, of course, and I do admit that bringing these three titles together, so different in nature, may not establish a clear-cut or even compelling argument. Perhaps the links are indirect at best, or feeble at worst. But they do exist. They demonstrate that 9/11 can refashion prior questions under different focuses, which forges the possibility of a new dialogue. Consider the following: Baudoin and Troub‘s‘ book is set in Ciudad Juarez, at the Mexico-U.S. border, so issues of international relations, militarism, economic pressure, are brought to the fore by the multitude of voices that compose its mosaic-like text. Le Roy visits the Middle East, or more precisely, the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank, within the framework of an exacerbation of the tense relationship between the West and the Arab World, and could be seen as a response to the demonization of Arabs, Muslims and Islam. Although this tendency existed before 9/11, it became even more pervasive and stringent after the events that took place in September 2011. Montellier‘s book is a fantasy, whose setting (Paris) and agents (the local powers) casts it even farther from the “9/11 theme”, but the way it engages surveillance culture, enhanced security, reality TV, and the commodification and instrumentalization of every element in social life (including insecurity and terror for political ends), can be associated with many prominent discussions on these subjects that took place after 9/11.

<5> Above all, these texts seem to be examples of what Ann Cvetkovich discusses as counter narratives. “This approach is especially urgent for the task of building cultural memory around September 11 and resisting the momentum of the culture industry, which is eager to tell a story that glorifies heroes and stresses national unity. In the United States, September 11 has already joined the pantheon of great national traumas, and I fear that its many and heterogeneous meanings (including the fact that it is a national trauma) will be displaced by a more singular and celebratory story” (apud Karuse 2011: 12-13).

<6> If we consider Walter Benjamin‘s dictum, “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (1992: 161; “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, section VII), then perhaps we can read many post-2001 comics, even if they are not addressing directly (i.e., diegetically, thematically) 9/11 or post-9/11 issues, as a form of resistance to more habitual responses. Neither mourning nor melancholic in nature, they attempt a move forward beyond trauma [2], especially through the gesture of dialogue with the Other, itself a subsequent one-sided construction of the crisis‘s discourses [3], perpetuated by works that stress their continuous existence within a uniform “crisis narrative”. These are works that aim towards a positive, constructive approach, contributing to a safe dialogue, a transcultural recognition of the Other which allows the Other‘s voice to form and, subsequently, to define itself from within. As it should be evident, we are aware that these are issues that were discussed long before the 9/11 events, especially within a post-colonialist and feminist ethnographic framework where non-hegemonic groups become empowered and recognized their voices recovered and heard in their own terms. But it can be said that after 9/11 these very same issues became enmeshed with wider global issues. In that sense, Baudoin, Troub‘s and Le Roy have all participated within the communities they have contacted, interacting directly with them, in order to overcome what James Clifford had called the “crisis of representations”. I hope, therefore, that by reading these diverse titles in this context will shed some light on the possibilities of opening up the field of inquiry not only of comics but also on how insecurity, as a pervasive affect, may be countered.

<7> Contrary to the opinion of some sectors within academia (or elsewhere), comics are not always, or even necessarily, popular culture. I wish to contest these widely spread ideas that “because of their populist and commercial nature, comics act as objects of mass culture and play an important role in the production of collective memory due to their mass appeal” (Dony-Linthout 2010: 180). First of all, I fail to see where the commercial nature of comics is any different from literature or cinema. Then, words such as “populist”, “mass culture” and “mass appeal” might not quite work well to define comics as a medium that has progressively lost the ubiquitous presence it had, say, in the 1920s and 1930s in both the US and Europe; moreover, it cannot be applied through-and-through in relation to the entire output of this (or any other) media, with the risk of becoming an essentializing, oversimplifying and basically wrong assumption. In other words, a medium should not be confused by one of its particular conceptual and cultural usages. Dony and Linthout address, for instance, Art Spiegelman‘s In The Shadow of No Towers. But how can a work that failed to find an immediate publisher in the artist‘s own country and found a first home in the German Die Zeit [4] fulfill the general mass-marketed role these scholars propose? Some comics are, in fact, popular and populist, commercial and mass-produced (such as Frank Miller‘s Holy Terror, DC or Marvel comics, even though one could argue that they are still “niche” products) but others are created with a deeper framework of meaning in mind (i.e. Spiegelman‘s, the previously referred to French titles, small press comics, and so on).

<8> In a footnote of Dan A. Hassler-Forest‘s essay, in which he addresses 9/11, superheroes and Hollywood, he adds that movies that acted out as an early response to 9/11, such as the multi-director 11‘09‘‘01 September 11 project (2002), were “aimed exclusively at (predominantly European) art house cinema audiences, and had no impact on American popular culture” (2010: 33-34). Although this information is not incorrect (and it was not Hassler-Forest‘s concern in his paper to state otherwise), why should we address only texts that have an assumed impact on “popular culture”? “Popular culture” is not antonym to “literature”, or “cinema” or “comics”, for that matter: the former is addressing the reception end of the chain and the latter a media. There is such a thing as “popular literature”, I believe, without it being a contradiction in terms. It can be said that the epithet “popular” does little to state a clear position: “as with all texts in popular culture, then as now, it is not easy to decide whether such provided texts reveal the thoughts of their readers” [5]. Today there is a wider choice of comics (some of which, it bears repeating, are not “popular culture”) and the circulation of this production is quite varied.

<9> The term “collective memory” brings about another issue that bears discussion. It is beyond the scope of this paper to problematize issues pertaining to the terms in use in Memory Studies, and even less so is it my desire to come up with a definitive definition of such terms (even if such a goal was attainable), but I should clarify the scope of a term that will be central in my argumentation. I would rather avoid the use of the vaguer notion of “collective memory”—despite the fact that it has been defined many times over by many theoreticians within different disciplines and perspectives. More often than not, “collective memory” seems to give the idea that there is a transcendental, overall content that is shared by a given community (national, cultural, imagined, etc.), as if in spite of differences of reception of a given event, it would be possible to reach an overarching common denominator, a monolithic, single story that would unite such a community. As an example, Alan Confino uses the term “collective memory” to define “an exploration of a shared identify that unites a social group, be it a family or a nation, whose members nonetheless have different interests and motivations.” (Confino 197: 1390) Greg Tinker, however, points out that it “cannot distinguish between fact and fiction”, something that must be mediated by the analytical interpretation of history. I would rather use “collective memory”, however, to describe that particular strand of memory that is created by official, top-down political institutions, precisely mixing historical fact and fictive or canonizing discourses, handed down in the form of monuments, certain types of writings and discourses, and general official representations [6]: something John Bodnar called “official memory”, in Remaking America (apud Tinker 2005: 3 and ff.).

<10> Being published, comics become part of what I will call public memory. By public memory I mean any kind of artifact (a text, a film, a comic book, a song) that is found within public reach. It can be bought and sold, swapped, read, heard, discussed, shared. This does not mean that it will constitute an official, institutional text, neither does it entail any sort of value or limitation: within the comics field, it can be a highly successful comic book run that has been adapted into a blockbuster movie, a low print run mini-comic or zine, or an independently-published graphic novel. Read by millions or a few dozen, all of them are public. The three works mentioned in this paper are all French, published in mainstream (Casterman) and alternative (L‘Association) presses, and even a mixed case (a respected publisher that recently moved into comics, Actes Sud); some are black-and-white while others are in color; some are fictional while others are not, and all those differences should be taken into consideration. All in all, their impact, reception, and social weight will be radically different from other works whose place has already been established in the public sphere, but we cannot deny that they exist within it. By focusing on public memory, therefore, I am not attempting to present an overall, sweeping look upon how memory is negotiated from both above and below, between political elites and the common people, but I propose to solely focus on a certain number of texts (Confino 1997: 1394; see also Niven 2008).

<11> 9/11 is an event that has produced many discourses, both official and contrarian, both popular and erudite. The response within the comics medium has not proven any different. Despite the fact that many have written that 9/11 “changed the world”, or “changed consciousnesses”, or that it heralded the 21st century, one must ponder carefully about its impact on both daily life through the mediations made possible by the arts, including comics. The conjoint attacks of September 11th 2001 in New York City, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania constitute in fact an event to which a quick and sensible answer is utterly impossible, with a “continuing conflict over [its] meaning” (Costello 2011:31). Such an impossibility is not due to the fact that it can constitute a traumatic event, not if we bear in mind Susannah Radstone‘s lesson that events are not traumatic per se, but it is rather the response of a given individual to it that may generate a trauma. First and foremost, a sensible answer is impossible because this event had a real impact on people‘s lives (both the dead and their families), an impact which extends into global political, economic, and military issues. So one must be careful to avoid what Geoffrey Wheathcroft has called “gibberish” and “the garbled utterances of the literary academic left”. Where comics are particularly concerned, scholars have pointed also to the existence of “some cartoon kitsch” (Worcester 2011: 139)[7].

<12> Such rhetoric defines 9/11 as an “event that defines the 21st century” or “a historical turning point” once again points at the desire to pivot the world on an American-centeredd axis, which may lead to yet another facet of imperialism. And while I do not believe, in the Frankfurt-school custom, that popular culture is necessarily a mouthpiece for hegemonic power, more often than not creations from popular quarters do tend to repeat a certain number of expected ideological constructions. North American mainstream comics often commingle one specific genre among many—superhero comics for instance, very diverse in themselves, are open to a multitude of reinterpretations, deconstructions, revisionisms, and subsequently to a wide array of ideological and political stances—with a production mode—under some degree of centralized editorial control. In turn, that mix is also often confused with the whole industry if not with the medium itself. And companies such as Marvel Comics and DC Comics, being the bona fide representatives of that mainstream, have delved into several “events” (in comics parlance, the coordination of several ongoing titles into a more or less coherent mega-narrative) after 9/11. Arguably, these “events” are but extending already common editorial practices that bring their entire fictional universes—the “Marvel Universe” or the “DC Universe”—under some sort of overwhelming threat, almost always “extinction-level threats”, or at least American nation-shattering. The title-names of these events, crossovers or “story arcs” are telling enough: Decimation, Secret War, Civil War, The Initiative, World War Hulk, Annihilation, War of Kings, Divided We Stand, Manifest Destiny, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, Siege, Fear Itself, Chaos War (all Marvel and interconnected to some degree), Our Worlds at War, Identity Crisis, Final Crisis, Faces of Evil (DC titles, with slightly loose interconnections).

<13> Two caveats are in order. First of all, we are not arguing that this particular genre is the only one that constitutes the North American comics mainstream. Some fantasy, war, noir, steampunk comics attain a high degree of success, either critically or commercially, or create their own fanbase. Moreover, one could also point to the growing presence of Japanese comics (manga) for instance, or the cultural capital that contemporary graphic novels have conquered in different circles. Although much has changed in the past ten years, it still holds true that superheroes are the first characters that come to mind to most people when discussing comics in general. It is this genre, after all, that has engendered the most visible fan sub-cultures, through fashion, cosplay, or the most vocal of opinions throughout internet channels, not to mention the associated merchandising industry and film adaptations (which have grossed millions in contrast with realistic depictions of 9/11 such as Oliver Stone‘s World Trade Center or Paul Greengrass‘ United 93). This is observable not only in the United States but other countries. Secondly, I am not stating that superhero comics are not capable of presenting resistant texts within the economy of its genre (although seldom beyond it), or, to quote an overused but well-studied adjective, revisionary texts [8]. But by focusing on oppositions, antinomies, Manichaeism absolutes, unrelenting enemies and the like—a position that is heralded by Huntington in his Clashing of Civilizations—it comes as no surprise that the mainstream comics industry will only underline and give continuation to representations of conflict. It is an integral part of superhero narratives‘ economy to have violent conflict at its core, despite whatever exceptions there may be (e.g., the Luna Brothers‘ Ultra). This is the exception that confirms the rule – the fact that revisionist texts need the original stereotypes to be acknowledged in order to gain purchase.

<14> A comprehensive assessment on the North-American comics‘ community response is found in Worcester 2011. The author discusses editorial cartoons and anthologies, from both mainstream and alternative circles, superhero comics and, more briefly, some book-length works, showing how they “provided a means of mourning the dead, conveying anxiety, reaffirming civic values, and, for some cartoonists, of sounding the alarm” (2011: 140). Some comics created dystopias in the near future in which the US slips into new Civil Wars, social breakdowns, the collapse of the rule of law, or the emergence of a society under permanent surveillance, such as DMZ, Wasteland, and Gen-Eg. Others do commentary on actual policies through fiction such as Army@Love, Ex Machina and Pride of Baghdad. Others still were triggered directly as a response to 9/11 and the politics that followed, case in point David Rees‘ Get Your War On.

<15> Whereas some popular strands of comics production have drawn heavily on and acted upon the spectacular nature of the 9/11 attacks, other areas, especially the so-called “alternative” scene, have dealt with experiences on a more personal (cf. In the Shadow of No Towers, American Widow, 9-11: Emergency Relief). In both cases, however, the overwhelming, almost numbing nature of the event is always stressed, in such a way that it fixes its reading, transforming it into a place of melancholy, if not of trauma. As most of these works responded as quickly as they could to what had happened, the event‘s proximity should be taken in account [9]. Trauma, at least from one perspective, not only locks people in the past (or a present burdened by the past), but also crystallizes that same past. Alertness and anxiety are crosshatched through these works, finding traumatic shadows lurking everywhere, including and retrospectively before the event itself, as if it could cast a precognitive shadow onto its own past. And the response, after an initial inertia, is translated into positive but also into dramatic action. In a way, these titles also contribute somehow to a unanimity of representations and conceptual constructs.

<16> Other works, especially one-panel and/or editorial [10] cartoons, or magazine covers [11], precisely because they work with less sequential, and arguably more iconic images, have used “sober imagery that often relied on familiar national symbols and tropes.” (Worcester 2011: 144) In a way they were used more for “memorializing” the event (Hoffman-Howard 2007) than to create any kind of reasoning around or on it. Within editorial cartoons, Donna Hoffman and Alison Howard (2007) argue that the “images of the 9-11 attacks become a constricted symbol” in the sense that even though artists continue to create images that question or ridicule domestic and foreign policies of US authorities, they restrain themselves from combining these with representations of the twin towers or other metonymies that could remind one of 9/11. A common strategy of both popular culture narratives and jingoist journalism and propaganda (a difference in genre, not in kind) is to stress the ordinariness of the victims at the same time that the exceptionality (and absolutely evil and outstanding character) of the crime‘s perpetrators is brought to the fore. To quote E. P. Thompson once again, “People can swing swiftly between poles when their leaders shift. But even loud patriotism must be inspected carefully for its nuances, its authenticity and also its ego-trips.” [12]

<17> There is, however, some resistance from certain quarters to engage in explanations. “But by offering up explanations of questionable veracity we diminish or disregard the unique qualities of the characters and events that comprise 9/11” (Kading 2005: 215). Terry Kading analyzes the singularity and seemingly absolute lack of precedents of the event in order to discuss it as a “supervillainous act”, which he analyzes in a profoundly philosophical manner, associating 9/11 to representations that, thus far, only existed in the four-colored realm of the superhero genre of comics. Moreover, the main point of Kading‘s discussion is precisely that “the goal of renewed security eludes us as we are forced to conceive, visualize and prepare for a whole new set of potential catastrophic eventualities, the likes of which further provoke uncertainty and insecurity.” (207) The point thus remains: it is as if the only possible mediated response to the event was through other spectacular and often violent means, more often than not conveyed in mainstream [13] comics‘ production. And in any case what most of these “business as usual” comics convey is a certain sense that the only possible reaction is the creation of an ambient of uncertainty, discomfort and suspicion. In the case of superhero fare, it‘s melodramatic action that moves up the stakes and, consequently, entrench obvious positions and expected roles (Americans as the global defenders of democracy and peace, while others act as disrupters of an ever-increasing world-sought but vague “freedom”).

<18> But beyond such dichotomies, is it possible to find yet other forms of response to such events and their fixed discourses?

<19> Following the examples of Art Spiegelman‘s In The Shadow of No Towers and Alissa Torres and Sungyoon Choi‘s American Widow (among other possible examples) we can see how comics can act as a “working-through” process in relation to traumatic experiences such as what occurred with 9/11 (and also “11/M” in Madrid or “7/7” in London). They help their creators “into new patterns of ordinary existence.” (Aronstein 2011) I am interested in new patterns that do not seek to perpetuate neither the bellicose responses of governments nor the traumatic event itself, but take those same opportunities to explore a dialogic field, in which an approach to the Other, whatever form this Other may take, is shaped as a new experience altogether [14]. This resistance is then not only operated in relation to the “single story” but also to the histrionics, the theatrics and the rhetoric of all its associated discourses. Fear, violent acts, suspicion and overwhelming anguish are dispensed with by these artists who “walk on by” towards new fashions of contacting the other.

<20> In no way am I arguing that the works I have quoted briefly so far are unimportant, non-valid or inferior in any way. By using American examples in this discussion and then moving on to closer analysis of French titles, I also do not wish to create any kind of simplistic, overarching divide. I am responding to my perception of how the interconnected realm of comics and 9/11 has been studied thus far, and, by focusing on quite dissimilar works, I am attempting to understand if different paths for expression and thought are possible.

<21> Viva La Vida! is a book co-created by French veteran cartoonist Edmond Baudoin and a younger yet accomplished artist, Jean-Marc Troubet, a.k.a. Troub‘s, published by the critically acclaimed, independent label L‘Association. The first thing that comes to mind when describing this project is that it brings together several genres. It can be considered at one time a travelogue, a reportage, but also a sort of diary about the brief acquaintance of two artists and also of their conjoined process of working together.

<22> Viva La Vida! recounts the trip Troub‘s‘ and Baudoin‘s took together to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, “the most dangerous city in the world” (2011: 2, all translations from this book and the next two mine). Baudoin, in the first pages, reveals that he wanted to go there after he read Roberto Bolaño‘s 2666, so he secured the institutional back-up necessary to travel there with his friend and colleague. The journey had a specific goal, and the authors explicitly reveal it in a manner very familiar for those who have been following Baudoin‘s oeuvre. But this manner becomes Troub‘s‘ as well, whose style, creative process and voice are somewhat influenced by his older mentor. As it is written in the book: “To find places to draw. To draw the portrait of those who wish it and ask them, ’what‘s your dream?‘ To say life where death dwells.” (2011: 23)

<23> A substantial part of this book, then, is devoted to introducing the people they meet, the places they visit, and also to expound on the tensions that exist between “this side” of Rio Grande, that is to say the Mexican side of the border, and “the other side”, El Paso, Texas. It is very telling that this follows a local perspective, and not the hegemonic, pretensely neutral view of a certain inscription in an “us” that is always “the same”, capitalist, liberal, colonial, and American or American-like, which would call Texas‘ “this side” and Mexico “the other side”. These encounters promote reflections and surprises, but it is the portrait of people‘s utterances when confessing their dreams that constitute the touchstone of the book. Some sections, vignettes or even full pages, present portraits of the people they meet done by either of the authors, with the name of the person, their occupation and a phrase notted down that states their dream: “I want to paint” (2011: 30), “I want a new house” (45), “ending up accepting who I am” (47), “to work, more and more”, “become old” (57)… Some are simple, ranging from the universal-sentimentalist (“happiness for the entire world, joy”, 68) to degraded, selfish ones (“I want a lot of women”, 69).

<24> Although the authors create small icons to distinguish who is writing and drawing—for those familiar with the artist‘s styles it is not absolutely difficult, but the fact they use the same materials, media and color schemes may become confusing from time to time -, namely a little turtle for Troub‘s and a uni-browed, goat-like man‘s head for Baudoin, I will consider all the narrator‘s sentences and drawings as belonging to a sole artistic gesture, or graphiateur, to employ Philippe Marion‘s term of comics scholarship. This basically means that we are facing a coherent text, even if constructed from distinct voices.

<25> On page 57 they write, “we‘ll end up being seen as dream catchers”, showing also a dreamcatcher. Although this is a Ojibwe cultural artefact, it has been adapted elsewhere, and some of the people the authors interview are, of course, First Nations. Both the confession and the drawn object, then, act as shorthand for the capture and redistribution of dreams, which can also be seen as a drive of the book. Closer to the aim of the present paper, though, this book also questions the state of the world, and the mode of interpreting the facts that constitute that world. Let us remind ourselves of Wittgenstein‘s lessons from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “1. The world is all that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things. (…) 2.04 The totality of existing states of affairs is the world. 2.12 A picture is a model of reality.”, and so on (Wittgenstein 1995: 29, 34, 35).

<26> This means is used to listen to the local people, to give them a voice. And some of their dreams are highly significant where the political and economic order is concerned. When Elpidia says “I want justice for women in the world, the end of their exploitation, suffering, discrimination and assassination. I dream of equality” or Ricardo mentions that “we need a pact, a blood pact between the main forces in action, and to reflect upon the legalization of drugs”, (47) they are both referring to very concrete situations that are also explored in this book, and are related to the specific circumstances of life in this border town. Even when the answers seem to be very personal they do seem to resonate with the local specificities: “to capture with music everything that I’ve experienced. To capture what we live with in Juarez. This mixture of violence and hope of change” (41), “to end with all the questions that I have from my past… and go” (44). However, some of their dreams have very clear political implications, as when Hector, a university student, says “I‘d like nations to knock down their borders. I see life through art, and social equality. A world without police, without governments. The freedom of a planetary thought-process. To bring home the implications of this, Baudoin drew a small anarchy “A” symbol within Hector‘s speech balloon (90).

<27> There are several moments in which the authors connect their personal efforts to a wider framework. For instance, at one point the authors discuss a similar “dream catching” project done in Mexico, in which a newspaper journalist interviewed 75 young children about their dreams and, 12 years later, re-interviewed them to understand both their failures and conquests. Unfortunately, the journalist “realizes that the majority works today in the drug trafficking business” (80). Viva la Vida!, in turn, only shows the current interviews, of course, and the circumstances of the authors‘ work. But somehow it is as if it promises a future document by quoting this other journalistic project. We could go even further, and say that to a certain extent the present book is a sign of that same hopeful future.

<28> As I have pointed out this book also incorporates other elements: the moments previous to their trip in which Baudoin and Troub‘s meet, their first discussions of the project, the authors‘ impressions and expectations in relation to Ciudad Juarez, a comic-inside-the-comic by a local artists‘ collective (656 Comics), and the depiction of the routines and work processes by the artists themselves. Sometimes a page will welcome a drawing by one of the friends or participants in this project. The patchwork quality that emerges within this is not disruptive at all, if we consider Baudoin‘s and Troub‘s‘ own solo work. Both lovers of sketchbooks, carnets de voyage and landscape drawings, they incorporate the original sketches and folios they did at the chosen locales into the finished and reproduced art of their; the ripped margins or the perforated marks of spiral-bound paper stock is visible, as are corrections with white out, the materiality of the brushwork and pen, blots, etc. Many times, a drawing that was created in a locale is extended beyond the original folio to create the final printed page. This gives a polyphonic and polygraphic quality to this project.

<29> One of the outstanding traits of this book is that its purpose is to devise a place for the expression of the local‘s people own perspective, without trying to adapt the other through a hegemonic discursive mode, although working within the familiarity of the tropes and figures of a specific strand of contemporary alternative bande dessinée, in order to incorporate those voices. On the one hand, this is akin to (modern) comics journalism, although this statement would warrant a more sustained discussion about it, and it will not be possible to do so within the scope of this paper. Arguably, the most famous example of comics journalism is Joe Sacco’s work, but the names of Philippe Squarzoni, Étienne Davodeau or Ted Rall could be added to the tally, each and every one of them utilizing different approaches [15]. Viva la Vida! has its own approach—the authors themselves are represented within the action, their subjectivity and reactions to what they learn and their experience is not hidden: they leave space for other people to question them and even write/draw on their pages. On the other hand, such a project is very different, of course, from older traditions of comics, in which the works from a hegemonic culture (say, that of the francophone world) would “speak for” the Othe [16]. Opening up such a space for the Other—in this case, the inhabitants of Ciudad Juarez—to speak for themselves [17], it is as if they are opening a trench within a socially naturalized art, comics, to create a “foreign language inside the mother‘s tongue” (to quote an image that Deleuze and Guattari‘s borrowed from Proust, whose discussion of a “minor language” would reveal interesting analytical tools to address these encounters).

<30> A woman called Lupe tells Baudoin and Troub‘s that she understands “that in France, you‘re afraid of foreigners”, to which Troub‘s replies “In France, we‘re afraid of our own shadows”. Lupe replies that “no foreigners will come to Juarez anymore, we are killing each other”. In this brief discussion the questions of “othering”, or exo-categorization, becomes central. 9/11 has created great divides along nations, languages, political alliances and even “civilizations” (if we are to take this word at face-value). An “Other” is always the not-self, and more often than not, the Self is an “unproblematic and unmarked Western self.” (Abu-Lughod 1991: 467) Spivak (1988) also speaks of the “European subject” and of the transparency with which European intellectuals, even when elaborating clear politically resistant discourses (as in the cases of Deleuze and Foucault, which she discusses), seem to end up bound to. Or, to employ a charged term that she also uses, “whiteness” restricts them. Spivak‘s warning is, of course, “that to buy a self-contained version of the West is to ignore its production by the imperialist project.” (1998: 86)

<31> Viva la Vida! resists that construction of the Other as an Other in relation to a “transparent Self” by expanding its scope of connections, taking into account political, economic and social factors that underline global power relations. It also focuses on the daily life, specifically in Ciudad Juarez, but also integrating it into a wider framework (an issue that I‘d like to stress once again existed before 9/11). At the very opening of the narrative we also have access to reminiscences of the authors‘ witnessing of diverse situations that somehow echo the political interconnections of their trip to Mexico: Baudoin watching kids playing football on a beach in Casablanca, and imagining a sea of water and sand, both uniting and separating Africa and Europe; Troub‘s memory of being at the port of Tangiers and watching a clandestine man escaping from their authorities and another one being captured and of stories of his friend who worked with refugees from Burundi. These experiences and memories of people from other quadrants of society contribute to a subtle idea of an alternative globalization, more human in scale, resistant in terms of political struggle, and attentive towards the people that have been forgotten by capitalist promises.

<32> > Ciudad Juarez, Tangiers, Casablanca, the war-beset Rwanda-Congo frontier, places such as the Foz do Iguaçu/Ciudad del Este, studied by Brazilian anthropologist Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, are what he calls “social transfrontiers”, “spaces out of state control and [that], as a result, are negatively valued by authorities and the media as zones prone to illegal activities. Such spaces, thus, can easily be manipulated by different political and economic interests since they are liminal zones, hybrids that mix people, things and information from many different national origins, and reveal nation-States‘ fragilities.” (Ribiero 2006: 240)

<33> By visiting such a transfrontier, “the most dangerous city in the world”, but focusing on the daily life, dreams and hopes of individuals, as well as issues of collaboration, education and social solidarity, and also employing one of the most important assets of anthropology, “the consideration of the agent‘s points-of-view” (Ribiero 2006: 234) Baudoin and Troub‘s are contributing with a safer perspective towards those places, which allows for mutual recognition, beyond the single story of the violence of that Mexican city. They do not hide it, but they do show that in spite of it, there are “places to draw” and “to say life where death dwells”, to quote once again from the authors.

<34> A somewhat similar work is Maximilien Le Roy‘s Faire le Mur, published by the more conventional, if not conservative, Casterman (publishers of Tintin). Although it is written and drawn by Le Roy, the narrative is told from a first person perspective, the protagonist being a young Palestinian man named Mahmoud Abu Srour, who lives in the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank. Mahmoud works in his family‘s grocery store, and has two dreams: to flirt with as many foreign girls as possible (and the opportunities are many, bearing in mind the presence of volunteers from all over the world) and to pursue his career as a graphic artist. He wishes to draw, to work on illustration and comics. Although neither the preface of the book nor the story itself present clear indications about it, a few additional photographic, annotated documents at the end of the volume reveal that Mahmoud is not a fictional character, but an actual person with whom Le Roy came in contact with. Le Roy does not represent himself in his book, and it is through the available paratextual material printed in this same volume that we come to realize that they met. Nurturing a strong friendship bond with him, Le Roy then proceeded with the creation or retelling of Srour‘s story.

<35> Still, this degree of lack of clarity between genres—fiction, auto-fiction, reportage—could be justified by a sense of protection. Joe Sacco, who represents himself in his own work, also alters parts of his interviews and changes names whenever he needs to protect his sources from eventual retaliations. Perhaps Mahmoud is the confluence of several people, perhaps he is based on one single person as shown through the photos; perhaps he is a combination of characteristics from both the author himself and another person.

<36> This lack of unambiguity does not prevent us from going into the heart of the matter. Faire le Mur is the telling of a young man‘s quotidian life and desires. Aida is a prison of sorts, where all its inhabitants have their own stories, fears and angers, aspirations and fantasies. Whereas Sacco is known for his polyphonic, prismatic approach, Le Roy‘s book homes in on the life of a singular person. Srour has no desire to hold grudges, nor to represent himself as a victim, nor solicit sympathy from anyone. He just wishes to live his life as a dignified human being, and no matter how many times he falls, he gets up and continues down his path. And we do witness the many times he falls, although they are never portrayed in a melodramatic, exploitative manner: whether being shot at by Israeli border soldiers, defending his mother from their insults, or crossing the border into Beersheba and back to visit his sister.

<37> The French author uses several graphical, figurative approaches in order to make this varied experience visible, sometimes within the same page. To begin with, there is a clearly central, continuous line of realistic drawings, with a jaggy contour line, and with a constricted color palette (in various shades of dark olive greens, perhaps reminiscent of the trees that grow ubiquitously in the area). This style is used to represent Mahmoud‘s daily, current life. Then there is a second similar style, with infographic-like schemes integrated into the images, or with uncolored sections, that is used to represent historical episodes, culturally recognizable iconic figures (Che Guevara, Subcomandante Marcos, Mandela, Jean Moulin), as well as key moments of local but also global history (incorporated a universal telling of the struggle for human rights). Flashbacks, in Srour‘s life, are represented by colorless panels with figures delineated in the same jaggy pencil line (the texture of the shading or darker parts allowing us to realize that the author uses watercolor paper, visible through the textured quality of his shading). Finally, we also “see” Srour‘s own drawings: highly stylized figures, with huge eyes and angular, plastic bodies, almost as if hallucinated, expressively colored with crayons, particularly in hues of red, orange, pink and brown. The book makes sparse use of speech balloons for short dialogues, using first person captions instead throughout these several levels previously outlined. But within Srour‘s drawings, the few speech balloons are filled with dotted or zigzag lines, or are made up of garbled doodles, as if it was more important the fact that they are communicating than their actual words. Or perhaps it is difficult to make plain what people are trying to say from that place of oppression. Sometimes their movements are blurred or twisted, as if they wanted to say much more than they are allowed to.

<38> Simone Bitton, in the foreword, speaks of Maximilien Le Roy‘s “generosity” for “the voice [parole] given to his friend”, (2010: n.p) but I disagree. Such generosity would be clearer if Srour‘s name was printed on the cover, as the co-author he clearly is. Could we not invert the factors and realize that it is actually Srour who is being generous towards the French author for lending his voice to Le Roy? It is not as much Le Roy who “gives voice to” Srour—which would always be understood as a relation of power, where it is the giver who has the power, the choice, and the actual gesture to give the voice to a subaltern—but Srour-the-protagonist who offers subject matter and expressivity to the author. In any case, even if it is a wholly fictional character, at the end of their journey (on the one hand, Srour‘s life, on the other, Le Roy‘s book), their direction is the same. Despite its title, Faire le Mur (lit. “building a wall”, but equivalent to “sauter le mur”, i.e. “to leave from a place without authorization” [18]) is actually about building a strong sense of self, of empowering one‘s own voice, and being able to speak—and dream, and draw—from a place of oppression. From a place of insecurity, to build security.

<39> The final book I would like to mention, as an example of this resistance to the representation of perpetual conflict, is L‘Inscription, by yet another French artist, Chantal Montellier. This is published by Actes Sud BD, a collection of “literary”-type comics from a well-established literary house. Montellier is, in a way an outsider star in French bande dessinée: she was associated with independent publishers such as Les Humanoïdes Associés and Futuropolis during the late 1970s, a colleague of avant-garde comics creators such as Bazooka, and a collaborator of the leftist political press (from Le Monde to Combat Syndicaliste). Her work has always focused on political themes such as racism, sexism, feminism, political activism, the deconstruction of official propaganda from the government or the police, and anti-nuclear actions.

<40> “Inscription”, in this book, must be understood as the social, philosophical principle of becoming integrated into society to a certain extent, the wish to become part of a social or political, homogeneity, if not hegemony. We could perhaps differentiate “integration”, in the sense of a dilution within that societal “sameness”, and “inscription”, which would allow for some degree of differentiation, some degree of tension. However, Montellier‘s book creates an absurd universe where the act of inscription is a rather literal, straightforward, bureaucratic act.

<41> The main character, Caroline, is a young, flighty poet who lives in the margins of society, culturally and aesthetically, but also economically and socially. Furthermore, although somewhat shallowly, she is also “different” in her presentation of the self as she is represented with an unruly lock of hair. Urged by a friend, she decides to “normally inscribe herself in the real”, (2011: n.p.) an act surprisingly easy to accomplish within this fictional universe: Caroline simply has to visit the right bureau, fill in a form, and be interviewed by an official (“l‘inscripteur”) to achieve inscription.

<42> Today, “difference” is very often a co-opted notion that is demanded by cultural conformity. Even publicity strategies will dare the consumer to “be different” by drinking brand x or wear brand y jeans. It is not my place to engage with this sort of broad-ranging cultural criticism, but it is important to point out that Caroline understands that to “inscribe herself in the real” means to choose one particular real, “that of the winners of the day” or of “the media circus.” (n.p.)

<43> Montellier quotes heavily from Lewis Carroll‘s Alice books, both textually and visually, as well as from Kakfa, creating a slightly obvious oppressive ambient that surrounds her character (underlined by the subdued color scheme, which uses blues, violets, ochres and greens always with a bleak tone). This exposes the possibility of a crossover between a realistic setting and fantasy elements. On the one hand, Caroline seems to be walking among the streets of contemporary France: there are posters with the faces of famous politicians such as President Sarzoky and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë (here called “Delanoix”); she takes the subway and sits down at cafés. On the other hand, a mini-Caroline, with little insect wings, seems to float by her, as a sort of sprite that represents her unconscious response to her surroundings. Dreams, memories and fears are represented within the same plane of composition as the so-called “real”. It is as if Caroline lives in a permanent tension between the so-called everyday reality and all her virtual becomings, in a porous world. These becomings are also visible through the many Caroline versions that appear throughout the book—roles that she aims to play or that others force her to play, especially within the sex industry “episode” in which she is rendered according to a multitude of typical comics styles (from hentai manga to superhero comics, to humorous strips).

<44> L‘Inscription also adds to the discussion about surveillance society or “dataveillance”, every street corner and building being mounted with CCTV cameras. A Big Brother scenario is stressed by the slogans that punctuate Caroline‘s daily life: Sarkozy‘s posters demand “Work more!”, her xenophobe concierge‘s parrot screams “La ‘Rance aux ‘rançais!” (a wordplay between France and rancid), a shopping mall‘s screens declare “the client king”, and the phone sex company Mediasex (a job Caroline gets in order to become part of the real) promises “call us and enjoy yourself” (bear in mind that jouir has sexual undertones). A nightmarish turn of this is stressed by characters whose heads are replaced by CCTV cameras or telephone receivers.

<45> It is not possible to engage in a close analysis of the entire book in this paper, but suffice to say that even when the powers that be are closer to make her an integral part of their society, to inscribe her totally, they fail. Caroline is thus the embodiment of a resistance to that violence operated by the State on their citizens.

<46> This is not to say that Montellier‘s book does not suffer of some degree of conceptual feebleness. In a way, the manichaeism she presents with the pretty, eco-conscious, sensitive young poet working against the villainous, leery, self-indulgent, over-imposing representatives of the State plays too much into a cliché, instead of an actual discussion of our own reality under heavy control and surveillance. This book is quite different from other projects by the artist, in which she addressed precise historical events, such as Les Damnés de Nanterre.

<47> Under these multiple layers of realities, and fantasies and dreams, there is no single, unitary reality, and therefore, perhaps, no ultimate inscription. The point of the book is not to clarify a such a supposed reality in any case. It seems to be more preoccupied with showing us that only a full acceptance by each and every one of us of our own unique experience, which comprehends fantasy, dream, memories, will make us complete individuals. Perhaps that is a fantasy, or perhaps it is the ultimate reality. Whichever may be the case, L‘Inscription works as a potential mapping of the connections between those realms, and it offers us a path, however fictional.

<48> It is possible that there is some degree of political naïveté in these projects. And manichaeism can only go so far. In Baudoin and Troub‘s‘ case, by drawing U.S. financial and industrial interests, corrupt policemen and government officials and drug barons on the one hand, and ritualistic indigenous peopleand common people on the other hand (slightly romanticized on a strange page in which everyone, including the authors, are represented with birds‘ heads—as if pointing out “integration” and “sameness”), the subtleties of the drug economy and the mutual dependence between both sides of the US-Mexico border are not always made clear in Viva la Vida!. Montellier‘s book is a little over-schematic, due to the many fiction sources it uses and mixes. Perhaps using hard data and exploring the connections between the capital market, financial politics, political power and private interests—as Philippe Squarzoni constructs his essayistic comics, for instance—would be a better strategy. Le Roy is closer to that, due to the fact that Faire le Mur contains several paratextual and additional material (photographic essays, interviews, etc.). However, taking in consideration the representational strategies, narrative structures and day-by-day poetic approach of these books, it is shown that the most effective texts are the ones that choose education through example instead of lecture.

<49> If we are using the word resistance in a political sense it is done in relation to a more or less unified worldview shared by hegemonic regimes across the globe, especially as they are related to a certain reductive vision of globalization (not an uncomplicated concept, but one that does not have to be necessarily equated to the liberal-capitalist agenda). During a time when the world seems to walk in large strides down the paths of insecurity, uncertainty and defeatism, these are some of the fulgurating gestures that show us another way to lend a hand and an ear to others, and not encapsulating them into one single story.

<50> Perhaps it seems a little far-fetched to quote books by French authors that take place in third-party countries (Mexico, the Aida camp), or in slightly exaggerated portraits of reality, to address “post 9/11” issues. Nonetheless, I feel that is by exactly looking at such different, unexpected networks of human similarities, that these authors not only draw on but also draw up, and that we can acknowledge the existence of discourses, within the comics medium, that aim for wider, stronger and more effective security.

Notes

[1] On the introduction to Post-Colonial Cultures in France, the editors ask themselves, “How far may one speak of a minority public sphere?” (HARGREAVES-McKinney 1997: 6).

[2] As, for instance, Chris Ware‘s integration of 9/11 as an inevitable but undramatized footnote in the life of Jordan Lint in his Acme Novelty Library # 20, “Lint” (Drawn & Quarterly: 2011).

[3] In Spivak‘s words, “the persistent constitution of Other as the Self's shadow” (1988).

[4] Cf. McGlothlin 2010: 107, note 12.

[5] Thompson, E. P., “Which Britons?”, in Making History. Writings on History and Culture. The New Press: New York 1994.; pg. 325.

[6] This is not to say that these “texts” are taken at face value, unopposed, uncriticized. But their very creation and anchorage presupposes a largely accepted circulation, contrary to alternative texts, whose social integration is more limited and circumscribed.

[7] A case in point is Frank Miller‘s Holy Terror, a sort of return to old school propaganda through comics, or, as Chris Murray put it, “popaganda” (“Popaganda: Superhero Comics and Propaganda”, in Comics & Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics, edited by Anne Magnussen, Hans-Christian Christiansen, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2000). Miller‘s book is a case study all by itself and it has been discussed by some comics scholars.

[8] See Coogan 2006 and Klock 2002 for a broad introduction on both the history and the “revision” of the genre, and Thompson 2005 for an engaging reading of Watchmen as, arguably, the unsurpassed resistant text within the superhero genre. Closer to 9/11 and its representation see Costello 2011 to understand their “underlying ambiguity” and “agon of conflicting identities” (37) as well as Packard 2011.

[9] One of the anonymous reader of this paper pointed out to the importance of the publishing dates of these works. Whereas most mainstream responses were done immediately after 9/11—a question of months—the ones I discuss here were done years after, and do not respond immediately to the event. This is not to say that the mere dating of the works is significant per se, as we‘ll see, but it is surely something that may help us to identify tendencies on how responses to such an event were created, with a more passionate, emotional force when close to the event, and with a more critical assessment of its context and consequences when considering it later.

[10] See Hoffman-Howard 2007.

[11] See Karuse 2011.

[12] Op. cit, pg. 324.

[13] We must take in account that this dichotomy “mainstream/alternative” is mostly an abstract divide created by comics scholarship and that speaks to a certain anxiety of the area. Perhaps I am wrong in using it here, but it is shorthand for a set of attributes and expectations.

[14] However, one must be quite careful not to fall into facile traps of essentialism, unnecessarily aggrandizing a medium into unsustainable positions, such as Dony-LINTHOT (2010), who argue that comics are “better equipped for trauma”.

[15] For two somewhat complementary but contrary positions, see Vanderbeke: 2010 and Woo: 2010.

[16] As in the cases of classical series like Alix and Asterix, where the Gaul heroes represent the model-focus from which all the other cultures they have contact with become “different” and “others”, leading to a sort of “I‘ll speak for you in my comic”. Although this is still different from a “I‘ll speak for myself in my own comic” associated with authors such as Farid Boudjellal and Kamel Khélif, Baudoin‘s and Troub‘s‘ project amounts to a “you will speak for yourself in my comic”. These questions the “subaltern‘s voice in comics-making” was the subject of another study, unpublished and in Portuguese, for a PhD seminar in Theory of Culture, under the auspices of Professor António Sousa Ribeiro; in English translation it would be titled “The Oud‘s Voice. The Creation of Multicultural Spaces and the Voice Reclaiming of the “Other” in French Contemporary Comics” (Moura: forthcoming). This is somehow a twin essay to the present paper.

[17] Although I am aware that many of these issues came to the fore from the 1960s through the 1980s thanks to disciplines such as cultural studies and critical ethnography, my point here is not to engage with that particular history and development within the comics medium, but simply to assess how these authors engage in such an attention and dialogue as a matter of fact, something that I feel is still not too common in the field.

[18] Thank you to one of the anonymous reader of this paper for pointing the importance of this out.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank both Susana Araújo and Susana Martins for their invitation and support throughout this whole process. Thanks are due to the two anonymous reviewers of the paper, whose sharp and attentive criticisms have made me rethink some of my points of argumentation. Also I would like thank Miriam Sampaio for proof-reading my garbled English. Rik Spanjers was instrumental for carrying on. All remaining errors or inconsistencies are mine.

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