Identity and History in Non-Anglophone Comics 1032480874, 9781032480879

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Chapter 1 Introduction
Part 1 Identities
Chapter 2 Outwitting the Flemish Past: Willy Vandersteen’s Dealing with Brabant Underdogs in Suske en Wiske’s ‘Het Spaanse spook’ (1948–1950)
Chapter 3 Displacement, Space, and Questions of Belonging: German and Colombian Graphic Novels in Dialogue
Chapter 4 Visual Aspects of Modern Greek Identity
Chapter 5 Mexico’s Conquest, Independence, and Revolution According to Rius
Part 2 Radicalisms
Chapter 6 Socialist Swedish Comics: Anticapitalism, International Solidarity and Whiteness in Johan Vilde and The Phantom
Chapter 7 Abandoning Ideals and Producing Graphic Disillusionment in Suomen suurin kommunisti
Chapter 8 Capitalism, Freedom, Future: Picture of Polish Transformation in the Graphic Novel Osiedle Swoboda
Chapter 9 Dissent and Resistance in Contemporary Portuguese Comics: The Case of Buraco #4 and Porto’s Es.Col.A. Movement
Part 3 Genders
Chapter 10 How to Discuss Sexual Identity, Minority Rights, and Society in Chile?: The Case of Katherine Supnem’s ‘Underground’ Comics
Chapter 11 Questioning the Inescapable Male Gaze in Altarriba and Kim’s El arte de volar and El ala rota
Chapter 12 The Pirate, the Queen, and the Handkerchief: Gráinne Mhaol, an Irishwoman among Men
Part 4 Historiographics
Chapter 13 Expressions of Subjectivity: Recent Historical Events Represented in Twenty-First-Century Chilean Autobiographical Comics
Chapter 14 Punťa the Dog Goes to the Second Italo–Abyssinian War: Czech, Polish, and American Comic Heroes in the Real-World Conflict of 1935–1936
Index

Citation preview

IDENTITY AND HISTORY IN NON-ANGLOPHONE COMICS

This book explores the historical and cultural signifcance of comics in languages other than English, examining the geographic and linguistic spheres which these comics inhabit and their contributions to comic studies and academia. The volume brings together texts across a wide range of genres, styles, and geographic locations, including the Netherlands, Colombia, Greece, Mexico, Poland, Finland, Portugal, Ireland, and the Czech Republic, among others. These works have remained out of reach for speakers of languages other than the original and do not receive the scholarly attention they deserve due to their lack of English translations. This book highlights the richness and diversity these works add to the corpus of comic art and comic studies that Anglophone comics scholars can access to broaden the collective perspective of the feld and forge links across regions, genres, and comic traditions. Part of the Global Perspectives in Comics Studies series, this volume spans continents and languages. It will be of interest to researchers and students of comics studies, literature, cultural studies, popular culture, art and design, illustration, history, flm studies, and sociology. Harriet E.H. Earle is a senior lecturer in English at Shefeld Hallam University and research fellow at the Centre for War, Atrocity, and Genocide at the University of Nipissing. She is the author of Comics,Trauma, and the New Art of War (2017) and Comics: An Introduction (2020) and the series editor of Global Perspectives in Comics Studies. She also sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Martin Lund is senior lecturer in religious studies at the Department of Society, Culture and Identity at Malmö University, Sweden. He is the author of Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection (2016) and co-editor of Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation (2017, with A. David Lewis) and Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics (2020, with Sean Guynes). His research interests include the intersections of religions and comics, comics and identity, and comics and urban life. He is also co-editor of the series Encapsulations: Critical Comics Studies (with Julia Round).

Global Perspectives in Comics Studies Series editor: Harriet E.H. Earle, Shefeld Hallam University, UK

Global Perspectives in Comics Studies focuses on comics as an international form, with histories as rich and complex as the stories that fll the pages. We bring together original scholarship on a wide range of themes and theoretical concerns that span the globe. These texts present outstanding bold interventions into existing scholarly conversations, with the freedom (indeed, explicit encouragement) to collocate works by creators from diferent national and analytical traditions, as well as genres within the form. The books in the series are concerned with ofering fresh perspectives on established concepts and theories through the comics form. Our aim in this series is to forge links across the feld, to foreground artistic and academic contexts that are underrepresented, and to give attention to comics in all their various guises. Ultimately, this series wants to encourage readers to challenge their existing perspectives on a form that is central to the reading lives of so many. Books in the series Cartooning China Punch, Power, & Politics in the Victorian Era Amy Matthewson Burning Down the House Latin American Comics in the 21st Century Edited by Laura Cristina Fernández, Amadeo Gandolfo and Pablo Turnes Comics and Migration Practices and Representation Edited by Ralf Kauranen, Olli Löytty, Aura Nikkilä and Anna Vuorinne For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Global-Perspectives-in-Comics-Studies/book-series/GPCS

IDENTITY AND HISTORY IN NON-ANGLOPHONE COMICS

Edited by Harriet E.H. Earle and Martin Lund

Designed cover image: Anomalía, Elisa Echeverría, 2012, p. 5. Copyright © 2012 Elisa Echeverría. First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Harriet E.H. Earle and Martin Lund; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Harriet E.H. Earle and Martin Lund to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-26923-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-48087-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-38684-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841 Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

List of Figures List of Contributors 1 Introduction Harriet E.H. Earle and Martin Lund PART 1 Identities

2 Outwitting the Flemish Past: Willy Vandersteen’s Dealing with Brabant Underdogs in Suske en Wiske’s ‘Het Spaanse spook’ (1948–1950) Michel De Dobbeleer 3 Displacement, Space, and Questions of Belonging: German and Colombian Graphic Novels in Dialogue Felipe Gómez and Gabi Maier 4 Visual Aspects of Modern Greek Identity Ioanna Papaki 5 Mexico’s Conquest, Independence, and Revolution According to Rius Annick Pellegrin

viii x 1

17

19

39 67

89

vi

Contents

PART 2 Radicalisms

107

6 Socialist Swedish Comics: Anticapitalism, International Solidarity and Whiteness in Johan Vilde and The Phantom Robert Aman

109

7 Abandoning Ideals and Producing Graphic Disillusionment in Suomen suurin kommunisti Oskari Rantala

129

8 Capitalism, Freedom, Future: Picture of Polish Transformation in the Graphic Novel Osiedle Swoboda Wojciech Lewandowski

153

9 Dissent and Resistance in Contemporary Portuguese Comics: The Case of Buraco #4 and Porto’s Es.Col.A. Movement Pedro Moura

171

PART 3 Genders

10 How to Discuss Sexual Identity, Minority Rights, and Society in Chile?: The Case of Katherine Supnem’s ‘Underground’ Comics Mario Faust-Scalisi

185

187

11 Questioning the Inescapable Male Gaze in Altarriba and Kim’s El arte de volar and El ala rota Mikel Bermello Isusi

201

12 The Pirate, the Queen, and the Handkerchief: Gráinne Mhaol, an Irishwoman among Men Christina M. Knopf

220

PART 4 Historiographics

13 Expressions of Subjectivity: Recent Historical Events Represented in Twenty-First-Century Chilean Autobiographical Comics Paloma Domínguez Jeria and Mariana Muñoz

237

239

Contents

14 Punťa the Dog Goes to the Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Czech, Polish, and American Comic Heroes in the RealWorld Confict of 1935–1936 Lucie Kořínková and Pavel Kořínek Index

vii

259

281

FIGURES

2.1 The characters of the series. From left: Lambik, aunt Sidonia, Professor Barabas, Suske, Wiske, Jerom 2.2 The oldest cover from 1952 and the 1974 ‘jubilee issue’ 2.3 ‘Het Spaanse spook’, Vandersteen, 1993, p. 7 2.4 ‘Het Spaanse spook’, Vandersteen, 1993, p. 71 2.5 ‘Het Spaanse spook’, Vandersteen, 1993, p. 26 2.6 ‘Het Spaanse spook’, Vandersteen, 1993, p. 39 2.7 ‘Het Spaanse spook’, Vandersteen, 1993, p. 56 3.1 Im Land der Frühaufsteher, Bulling, 2012, p. 29 3.2 Im Land der Frühaufsteher, Bulling, 2012. p. 31 3.3 Im Land der Frühaufsteher, Bulling, 2012, p. 56 3.4 Im Land der Frühaufsteher, Bulling, 2012, p. 125 3.5 La Palizúa. Art: Camilo Aguirre Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, pp. 10, 18. Sin mascar palabra 3.6 La Palizúa. Art: Camilo Aguirre Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, p. 39 3.7 Sin mascar palabra. Art: Camilo Vieco, Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, p. 8 3.8 La Palizúa. Art: Camilo Aguirre Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, p. 36 3.9 Sin mascar palabra. Art: Camilo Vieco, Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, p. 33 4.1 Kalaïtzis, To Mavro Εidōlo tīs Afroditīs, Ars Longa/Nemo (Athens 1990), p. 40 4.2 Kalaïtzis, Tsiggάnikī Orchīstra, Polytypo (Athens 1984), p. 8

21 22 22 23 24 26 31 42 43 44 47 52 56 58 60 62 77 80

Figures

4.3 Kalaïtzis, Τyfōn, Komos (Athens 1997), 13. Source: Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI), Giannis Kalaïtzis Archives 4.4 Kalaïtzis, Tsiggάnikī Orchīstra, Polytypo (Athens 1984), p. 60 7.1 Suomen suurin kommunisti, Matilainen, 2017, p. 69 7.2 Suomen suurin kommunisti, Matilainen, 2017, p. 189 7.3 Suomen suurin kommunisti, Matilainen, 2017, p. 196 7.4 Suomen suurin kommunisti, Matilainen, 2017, p. 213. And poster ‘1917’, Yakov Guminer, 1927 11.1 El arte de volar, Altarriba and Kim, 2009, p. 145 11.2 El ala rota, Altarriba and Kim, 2016, p. 142 11.3 El ala rota, Altarriba and Kim, 2016, p. 143 11.4 El arte de volar, Altarriba and Kim, 2009, p. 147 11.5 El ala rota, Altarriba and Kim, 2016, p. 149 13.1 Anomalía, Elisa Echeverría, 2012, p. 5 13.2 Dibujos por madera, Eduardo Browne, 2013, pp. 172–173 13.3 Diario Íntimo de Maliki Cuatro Ojos, Maliki, 2011, p. 129 13.4 Año Sabático, Vicente Cociña, 2012, p. 49 13.5 Año Sabático, Vicente Cociña, 2012, p. 33 13.6 Año Sabático, Vicente Cociña, 2012, p. 24 14.1 The cover of the inaugural issue of the Punťa magazine, summer 1935 14.2 ‘An Abyssinian armour-plated vehicle’ (Anon, 1935d, p. 18), a cartoon from the children’s magazine Malý hlasatel 14.3 The cover of the December 1935 issue of the Punťa magazine 14.4 ‘Punťa is trembling in fear – he is brought before the Emperor’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936c) 14.5 ‘Punťa in pursuit of the gangsters’ (theatre play), promotional photo (as reprinted in the March 1940 issue of the Punťa magazine)

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83 84 137 140 143 146 208 209 210 211 211 244 247 250 252 253 255 261 267 268 270 276

CONTRIBUTORS

Robert Aman is Associate Professor in Education at Linköping University, Sweden.

He primarily conducts research on ideology, legacies of colonialism, and the politics of representation in comics. He has published a number of articles in journals such as Third Text, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and Inks. His most recent book in English, The Phantom Comics and the New Left (Palgrave Macmillan), was published in 2020. Mikel Bermello Isusi is a crip and queer PhD candidate at The Ohio State

University. While their research focuses on contemporary Iberian visual culture, they also pay attention to gender and sexuality as well as disability and their links to the nation.They have published in graphic narratives, as they dealt with gender, sexuality, and afect. Together with other graduate students in 2019, they created the frst Creative Writing Student Organization in Spanish and Portuguese at their university. They were its frst president, and the organization has remained active and well through the COVID-19 pandemic. Michel De Dobbeleer is a Slavist, Classicist, and Italianist; he achieved his PhD in

East European Languages and Cultures at Ghent University in 2012. Currently, he is Visiting Professor at KU Leuven (Applied Languages Studies: Russian-Dutch and Cultural Studies: Southeast Europe). He has published on comics adaptations of East European classics, siege chronotopes, ‘real’ and alternate history in comics, graphic children’s poetry, and Flemish family comics. Paloma Domínguez Jeria has a PhD in Linguistics from the Pontifcia Universidad

Católica de Valparaíso. She teaches magazine publishing, comics, and linguistics at Universidad Diego Portales as well as at the Certifcate Program in New Reading Practices at the Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, where she addresses

Contributors

xi

aspects of multimodality. She has published articles related to multimodality, feminism, and comics and, since 2016, is the director of the literary magazine Grifo. Harriet E.H. Earle is a senior lecturer in English at Shefeld Hallam University and

research fellow at the Centre for War, Atrocity, and Genocide at the University of Nipissing. She is the author of Comics,Trauma, and the New Art of War (2017) and Comics: An Introduction (2020) and the series editor of Global Perspectives in Comics Studies. Dr Earle also sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Mario Faust-Scalisi is a political scientist, historian, and philosopher. Currently, he is postdoctoral researcher at the Doctoral College for Intersectionality Studies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Mario is working on a project on comics in Chile and the Philippines and preparing a project on intersectionality via comics in Jamaica and its diasporas. Felipe Gómez is Teaching Professor of Hispanic Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (USA). His research interests relate to the cycles of political violence and impunity in twentieth-century Latin American history, especially as presented in Argentine, Colombian, and Mexican literatures and popular cultures. Gómez is the founder and curator of the Latin American Comics Archive (LACA), an award-winning digital humanities project. He is currently working on a book project titled Utopia, Dystopia, and Afect in Recent Latin American Comics, examining resilience and underlying issues of race, gender, and sexuality in community responses and survival strategies in Spanish-language apocalyptic comics. Christina M. Knopf is a Professor of Communication and Media Studies at the

State University of New York (SUNY), Cortland. Dr Knopf is the author of Politics in the Gutters:American Politicians and Elections in Comic Book Media (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), The Comic Art of War: A Critical Study of Military Cartoons, 1805–2014 (McFarland, 2015), and dozens of articles concerned with politics, popular culture, and representation. She is a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Eastern Communication Association and a Wilson Fellow of the New York State Communication Association. Pavel Kořínek works at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He dedicates his research to comics studies and popular literature. In the past, he led a team that conducted a survey on the history of Czech and Slovak comics of the twentieth century, summed up in the voluminous monograph Dějiny československého komiksu 20. století. He has introduced Czech comics to Czech and foreign audiences in several exhibitions. Lucie Kořínková is a literary historian; she works at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on the Czech literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the history of Czech popular culture.

xii Contributors

She is the author of a monograph on the Czech writer and cartoonist František Gellner, and, with Pavel Kořínek, she co-authored a publication on the Punťa magazine, Punťa: Zapomenutý hrdina českého komiksu (1934–1942). Wojciech Lewandowski is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, University of Warsaw. His research interests focus on sociopolitical issues and political ideologies in texts of popular culture, especially comic books, progressive rock, and horror movies and literature. Martin Lund is senior lecturer in religious studies at the Department of Society, Culture and Identity at Malmö University, Sweden. He is the author of Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) and coeditor of Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation (ILEX Foundation/ Harvard University Press 2017, with A. David Lewis) and Unstable Masks:Whiteness and American Superhero Comics (Ohio State University Press 2020, with Sean Guynes). His research interests include the intersections of religions and comics, comics and identity, and comics and urban life. He is also the co-editor of the series Encapsulations: Critical Comics Studies (with Julia Round). Gabriele Maier is Teaching Professor of German Studies and Co-Director of the M.A. program in Global Communication and Applied Translation at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Maier’s research includes the literature of the twentieth and twenty-frst centuries and focuses primarily on travel writing, questions of home and identity, transcultural writers, and graphic novels. She has published on Christian Kracht, Hans-Ulrich Treichel, and Christoph Ransmayr and written a textbook titled Deutschland im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Pedro Moura is a Lisbon-based comics scholar; he completed a PhD degree in Comparative Literature from KUL, Leuven, and FLUL, Lisbon. His book, Visualing Small Traumas. Contemporary Portuguese Comics at the Intersection of Everyday Trauma, came out earlier was published in 2022 by this year from Leuven University Press. Presently he is putting together an essay collection on experimental comics artist Ilan Manouach.Within the area of comics, he is very active as a curator,TV documentarian, podcaster, bookstore/gallery owner, published scriptwriter, and critic. Mariana Muñoz has a PhD in Communications Sciences from the Pontifcia

Universidad Católica de Chile. She is a member of the Graphic Narrative Researchers Network (RING) and, since 2000, she has been working as an independent academic and researcher. Her main interests are Chilean visual communication, graphic heritage, counterculture, and biographical and autobiographical genres. She is the co-author of the books Alejandro Fauré, obra gráfca (2009, Santiago: Ocho Libros Editores), and Francisco Otta, obra gráfca (2017, Santiago: Ocho Libros Editores).

Contributors

xiii

Ioanna Papaki completed her BA and MA in Modern Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and her second MA in Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford. She is now writing her PhD thesis at the University of Siegen, Germany, on the transnational and transcultural turn of Greek comics and graphic novels, their role in the renegotiation of the past, the national imagery, and identity discourses on a transnational basis. Annick Pellegrin is a graduate of The University of Sydney. She is a columns and

articles editor for Comics Forum and sits on the editorial board of Studies in Comics. Her research has been published in French, English, and Spanish, most recently in Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books, The Journal of European Comic Art, and Trans Identities in the French Media. She is currently working as a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies (FHIS) at the University of British Columbia. Oskari Rantala is working on his doctoral thesis at the University of Jyväskylä,

Finland, researching medium-specifc narrative strategies and medial self-awareness in the comics of Alan Moore. His research interests include experimental narrative strategies, medium specifcity, (inter)mediality, and their political uses.

1 INTRODUCTION Harriet E.H. Earle and Martin Lund

Comics are not fruits; they are more akin to vegetables. ‘Fruit’ has a clear defnition in botany. It is an ‘edible product of a plant or tree, consisting of the seed and its envelope’ (‘Fruit’, 2021, n.p.). ‘Vegetable’ is far more vaguely defned: ‘Any living organism that is not an animal’ (‘Vegetable’, 2021, n.p.). There is, of course, a massive diference between a lettuce and a durian so as a term for classifcation, ‘vegetable’ is not particularly helpful. It is more often than not used as a ‘folk category’ with boundaries established in a particular context. Another common usage of the category ‘vegetable’, after all, is ‘the fresh edible portions of certain herbaceous plants’. What is counted as a vegetable in one kitchen might be considered a weed in another’s garden (and let us not forget the muchmaligned tomato). It often seems to be the same with ‘comics’. There is no single, generally accepted defnition of the term, and many extant defnitions centre on aspects that make them mutually exclusive. Among the most commonly cited defnitions of comics, as far as Anglophone comics studies are concerned, is the one proposed by the comics creator and theorist Scott McCloud in the mid-1990s. To McCloud, comics are ‘[ j]uxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer’ (1994, p. 9). In this defnition, comics must necessarily be sequential and multiple. The comics scholar and critic Fredrik Strömberg, on the other hand, after discussing several possible ways of constructing comics defnitions and proposing a few examples, ofers the following additional suggestion: ‘Ett orörligt bildmedium som ska upplevas kronologiskt och/eller temporalt’ [A static pictorial medium meant to be experienced chronologically and/or temporally] (2003, p. 133). Strömberg explicitly positions this defnition against the nowadays ‘self-evident’ criterion that comics must necessarily consist of images in sequence. The comics scholar Maheen Ahmed, in turn, notes that, while sequentiality is a characteristic of DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-1

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Harriet E.H. Earle and Martin Lund

comics that sets it apart from painting, for example, it is not always present and thus not a necessity for something to be created or conceived of as a comic (2016, p. 8). None of these views is ‘right’, but neither are they ‘wrong’. To suggest that they are would be to suggest that comics is sui generis, something that is entirely of its own kind and exists independent of the ways human actors in history try to understand, name, and claim comics as either Art, Literature, or trash, for example. Rather, each of the above approaches allows for diferent ways of studying, analyzing, and understanding comics. A whole book could (and should) be written on the topic of how scholars and others have sought to defne comics, why they have done so, and what the consequences of those attempts have been. This is not that book; here, it is more important to note that the very idea of comics is itself multiple, protean, and unstable. This is important because it reminds us that choosing a defnition is not a matter of capturing the ‘thing itself ’, that is to have arrived at the fnal word of what comics ‘really’ is, has been, and will be. It is rather a matter of bracketing certain things of for further study and of clarifying one’s thinking for oneself and one’s interlocutors or readers. Even if it were possible to arrive at a universally agreed-upon defnition that truly captures comics in all its diversity with fnality – a defnition that functions like the defnition of fruits rather than vegetables – we would still be faced with a simple, stark, and unavoidable fact: even though there are things out there, all over the world that conform to any given defnition of comics, they have diferent histories, diferent contexts, and diferent concerns. Apples and oranges are both fruits, but as the old saying reminds us, we should at least be careful when we compare them. A defnition, no matter how concrete or grounded, does not do away with diference. If anything, it allows both similarities and diferences to stand out even more clearly and be constructively compared. To further complicate the matter, language, culture, geography, and history impact what can be credibly compared and how. Instead of apples and oranges, Swedes caution against comparing apples with pears while in Brazil – but not in Portugal – the caution is against comparar alhos com bugalhos (garlic and wasp nests). What in English is called ‘comics’ has other names in other languages. The English word has undoubtedly left an impression around the world: in German, they speak of Comics, in Russian of Комикс (komiks), in Hebrew of ‫קומיקס‬ – ‘comics’ transcribed phonetically. But we can also speak of Japanese 漫画 (manga), Korean 만화 (manhwa), Francophone bandes dessinnées, Swedish tecknade serier, Danish or Norwegian tegneserier, Portuguese bandas desenhadas, Italian fumetti, Spanish historietas, and so on. While defnitions of comics speak to the medium or form, the names given to local traditions further suggest that we need to think about diferences as much as we need to think about similarities. There is signifcance in these names, beyond denoting national origins. They all carry diferent emphases and assumptions. The English ‘comics’ is a case in point: originally a name attached to certain kinds of cultural production because of its perceived use in mainly humorous ways, the word has stuck but recent

Introduction

3

decades have seen debates about whether or not it is time to ‘retire’ it. After all, not all comics are humorous. ‘Comics’ is a word with historical roots that generalizes from a perception about given texts’ qualities to give name to a growing number of similar-looking and related practices, tropes, conventions, forms, formats, labour relations, and more. When transposed to other languages and cultural geographies, the connotations change as the term settles over diferent histories. The Japanese word manga comes instead from the combination of two kanji, 漫 (man) and 画 (ga). The same roots make up the Korean manhwa and Chinese manhua. Various English translations of manga have been ofered, including Fredrik Schodt’s 1983 rendition of the word as ‘irresponsible pictures’ (quoted in Gravett, 2010, p. 9). Other translations instead render man as ‘aimless’, ‘whimsical’, or in similar terms. The translation issues surrounding the word manga make it more difcult for an informed discussion in English of the cultural connotations and understandings surrounding the form, but it seems clear that manga has been understood in relation to their visual form and as comparatively light in cultural terms. The Francophone term bande dessinée, on the other hand, says little about content or cultural weight. It is, on the face of it, a descriptive term that translates roughly into ‘drawn strip (or band)’. Comics scholar Mark McKinney notes that the term has an advantage over the Anglophone ‘comics’ ‘insofar as the Frenchlanguage term contains no suggestion that the material is comic or funny’. It highlights that what some of us call comics are (generally) drawn and (often) sequential but that it can also be misleading: ‘for decades the overall page layout (as opposed to the strip) has been an essential aspect of the art of many cartoonists and comics’ (McKinney, 2008, p. xiii, emphasis in original). The Swedish tecknade serier, as well as the Danish and Norwegian tegneserier, is close in meaning to bande dessinée. ‘Tecknad’ means ‘drawn’ in Swedish, and ‘serie’ can be translated into ‘series’ or ‘sequence’. With a minor diference in spelling and accounting for the fact that the words are compounded, the Danish and Norwegian words translate the same. In all three languages, the emphasis is on drawing and sequentiality. The Italian fumetti – ‘little puf of smoke’ – emphasizes one element of comics, the speech bubble, and turns it into a synecdoche for the whole medium while also perhaps suggesting the perceived ‘lightness’ or ephemerality of the form. These and many other terms carry historical signifcance that can easily be ‘lost in translation’ when they are glossed simply as non-English words for comics or as catch-alls for comics produced within a certain geographic or linguistic sphere. While the debate rages within comics studies about what we should call our objects of study and how we should classify them, these debates are largely contained within Anglophone scholarship. Anglophone comics scholars may be divided on the use of ‘comic’ or ‘graphic novel’, but, for the most part, a geographic or linguistic demarcation is not questioned. Japanese comics are often labelled ‘manga’, from the new-born kitten adventures of Konami Kanata to the

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Harriet E.H. Earle and Martin Lund

horror stories of Junji Ito, regardless of what else they may have in common – or how they may difer. So too is often the case with Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées, Italian fumetti, and Spanish-language historietas. The geographic or linguistic distinction is, by this reckoning, fawed. But Anglophone scholarship and categorization lacks nuance in this respect. Minute categorizing of comics appears largely to be the remit of Anglophone comics. But the fact remains there are nuances attached to all the ways ‘comics’ are named, claimed, negotiated, and disclaimed. No matter what sub-category of comics one chooses to study in an Anglophone context, it is extremely unlikely that it can be discussed exhaustively with reference to only comics originally published in English. Historietas is one Spanish name given to the cultural artefacts and medium called ‘comics’ in English, but there are others. Some call them cómics and others still tebeos, after a particularly infuential magazine containing comics. Bangla uses ‘comics’ (written in Bengali script) for most comics, but a common diferentiation is made for the so-called choti, sensual, and often erotic comics.1 And similar struggles over cultural consecration that are often noted in discussions of the US or UK context have been common elsewhere, up to and including mid-twentieth-century moral panics about comics’ efects on young readers in places such as Sweden and Finland. The types of things we call ‘comics’ in English exist around the world, named and discussed in sometimes-similar terms to Anglophone contexts, sometimes in radically diferent terms. That there are similarities is not surprising. Art and literature have long crossed borders and infuenced people far afeld from their productive context. Comics are no diferent in that respect. Looking at any comics culture as a closed system will only lead to a blinkered understanding of its output and conditions. US American comics have been exported around the world through means connected to both soft and hard power. They have, undoubtedly, left their mark in palpable ways across the world. But their infuence has not been uncontested. In France or Mexico, for example, the arrival of US American comics did not lead automatically to the wholesale adaptation of US-formed tropes and conventions. French publishers, artists, and institutions resisted US hegemony and produced or promoted comics with more ‘local’ fair. And in Mexico, Armando Bartra and Juan Manuel Aurrecoechea note that the ‘foundation of our modern comic book [historieta] results from the insistent combination of two divergent compulsions: the imitation of North American models and extreme Mexicanism; the new comics arose from the tension between irresistible mimetic will and deeply felt national vocation’ (quoted in Campbell, 2011, pp. 3–4). Nor has the fow been unidirectional. Decades before the late 1890s, when many date the ‘birth’ of US American comics, sequential art from all over the world infuenced the cultural landscape. One example that has recently been given much attention is the work of the Swiss teacher, writer, and artist Rodolphe Töppfer, whose 1837 story Histoire de M. Vieux Bois was published (likely in pirated form) in English around 1840 as The Adventures of Obadiah

Introduction

5

Oldbuck. Töppfer’s work has made him the most recent person to earn the designation ‘father of the comic book’ (Kunzle, 2007). The designation is understandable: Töppfer’s work fts many defnitions of ‘comics’, predates many other supposed ‘frst comics’ by decades, and was, undoubtedly, infuential. Nostalgic, critical, or appreciative references to Obadiah Oldbuck persist in US American magazines and art history until at least 1965 (Lund, 2014). In Sweden, Fritz von Dardel’s, who some view as one of Sweden’s frst comics creators, 1849 ‘Gubben med skåpet’ (‘The Old Man with the Cupboard’) was likely inspired by Töppfer, with whom von Dardel shared a social circle (Dardel, 2003). von Dardel was also acquainted with the French artist known as Cham, who is similarly viewed by some as another important early European comics creator. As this last example suggests, many fows of infuence and inspiration sidestep the Anglosphere entirely. Visiting European comics shops or publisher websites, a series of networks begin to appear in which various European comics traditions fow via translation between countries and cross-pollinate in productive ways. Some large comics shops or comics shop chains even have their own publishing wings that help stock a multinational selection of titles for their customers, all in a local language. Examples include the Danish chain Faraos cigarer that has its own publishing arm and the Danish publisher Zoom forlag that publishes in multiple languages and collaborates with the Norwegian comics shop chain Outland for its Norwegian business. There is also a bustling, sprawling, and dynamic world of comics in the parts of the world that are collectively designated with the geopolitical descriptor ‘Asia’. Writing with the express intention of ‘plugging’ a gaping hole in Anglophone comics studies, ‘the absence of study of Asian comic art’, John Lent has ofered the most comprehensive guide to the subject for English-language readers to date (Lent, 2015, p. 3). In chapters of about 20 pages each, Lent’s Asian Comics introduces readers to comics from China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Although long, the list of chapter headings is worth reproducing in whole because it shows how much of the map Anglophone comics studies has yet to critically explored. Lent’s book provides capsule histories and overviews of major actors, trends, and tendencies and charts some important local networks and areas of cross-pollination.2 Similarly, Frederick Luis Aldama, working with several co-editors and co-authors, has been at the foreground of making Latine comics from Latin America and North America more accessible to Anglophone readerships, showing in the process a rich variety of comics production that represents an even richer archive as yet unknown to many who study comics within the Anglosphere (e. g. Aldama, 2017, 2009; Aldama & González, 2016). The most glaring omission from this collection is comics from – and about – Africa and the Middle East; only one chapter considers this geographic area at all, and it is within the context of a Czech comic. Similarly, there is no detailed discussion about the smaller comics communities based in North America and

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Oceania, which produce and publish comics in both English and other languages. For these reasons, we cannot say that this collection is global in its research reach. This is a limitation common to scholarly work such as this, which rely on interest and initiative (and a response to a call for submissions), but this does not change the fact that large chunks of the global comics feld are not represented here. This is not to suggest that these areas should immediately be given scholarly attention as islands of production, cast adrift from the wider global issues of comics (though that’s certainly what appears to have happened in – and to be happening to – many other national or local traditions). Rather, there are many research questions that remain unprobed when it relates to these areas and their comics traditions. For example, we may ask how African bandes dessinées are cross-pollinating with French Algerian – or, following the lead of Véronique Bragard, who has traced a transnational genealogy of Belgo-Congolese comics aesthetics, try to better understand how new voices emerge by mixing and resisting existing conventions. Bragard writes that the ‘new esthetics emerging from Congolese comics alternative production [sic] share visual and postcolonial features that pay homage to ligne claire and more conventional adventure comics but which move beyond them to include African voices and imagery, countercultural and historical dimensions’ (Bragard, 2016, p. 339). Similarly, Michelle Bumatay has studied how sub-Saharan autobiographical and journalistic bandes dessinées have worked to challenge colonial stereotypes of Africa and to reconfgure European imperialist discourses to produce new ways of thinking about and representing sub-Saharan Africa (Bumatay, 2013). Postcolonial and autoethnographic work is becoming more common across the globe, from Lee Francis 4, Weshoyot Alvitre, and Will Fenton’s Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga (2019), about the 1763 Paxton massacres of Conestoga Indians to foreground Indigenous victims and survivors in ways colonial sources have never done, or Mats Jonsson’s När vi var samer [When we were Sámi] (2021), which recounts Jonsson’s discovery of a lost heritage and simultaneous realization that what the Swedish state, church, and people did to the forest Sámi must be screamed: ‘KULTURELLT FOLKMORD’ [CULTURAL GENOCIDE] (pp. 236–237). More and more voices are speaking about marginalization, silencing, oppression, and destruction, using the languages of what some of us call comics to show that there are more sides to stories that have long been presented as fnished and over. Frantz Fanon wrote: ‘The Tarzan stories, the tales of young explorers, the adventures of Mickey Mouse, and all the illustrated comics aim at releasing a collective aggressiveness. They are written by white men for white children’, but also ‘devoured’ by readers racialized as non-white. Thus, colonial representations could in Fanon’s time – and arguably into our own – infuence colonized or formerly colonized consumers as well, encouraging them to identify with colonizers (2008, pp. 124–126). On the other hand, Edward Said has refected on how, to him, in his youth,

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comics in their relentless foregrounding … seemed to say what couldn’t otherwise be said, perhaps what wasn’t permitted to be said or imagined, defying the ordinary processes of thought, which are policed, shaped and re-shaped by all sorts of pedagogical as well as ideological pressures. (2001, p. ii) Comics, then, are neither inherently revolutionary or regressive, liberating or oppressive. But they can be any of this or more, depending on who is telling the story and how and how it is read and understood. The cultural exports of colonialism have wrought untold destruction on massive amounts of Indigenous art and cultural production, but comics is an international form and has been from its inceptions. It is likely that many of these communities had an extant comics tradition – or an image-based storytelling tradition of some kind – that has grown and developed in relation to that of the larger colonial presence. In order to start growing the scholarship on these areas, engaging with the commonalities already existing between other, more rigorously studied, texts and traditions would provide a framework from which their study can develop. And this says nothing about the variety and diversity within those more broadly defned traditions. There is much for Anglophone comics scholars to learn from moving outside of our own personal libraries, from other works on comics published in languages other than English, and from looking beyond the language barrier where there are still no guides. This is not to say that we should set out to ‘discover’ comics as yet unknown to Anglophone readers and scholars. There’s nothing to ‘discover’. These texts are already there. What is absent is intellectual curiosity and openness to broadening a collective feld of vision. Scholarship that introduces, discusses, and analyses comics that were not written for an Anglophone readership is essential reading even for a scholar who has never felt a reason to discuss such comics and who is likely to never do so (e. g. Callison & Rif kind, 2019; Douglas & Malti-Douglas, 1994; Kutch, 2016; Miller, 2007; Repetti, 2007; Strömberg, 2010). Perhaps it is especially important for those of us who ft this description. It shows, in no uncertain terms, that comics is more than what is right in front of our eyes. And acknowledging that is of utmost importance if the feld of Anglophone comics studies is ever to outgrow and remedy the lopsided way it has developed.3 There can be no doubt that Anglophone comics studies is lopsided in its overall perspective. When John Lent conceived of his book on Asian comics in the early 1990s, ‘the parochialism of the feld did not sanction much in the way of studying other countries’ comics. The thinking in many quarters was that comics are an American idiom, and that’s that’ (Lent, 2015, p. 3). When his book came out, 22 years later, the landscape had changed but not by much. Writing this introduction, a further seven years later, the picture is not much diferent. Benjamin Woo and Bart Beaty (2016, pp. 6–7) illustrate this in a striking way, when they present the results of a survey of the feld’s most-studied texts:

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not only do a very small number of names dominate (Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Chris Ware), but the majority of candidates included are white, male, and US American or British. It is way past time for Anglophone comics studies to broaden. We would do well to dispose of the still-prevalent ethnocentric idea that comics are a US American art and to put aside the teleological pursuit of the ‘frst’ comic. The more one reads about comics from outside the USA, the stranger the claim that comics are ‘an American idiom’ becomes. The way comics have developed as comics in the USA is, undeniably, US American (with all the variety, multiplicity, and contradiction that both labels entail). By the same token, Chinese 漫画(manhua) are a Chinese idiom, French bandes dessinées are a French idiom, Arabic ‫( قصص مصورة‬qisas musawara, ‘illustrated stories’) or ‫( رواية مصورة‬riwayat musawara, ‘illustrated dramas’, commonly translated as ‘graphic novel’) an Arabic idiom, and so on. But tautological reasoning adds little of value to scholarly discussion. Afrming diferences and citing specifc identifers should be a starting point, not a conclusion. It should invite questions, not sidestep them. How have these separate developments played out? That is, what makes an Egyptian comic specifcally Egyptian and so on? On what historical models and in relation to what local and global aesthetic forms, values, and preferences in the past and present have they taken shape? To better ask those questions, we should also stop looking for the ‘frst’ comic. Comics is not ‘fnished’ and it never will be – but rather has been and remains a changing, shifting way of communication with many diferent means of expression – so whatever text we deem the ‘frst’ will by necessity be judged against a standard that is rooted in a historical, contingent understanding of what comics is. But if we take seriously the proposition that comics is not singular but rather plural, not universal but simultaneously global and local, there can be no true ‘frst’, because there is not a single point of origin, only times of emergence and decisive shifts brought on by development and interplay between diferent forms, cultures, aesthetics, and so on. It is possible to study the kinds of sequential art that tends to be called ‘comics’ in English with many of the same tools, theories, and methods no matter where they come from. For all their diferences, there are enough similarities for that. But even the most doggedly formalist analysis ought conversely to remain sensitive to the very real diferences that exist between comics traditions and networks from across the world. The drawn line is not without connotations, and images are not read the same way by all human beings (cf. Kelp-Stebbins, 2018). In confating ‘non-Anglophone comics’ under singular geographical designators or under an unexamined, generalized ‘comics’ rubric, nuance is lost and thematic connections across linguistic and national borders are erased. Such erasure weakens our scholarly feld by diluting and distorting the corpus of texts that we choose from in our analyses. But what is the solution? We cannot insist that scholars be both multi-lingual and aware of the entire international corpus of what some of us call comics that fts their specifc research theme or aspect.

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Similarly, it is unfair and unfeasible to declare a lingua franca for comics studies, as is already in place for academic disciplines such as computer science. Ensuring there are good translations of both primary material and scholarship is similarly unfeasible and insufcient. At present, there is no sensible and satisfactory answer to these questions, but we must continue to ask them: How can we position ourselves as an international feld of study when we so regularly exclude and ignore huge swathes of material? Our mission in this edited collection of essays is not to remedy the myriad issues of classifcation; we mention them above as it is one of the most pressing issues for this area of study. What we present in these pages is the very small tip of a proverbial iceberg. We demonstrate a small proportion of the scholarship that is being developed from non-Anglophone comics and by multi-lingual scholars. The chapters we present herein ofer suggestions for the integration of international comics scholarship into the Anglosphere. Though it can be said that this collection aims at a decisive turn in comics studies to this transnationalism4 – and inevitably fails to fully achieve this goal – we see this collection as a way of integrating otherwise under-studied comics with themes that are prevalent in contemporary Anglophone comics scholarship. Before we outline the structure and contents of this collection, we turn briefy to the wider issues of comics translation. Translation is more an art than a science; translators and translation theorists widely debate the diferent approaches that can be taken in the translation of any text. Most agree, however, that the aim of translation is to move beyond words and into the realm of cultural signs and understanding. Weissbort and Eysteinsson write that one understands other places and cultures, ‘by building linguistic bridges across the channels that divide language spheres and cultural regions, whether by the rewriting of messages and works in another tongue, or through other interventions by individuals who possess knowledge in more than one language’ (2006, p. 1). Comics demands further consideration – that of the image. It is important to remember, as Altenberg and Owen write, that there is ‘no single history of comics translation, but rather many national and formal and thematic histories’ (2015, p. iv). As such, we cannot create a holistic history of translation but ‘need to begin with small clusters of individual translations’ (2015, p. iv). There are two components to comics translation: textual and image. It is not enough to simply translate the textual components of the comic (the speech bubbles and captions), but the images themselves are part of a system that needs to be considered within its cultural, national, and linguistic contexts. In some cases, the translation is a simple case of the text component moving from one language to another. For example, onomatopoeia such as ‘crash’: dropping a rock in French will lead to ’patatras’, while in Czech it is ‘bum’. Conversely, English cows ‘moo’, Dutch cows prefer ‘boeh’, and Korean cows opt for ‘eum-mae’. Zanettin writes: Most ‘grammatical devices’ such as speech balloons, onomatopoeia and visual metaphors are used in comics produced in many diferent cultures

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and can be seen as central to comics as an art form, while other features are perhaps less salient. However, there is not one single ‘language’ of comics, as each regional tradition has developed its own set of conventions and stylemes, as regards reading pace, drawing style, subject matter and themes. Each of these regional varieties of comics can thus be seen as a ‘dialect’ of the language of comics. (Zanettin, 2008, p. 18) He suggests that the ‘study of translated comics may provide useful insights into an understanding of translation as a complex process of intercultural communication, involving much more than simply the replacement of written text in speech balloons’ (Zanettin, 2008, p. 98). Thinking in a similar way, Altenberg and Owen write that ‘the linguistic translation of comics has some distinct practical issues: spatial issues akin to those in subtitling, to do with ftting the new language into the extant text boxes and speech balloons’ (2015, p. i). However, it is in the translation of meaning that complexities occur: Undertaking to translate that meaning can entail: rewriting text with no redrawing, rewriting text with partial redrawing, rewriting text with complete redrawing, or retaining the text with complete redrawing. (2015, p. i) There are many arguments that can be made for and against image translation beyond the linguistic component; these topics form the basis of much work being done in comics and translation studies, by scholars including Federico Zanettin, Tilmann Altenberg, and Klaus Kaindl. Kaindl writes: ‘If we do not translate languages but cultures, what is the role of the non-verbal dimension in translation: do we have to redefne the concept of translation in order to also include forms of transfer which do not involve language?’ (2004, p. 174). It is difcult to deny that the translation of comics at the level of the image and sign is benefcial to the cross-cultural transmission and understanding of comics. If, as Berman writes, ‘a translator without historical consciousness is a crippled [sic] translator, a prisoner of his representation of translation and of those carried by the social discourses of the moment’, it is not a stretch to take this further and to say that, in comics, a translator who does not consider the non-verbal and the visual is similarly hindered in their enterprise (Berman qtd in Venuti, 2012, p. 2). From the above, it should be clear that translation is not merely a matter of taking a text and transposing it, unchanged, into another language. Translation is also a form of interpretation. For the purposes of comics studies, it also provides an incomplete and stunted record. Anglophone comics readers and researchers have access to a constantly growing number of texts to read and consider, but comics from many cultures still fail to fnd their way into a translator’s hands. The same applies for readers of any other language. It is essential to understand that how comics reach us – as readers and as researchers – and what comics end

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up reaching audiences outside their original publication area can have a deep and long-running efect on how we read and research comics. While reading and studying comics in translation can help broaden and inform us as readers and as scholars, and expand the cultural and academic archive in diferent contexts, important questions that are outside the scope of this volume to be asked and answered, among the most pressing ones being: what gets translated, how does it get translated and for what audience, and how does the act of translation and reception infuence the way meaning is made with the translated comics? Even if those questions can ever be asked with any degree of satisfaction, translated texts are still a poor substitute for a sensitive, contextual reading of the text in its original language, such as the ones ofered in these pages.

Overview of This Collection In the title of the collection, we emphasize two particular themes in relation to non-Anglophone comics: identity and history. These themes emerged as the most prevalent within the chapters we received for this collection. The comics we are discussing here are nearly all ones that have (thus far) not been translated - by resistance or by lack of Anglophone interest; we are struck by the common themes that similarly resist translation. Much of the comics themselves speak to social, historical, and cultural identities and knowledges that are particular to the language and geography of their homes. It follows that this would be a difcult if not impossible task to accurately and appropriately translate, not only linguistically but also culturally. We begin with a series of chapters on identities; authors are considering what this term means in relation to their chosen comics corpus. In the frst chapter of this part, Michel De Dobbeleer centres his analysis of Willy Vandersteen’s ‘Het Spaanse spook’ [‘The Spanish Phantom’] on the creator’s fascination with Flemish history and heroism. He discusses the representation of siege warfare in comics and argues that it is in sieges, rather than battles, that some of the most incisive representations of Flemish and Brabant identity can be found. In their chapter, Felipe Gómez and Gabi Maier bring together two geographically remote comics traditions – Germany and Colombia – united in their themes of displacement and refuge. They discuss several comics from both countries in the wider context of comics about migration and displacement, focusing on the points of diference and convergence within the texts and also the place of comics more broadly in debates on this topic. Ioanna Papaki constructs a single-creator case study in modern Greek identity in her chapter on the works of Giannis Kalaitzis. She argues that, though Kalaitzis’ work is largely unknown outside of Greece, analysis of it contributes to a better understanding of the beginning of the ‘graphic novel’ format in the European framework. The chapter also discusses the representation of Greece post-Junta (1967–1974), suggesting that the comics form engages with the construction of cultural identities. The fnal chapter of this part, by Annick

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Pellegrin, considers the comics corpus of Rius and his critical history of Mexico’s economic, political, and cultural dependence from the Spanish conquest to the present day. His work returns repeatedly to themes of Mexico’s lack of efective economic, political, and cultural independence as well as the uneven distribution of wealth within the country. Pellegrin’s decolonial lens provides incisive analysis of this creator’s works in relation to questions of national identity in a country that, despite independence, cannot fully shake of the colonial power relationship with the colonizer. In the second section, we examine radicalisms and political narratives, with the frst two both based on Nordic comics. The frst chapter, by Robert Aman, takes the Swedish comics Johan Vilde and Fantomen [The Phantom], two of the most commercially successful examples of 1970s comics. Aman positions these two titles as prominent examples of the ways in which New Left ideology was fltered through comics. He suggests that they ofer a window into the ideological climate in Sweden during the birth of the New Left, student revolts, solidarity movements, and other events associated with the leftist radicalization in Sweden during the 1960s and 1970s. In the second chapter, though the Finnish Communist party is among the lesser known within Europe, the origins of the party have been rendered in a fctionalized historical comic: Jesse Matilainen’s Suomen suurin kommunisti [The Greatest Communist of Finland]. Oskari Rantala interrogates this graphic novel, ofering a clear analysis of the narrative and artistic strategies at play in his chapter. He positions the story as one of personal and political transformation for all involved, ultimately seeing the story as one of disillusionment. Wojciech Lewandowski presents the graphic novel Osiedle Swoboda [The Swoboda District], by Michał Śledziński, as an example of images of Polish political, social, and economic transformation that took place after 1989. This chapter presents a picture of Polish transformation as shown in the graphic novel’s multi-perspectival structure. In its portrait of a young generation of Poles experiencing a difcult time of social changes, the comic can be seen as a critical voice against the excesses of capitalism enforcing a certain style of life and work. In the fnal chapter of this part, Pedro Moura introduces the Portuguese comics industry which, until recently, was not commercially strong but has an outstanding output of engaged and experimental artists. This chapter ofers a context for understanding the convergence of comics creation and political activism, how comics can interrogate power, authority, socioeconomic ‘inevitability’, and institutionalized, conformed discourses. With contemporary Portuguese case studies as its focus, it mirrors potentialities in larger, international practices. Part 3 shifts the focus of the chapters to gender, sexuality, and the myriad questions of representation that these themes invite. Mario Faust-Scalisi’s chapter on the work of Chilean artist Katherine Supnem brings to the fore an underground artist whose work, despite having limited circulation, brings a new perspective on Chilean society. Supnem’s feminist stance on money, homelessness, and, more strikingly, sexuality and gender-based violence demonstrates

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the importance of small-scale, ‘underground’ comics to discuss those topics considered ‘too hot’ to be handled in the comics of the general market. Mikel Bermello Isusi’s chapter considers a pair of comics that exist in dialogue with each other: El arte de volar [The Art of Flying] and El ala rota [The Broken Wing], both by Antonio Altarriba Jr and Kim, which tell the story of Altarriba’s father and mother, respectively. The two comics narrativize individual experiences and problems faced by the generation that lived through the Civil War and the Dictatorship, showing that memories (and lives) such as these, of the Francoist Regime, are both private and collective, since they appeal to contemporary Spanish culture and society. In a chapter on possibly the youngest comics market discussed in this volume, Christina M. Knopf turns to Irish Gaelic comics and Gráinne Mhaol [Grace O’Malley] by Gisela Pizatto and Bruno Büll. A legendary pirate queen of sixteenth-century Ireland, O’Malley’s story is found mostly in English annals. Gráinne Mhaol can thus be read as a reclamation of Ireland’s heritage through its Irish language, women’s history through its subject matter, and improved gender representation in comics through its heroine and lead creator. In the last part, there are two chapters which focus on historiographical comics and the ways in which talking about historical events is culturally and visually remediated. Paloma Domínguez Jeria and Mariana Muñoz address this issue in relation to Chilean autobiographical comics, an emerging feld that gives space to approach individual subjective viewings of historical events. The chapter focuses on the newness of the genre and asks which events have received particular interest and why? How are creators weaving their personal history into the history of their country? The fnal chapter of this volume, by Lucie Kořínková and Pavel Kořínek, spotlights Czech children’s comic Punťa [Spotty] and its protagonist’s escapades in the Second Italo–Ethiopian War (1935–1936). This is a landmark series, depicting a war as it was happening, which raised several moral questions for the creators regarding how to interpret (and visually represent) war-time situations. Is it appropriate to show war brutality to children? Is it acceptable to let them know that international aggression has, in the end, paid of? The chapter analyses the strategies used by the creators of Punt’a in solving these dilemmas.

Notes 1 Thanks to Amreen Bashir for telling Martin about this distinction. 2 See also Lent & Xu, 2017. 3 We are indebted to one of the book proposal’s anonymous reviewers for the word choice ‘lopsided’. 4 As one of the anonymous reviewers characterized the project.

References Ahmed, M. (2016) Openness of Comics: Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

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Aldama, F. L. (2017) Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. ———. (2009) Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez. Austin: University of Texas Press. Aldama, F. L. and González, C. (eds.) (2016) Graphic Borders: Latino Comic Books Past, Present, and Future. Austin: University of Texas Press. Altenberg, T. and Owen, R. (2015) 'Comics and Translation: Introduction', New Readings, 15, pp. i–iv. Beaty, B. and Woo, B. (2016) The Greatest Comic Book of All Time. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Bragard, V. (2016) ‘Belgo-Congolese Transnational Comics Esthetics: Transcolonial Labor from Mongo Sisse's Bingo en Belgique to Cassiau-Haurie and Baruti's Madame Livingstone: Congo, the Great War (2014)’, Literature Compass, 13(5), pp. 332–340. Bumatay, M. (2013) African Francophone Bandes Dessinées: Graphic Autobiographies and Illustrated Testimonies. PhD thesis. University of California, Los Angeles. Available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/27t2j8mq (Accessed: 17 August 2015). Callison, C. and Rif kind, C. (2019) ‘Introduction: ‘Indigenous Comics and Graphic Novels: An Annotated Bibliography’’, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 11(1), pp. 139–55. Campbell, B. (2011). Viva la historieta: Mexican Comics, NAFTA, and the Politics of Globalization. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Dardel, F. von. (2003 [1849]) Fritz von Dardels Gubben Med Skåpet – En svensk serieklassiker från 1849 [Fritz von Dardel’s The Old Man with the Cupboard – A Swedish Comics Classic from 1849]. Translated from Swedish by F. Strömberg and G. Kannenberg, Jr. Malmö: Seriefrämjandet. Douglas, A. and Malti-Douglas, F. (1994) Arab Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging Mass Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fanon, F. (2008 [1958]) Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by R. Philcox. New York: Grove Press. Francis, L., Alvitre, W. and Fenton, W. (2019) Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga. Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia. ‘Fruit’ (2021) in OED Online. Available at: https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/221872 (Accessed 13 December 2021). Gravett, P. (2010) Manga. New York: HarperCollins. Kelp-Stebbins, K. (2018) ‘Comics as Orientation Devices’, in Aldama, F. L. (ed.) Comics Studies Here and Now. New York & London: Routledge, pp. 211–225. Kunzle, D. (2007) Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpfer. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Kutch, L. M. (ed.) (2016) Novel Perspectives on German-language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory. Lanham: Lexington Books. Lent, J. (2015) Asian Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Lent, J. and Xu, Y. (2017) Comics Art in China. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Lund, M. (2014) ‘Introducing: Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck’, Martin Lund, 20 March. Available at: https://redrawingnewyork.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/introducing-mr-obadiah -oldbuck/ (Accessed 12 December 2021). McCloud, S. (1994) Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennial. McKinney, M. (2008) History and Politics in French-language Comics and Graphic Novels. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Miller, A. (2007) Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-language Comic Strip. Bristol: Intellect Ltd.

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Repetti, M. (2007) ‘African Wave: Specifcity and Cosmopolitanism in African Comics’, African Arts, 40(2), pp. 16–35. Said, E. (2001) ‘Homage to Joe Sacco’ in Sacco, J. P.. London: Jonathan Cape, pp. i–v. Strömberg, F. (2010) Swedish Comics History. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association. ———. (2003) Vad är tecknade serier? – En begreppsanalys [What is comics? – A Conceptual Analysis]. Malmö: Seriefrämjandet. ‘Vegetable’ (2021) in OED Online Available at: https://www.oed.com/view/Entry /75072 (Accessed 13 December 2021). Venuti, L. (2012) The Translation Studies Reader. Abingdon: Routledge. Weissbort, D. and Eysteinsson, Á. (2006) Translation Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zanettin, F. (2008) Comics in Translation. Manchester: St Jerome Publications.

PART 1

Identities

2 OUTWITTING THE FLEMISH PAST Willy Vandersteen’s Dealing with Brabant Underdogs in Suske en Wiske’s ‘Het Spaanse spook’ (1948–1950) Michel De Dobbeleer

On 15 November 2003, Professor Karel Porteman – a well-known specialist in pre-modern Dutch literature – gave his valedictory lecture at the University of Leuven. The title of this lecture (without an explanatory subtitle) contained merely three words: ‘Het Spaanse spook’. In the frst 15 lines, Porteman explicitly refers to the work whose title he borrowed, supposing that ‘[m]any of you will surely have recognised the title of this valedictory lecture’.1 In the Low Countries, Willy Vandersteen’s (1913–1990) ‘Het Spaanse spook’ (‘The Spanish Spectre’, 1948–1950) is a real classic. The album is the tenth out of more than 350 Suske en Wiske albums that have appeared between 1946 and the present. At the same time, it was the frst product of what can be called a ‘collaboration’, albeit short lived, between Vandersteen and Hergé (Georges Remi, 1907–1983), the ‘spiritual father’ of the world-famous Tintin. In this chapter, I frst contextualize ‘Het Spaanse spook’ as a Flemish familiestrip under the ‘anti-Flemish’ artistic direction of Hergé. Further on, I explore why and how the album’s sixteenth-century historical time frame enabled Vandersteen to construct a Brabant ‘us’ that united Dutch- and French-speaking Belgian readers. What was more, the age-old narrative topic of the siege still increased the sympathy with the underdogs, the besieged Brabanters. With the help of Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope concept and his notions of adventure time and adventure space, I explain how Vandersteen keenly moulded his (readers’) national history according to the ‘plot rules’ of the adventure comic. The plot, however, is just one level on which the author outwitted the Flemish past. I will demonstrate how Vandersteen, by changing the Flemish language of his characters – much to the regret of those who were against such a ‘translation’, and thanks to the multifunctionality of the term ‘Brabant’ – turned Suske and Wiske into heroes for the Netherlands too.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-3

20 Michel De Dobbeleer

Big in the Low Countries: Suske en Wiske and the Humoristic Adventure Genre Suske en Wiske is the longest running of the Flemish so-called ‘family comics’ ( familiestrips), a typical combination of humour and adventure addressing younger and older readers alike.2 The series was named after the young protagonists, both in their early teens, Suske and Wiske. Though now old fashioned, these names were common in the middle of the twentieth century as Flemish diminutives of François/Franciscus and Louise, respectively. As ‘family comics’, the Suske en Wiske stories followed a particular publication format: frst in newspapers (two tiers a day), where the main/frst readers were adults and then in albums, whose main readers were children: Even in a small region such as Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, a particular combination of two publication formats was forged and perfected as part of a commercially attractive dual publication system. It involved a daily installment consisting of two tiers in a newspaper (published as one long tier over the total width of the newspaper page until 1966) and a collection of daily tiers in one album of a fxed number of pages. … Every short installment was destined to arouse the reader suffciently, be it by humor, by suspense, or a combination of both. The Suske en Wiske series, then, can be understood as a prime example of the art of balancing the rather anarchaïc farce and the rigid makeup of the adventurous story.3 (Lefèvre, 2013, pp. 256, 267) Thus, within this dual publication format, the eponymous heroes, helped by a group of adult friends, including their aunt Sidonia,4 have a range of fascinating adventures, normally one per album. Being mainstream popular comics, the Suske en Wiske albums frst and foremost draw their success from the recognizability of their characters and the usually popular and humoristic tone, especially thanks to Lambik (‘Ambrose’ in English; Figure 2.1: far left), the older, bigheaded but genuinely good-natured and brave friend of the children. Despite critical remarks, from the late seventies onwards, about the consequences of mass production in the series, it remains popular in the Low Countries, in Flanders as well as in the Netherlands.5 In 2013, the Suske en Wiske ‘universe’ was reinvigorated thanks to the successful spin-of series Amoras, named after a fctitious island in the Suske en Wiske universe. Amoras, in which all the heroes have grown visibly older, clearly addresses an older audience than the typical child readers of most of Vandersteen’s comics. Although since 1976 some 30 albums of the regular Suske en Wiske series have been translated into English (with diferent publishers in the USA and the UK – as Willy and Wanda, Spike and Suzy, Luke and Lucy, and even with their French names Bob and Bobette) – it never met with success in the Anglophone world.

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FIGURE 2.1

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The characters of the series. From left: Lambik, aunt Sidonia, Professor Barabas, Suske,Wiske, Jerom. © 2021 Standaard Uitgeverij.

‘Het Spaanse spook’, ranking second in the Suske en Wiske ‘hit parade’, never appeared in English.6

‘Het Spaanse spook’: The Story and Its Author’s Penchant for the Eighty Years’ War The title of this classic album (Figure 2.2 shows the oldest cover, 1952, next to that of the 1974 ‘jubilee issue’, cf. infra) refers to the friendly ghost of the fctitious Flanders-based Spanish nobleman Don Persilos y Vigoramba.7 During the Spanish–Dutch Eighty Years’ War (or Dutch Revolt, 1568–1648), Don Persilos disagreed with the barbaric attitude of the Spanish soldiers under Don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba (1507–1582), towards the courageous Flemings. In rather far-fetched circumstances, shortly after midnight, while keeping watch in a museum in front of Bruegel the Elder’s The Peasant Wedding (1567/1568), Suske, Wiske, and Lambik are taken to the year 1565 by the ghost.8 Here, in fashback panels in which the readers see Don Persilos in life, the ghost tells them his sad story (Vandersteen, 1993, pp. 7–9). Moved as he was by the endurance and bravery of the inhabitants of Kriekebeek, a fctitious town in Brabant,9 who are fghting the ruthless siege of the Spanish under the Duke of Alba, Don Persilos (see Figure 2.3; 1993, p. 7) sailed to King Philip II of Spain, where he successfully pleaded for mercy

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FIGURE 2.2

The oldest cover from 1952 and the 1974 ‘jubilee issue’. © 2021 Standaard Uitgeverij.

FIGURE 2.3

‘Het Spaanse spook’,Vandersteen, 1993, p. 7. © 2021 Standaard Uitgeverij.

for the small town. However, spies of the Duke of Alba (who wanted to sack Kriekebeek purely for its riches) found out about Don Persilos’ plans and tried to intercept the royal writ that would immediately stop the siege. Initially, Don Persilos successfully threw of his opponents, but on his way to Kriekebeek, he was struck by lightning and died. A spy found the royal writ and brought it to the Duke of Alba, who immediately suppressed the ofcial document. The mission of the heroes evidently consists in the retrieving of this document which turns out to be in the room (within the town hall of Brussels)10 of

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the Duke himself, realistically portrayed in the album. Needless to say, they succeed in fnding it after innumerable adventures and thus save Kriekebeek. As a result, the Spanish spectre fnally fnds eternal peace, but before disappearing, he conjures the three friends back to the museum in their own mid-twentiethcentury time, where we fnd them asleep, on the last page (Vandersteen, 1993, p. 71). When they awake, at frst, they do not remember what they have gone through. After a while, they start realizing that they have all experienced the same adventure. In the end, Wiske remembers that she had taken a photograph of the spectre (at the beginning of the album). After they have developed the flm, one of the pictures indeed displays the spectre (Figure 2.4), a proof that their adventure did really take place. For the frst time in the history of Suske en Wiske, the adventures of the protagonists take place during the Spanish–Dutch Eighty Years’ War (1568– 1648). Having already introduced Suske and Wiske’s friend Professor Barabas (Figure 2.1: third from left) and his time machine (the teletijdmachine) in the second story (1945–1946), Vandersteen often made use of historical time frames to diversify the adventures of his heroes, but the Eighty Years’ War was arguably one of Vandersteen’s favourite historical periods. This is further evidenced by the fact that in 1985, at the time when the production of his own comics studio, Studio Vandersteen, was running at full speed, as a 72-yearold man he surprised friend and foe by coming up with a new series, largely made on his own: De Geuzen (The Geuzen, 1985–1990).11 Geuzen (from the French gueux, ‘bums’) was the self-given nickname of the Dutch nobles and common people alike who fought against the Spanish rule in the Netherlands. Probably, no period better allowed Vandersteen to romantically highlight the proud national character of the Flemings, friendly and cheerful, but rebellious when wronged.12 Vandersteen’s penchant for portraying popular characters, together with his relaxed, folksy style, has earned him the nickname the ‘Bruegel of Comics’. This fne nickname was given by none other than Hergé, though it is unclear when.

FIGURE 2.4

‘Het Spaanse spook’,Vandersteen, 1993, p. 71. © 2021 Standaard Uitgeverij.

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Suske en Wiske in Le journal de Tintin: Vandersteen Versus Hergé? Hergé specialist Marcel Wilmet (in Vandersteen, 2020a: 8) suggests that it was only in 1970 that the creator of Tintin called Vandersteen the ‘Bruegel of Comics’. Before, it was supposed that Hergé introduced the nickname around 1950, given the presence of the Bruegel painting in the opening and fnal pages of ‘Het Spaanse spook’ and the role of the painter himself as a speaking character within the story (Vandersteen, 1993, p. 26 [Figure 2.5], 60).13 What is more, ‘Het Spaanse spook’ was the frst out of eight Suske en Wiske adventures that – from 1948 until 1959 – serially appeared in the prestigious weekly Tintin comics magazine (1946–1993) under the artistic direction of Hergé, both in the weekly’s French-language version, Le journal de Tintin, and in the Dutch version Kuifje (being Tintin’s Dutch name; literally ‘Little Quif’). Almost 75 years later, for fans – and scholars alike – of (Franco-)Belgian comics classics, it is fascinating to know that ‘Het Spaanse spook’ ran simultaneously with Hergé’s ‘Tintin au pays de l'or noir’ (‘Land of Black Gold’) and Edgar P. Jacobs’s frst Blake and Mortimer story ‘Le secret de l’Espadon’ (‘The Secret of the Swordfsh’; Van der Made in Vandersteen, 2020a, p. 31). Naturally, in a country famous for its comics, much has been written about the connections between the most renowned French-speaking Belgian comics author, Hergé, from Brussels, on the one hand, and Willy Vandersteen, from Antwerp, most probably the best-known twentieth-century Flemish (and thus Dutch-speaking)14 comics author on the other.15 The idea of their ‘alliance’ had come about at publishing house Le Lombard, which wanted to get a local Flemish star on board because of the disappointing sales fgures of the Flemish version of the weekly magazine. In his mid-thirties, Vandersteen, eager to break through in France, was prepared to bend to the wishes of the artistic director Hergé, which

FIGURE 2.5

‘Het Spaanse spook’,Vandersteen, 1993, p. 26. © 2021 Standaard Uitgeverij.

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included an adjustment to his style and set of characters.16 Hence, Hergé did not allow aunt Sidonia or the strongman Jerom (Figure 2.1: far right) to take part in the Suske en Wiske adventures appearing in Tintin since he considered their characters too common or improbable. As for Vandersteen’s style, ‘Het Spaanse spook’ shows us how Suske and Lambik, and especially Wiske, evolved from the Flemish newspaper style into the more bourgeois, Hergé-imposed Tintin weekly style (compare Wiske’s respective haircuts on Figure 2.3 and Figure 2.4). The sixteenth-century witch Alwina transforms the appearance and clothes of the heroes so that they would not stand out among the nobles of the sixteenth century, though Lambik – comically and much to his regret – fnds himself dressed as a peasant. Curiously, after being brought back to their own time, they retain this noble appearance in the next seven Suske en Wiske adventures in Tintin. In the Flemish newspaper strips, however, where the characters simultaneously appeared in other new adventures, they maintained their older, ‘folksy’ appearance. In a way, one can say that in the Tintin magazine adventures Vandersteen adapted – some will say ‘denied’ or even ‘betrayed’ – this folksy style of Suske and Wiske’s newspaper adventures. In the continuation of these latter adventures, he also denied the protagonists’ ‘nobility’ from the Tintin magazine, thus outwitting – so to speak – the characters’ relatively short past under the artistic direction of Hergé. Biographer Peter Van Hooydonck summarizes this two-faced period – which lasted until 1959, when Vandersteen ended his cooperation with Tintin – as follows: With his collaboration on Tintin, Vandersteen certainly laid the foundations of his international success.17 It was undoubtedly in this period that he reached his absolute peak …. Hergé, who had always disapproved of the working-class nature of Vandersteen’s work, had to admit that the Antwerp artist had more to ofer than quickly-drawn pictures. … On the other hand, in his [Vandersteen’s] work for Tintin some familiar elements were lost. The popular, everyday and familiar feeling that characterised the [Flemish] newspaper strips largely disappeared. Fortunately, Vandersteen has kept the humorous element in the Blue Series.18 Lambik has evolved into a hero who masters fencing, deep-sea diving and wrestling, but he still pulls of a number of silly stunts, which were greatly appreciated by his readers. (Van Hooydonck, 1994, p. 174) Undeniably, in ‘Het Spaanse spook’ too, the seriousness of the omnipresent heroic action is frequently interrupted, alleviated by such ‘silly stunts’, most often indeed by Lambik, but sometimes also by the other protagonists, the Spanish spectre included. This is most probably the reason why in the popularity polls regularly published by the Tintin magazine, the Suske en Wiske stories often preceded those about Tintin.19

26 Michel De Dobbeleer

Sieges as Appealing but Tricky Comics Adventures The fctional worlds of popular comic book series have been connected with the chronotope of the (ancient Greek) adventure novel of ordeal as introduced in 1938 by Mikhail Bakhtin (Romero Jódar, 2006, pp. 99–104). The most notable property of this adventure chronotope, that it leaves no substantial trace on the heroes involved (Bakhtin, 1982, p. 110), applies to many classic comic series, including the humoristic adventure series typical of the Flemish dual publication system, with their characters who never age. An even more straightforward term, yet, than Bakhtin’s adventure chronotope of ordeal is Bart Keunen’s Bakhtin-inspired mission chronotope, in which a state of confict (i.e. the long middle of the narrative in which the heroes try to adjust what went wrong) sits between two states of equilibrium: one in the beginning and one at the end (Keunen, 2011, p. 64). Consisting of the Greek words for ‘time’ (chronos) and ‘place’ (topos), ‘chronotope’ refers to a constructed universe in which a specifc time and space are inextricably linked. It may be helpful to think about chronotopes as fctional worlds with their own intrinsic (plot related and other) rules. Typical for Bakhtin’s ‘adventure time’ is that Suske, Wiske, and Lambik, as we have seen, on the fnal page of ‘Het Spaanse spook’ have almost completely forgotten what they have gone through during their adventures. Although they were so thoroughly involved in the pseudohistorical events of the Eighty Years’ War, their heads have been emptied so that they can start their next adventure (of which a new album will be made) in a perfect, restored state of equilibrium. Another point in common with Bakhtin’s adventure time is the high density of happy coincidences. Far more often than one would consider credible in historical time, the protagonists are extremely lucky and ‘save their skin’ at the last second (see Figure 2.6, where Wiske falls while climbing the meticulously drawn Brussels town hall: Vandersteen, 1993, p. 39). Regarding the second component of the chronotope, the Russian literary scholar explains how fundamental it is in this kind of stories: ‘In order for the adventure to develop it needs space, and plenty of it’ (Bakhtin, 1982, p. 99). Indeed, the heroes – in ancient Greek novels as well as in traditional comic books

FIGURE 2.6

‘Het Spaanse spook’,Vandersteen, 1993, p. 39. © 2021 Standaard Uitgeverij.

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– need a lot of space for all their typical adventurous actions (chasing, searching, feeing, etc.). Bakhtin speaks of a ‘large and diverse’ fctional world (1982, p. 100), which is highly applicable to all adventure comics (consider Superman, who can fy through space, or the titles of Tintin’s frst adventures: ‘Tintin in the Land of the Soviets’, ‘Tintin in the Congo’, ‘Tintin in America’; later on even ‘Destination Moon’). In short, comics heroes cannot have adventures by staying in their armchairs. Adventure and ‘adventure space’ indeed make one think of faraway places. Obviously, for the Belgian reader, Brussels and the small fctional town of Kriekebeek are far less exotic than for, say, American or Japanese readers, but the exotic in ‘Het Spaanse spook’ is situated in the fctionalized settings of seventeenth-century Brabant: in the historical time which Vandersteen materialized into historical adventure space for his heroes. A particular combination of adventure and historical time-spaces, already successful since Homer’s Iliad, is operationalized in narratives about city sieges. Whether epic, historical, or both, sieges, such as those of Troy, Jericho, Constantinople, or Jerusalem, have always appealed to human imaginations. The heroism and shrewdness of both the besiegers and the besieged, their endurance and strategic choices, but also their recklessness and scheming, and their dirty tricks, have very often tested the limits of man’s capacities. As Malcolm Hebron writes, the siege is a focus for the depiction of the horror and the spectacle of fghting, for the literary exploration of subjects such as chivalry and the military arts, the sufering and resilience of those under attack, and the actions and attitudes of the victorious. (1997, p. 2) The most characteristic aspect of siege narratives must be looked for on the spatial level: the ‘defnite, enclosed space’ (ibid.) of the city, usually surrounded by walls. The oppressive efect of this enclosed space on the besieged is famously evoked in the Iliad (e.g. in the scenes with Hector and his wife Andromache), but it should be noted that the time-space (chronotope) of this ancient siege narrative is too claustrophobic for a comics album of the Flemish humoristic adventure type. A limitation of the action inside or immediately around the besieged city walls may be exquisite material for a realist, historical comic book or graphic novel; in traditional adventure comic books, it would not work. I see two reasons for this. First, the requirement for space inextricably linked to the adventure chronotope of this type of comics is so compelling that space indeed must be ‘large and diverse’ (Bakhtin, 1982, p. 100). A siege ofers a colourful and emotion-flled backdrop for traditional adventure comics, and the ‘single straight line’ – as Lowe (2000, p. 111) calls it with regard to the Iliad – between city and besiegers may provide exciting action but not enough adventure. In ‘Het Spaanse spook’, this line can only be seen towards the end of the album (Vandersteen, 1993, pp. 59–60, 65–70).

28 Michel De Dobbeleer

This ‘frontline’ may be considered as the adventure’s grand fnale: now the reader fnally sees to what end our heroes had to undertake all these vivid ‘space-consuming’ adventures, bringing them in the woods, in local inns and windmills, in a secret hiding place behind the bookshelves of a Brussels printer, at a Bruegelian banquet, in the opulent town hall of Brussels, and even on top of its magnifcent tower. It is no exaggeration to say that the characters during the sixteenth-century events only sit still when forging their upcoming plans (Vandersteen, 1993, pp. 35, 44, 49, 58), a particular comics plot element which De Dobbeleer and Dubois (2013) have called the chronotope of the war council. A second reason has to do with the educational concerns which comics artists in Catholic Flanders/Belgium had to keep in mind. As elsewhere, the slightest pernicious content was not acceptable. In the late 1940s, several years before Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954) would echo through Europe, making comics in Belgium was seriously hampered by the discriminatory directives of French publishers. The latter boycotted the success of Belgian authors by means of exaggerated, if not ridiculous, censorship regulations. Draconian measures concerning the depiction of violence and sex (no attractive women) and references to politics were imposed on all Belgian comics; for French artists, these measures were less strict (for this perfectionism, see De Weyer, 2005, pp. 18–19; 2015, pp. 84–87). Because of the commercial opportunities in the French market (cf. note 17), the majority of Belgian artists gave in. The Flemish Vandersteen, working for Tintin magazine in search of international recognition, was no exception. Yet, ‘Het Spaanse spook’ is not without violence, but there are no deaths, apart – of course – from the ‘functional’ death of Don Persilos by a lightning strike, shown in the fashback at the beginning of the album (cf. supra). The depicted violence, in child-oriented comics like these, was (and still is) always humoristic (slapstick) or functional, and if one should doubt the good intentions of the creator, Vandersteen makes mayor Van de Molenburg explicitly say (before throwing a bomb): ‘Now we will destroy the convoy without causing casualties. After all, the enemy also consists of human beings!’ (Vandersteen, 1993, p. 50). Rather than using violence, adventure heroes fght evil with clever plans that usually cover a lot of distance. In the space thus created, the heroes search, rescue, and fee – all of them more peaceful activities than fghting in front of or on the walls of a besieged city. So, to avoid too much violence, not only for educational reasons, but above all to reduce the risk of too monotonous adventures, adventure comics should rely frst and foremost on non-violent means to break a siege. The ‘device’ here is Philip II’s letter of grace. If the protagonists can get hold of it, Kriekebeek is saved, and the equilibrium of the mission plot is restored. This letter, frst seen briefy in the fashback told by Don Persilos at the beginning of the story (Vandersteen, 1993, p. 9), is in fact nothing more than what Alfred Hitchcock has called a ‘MacGufn’ (see Lowe, 2000, p. 70). We do not get the slightest

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clue of what King Philip has written in this royal document, but as usual with MacGufns, this is not important. The document’s plot signifcance lies in the adventure space it generates for the heroes who desperately need to fnd it.

The Siege as a Welcome Background for Depicting Common Compatriots In his work on sieges, Malcolm Hebron (cf. supra) does not mention a relevant aspect of ‘Het Spaanse spook’ as a (comics) siege narrative: far more than literary or other evocations of pitched battles, siege narratives, and their depictions have to do with common, non-military people.20 Yet, because of the specifc use of the ‘adventure space’ in ‘Het Spaanse spook’, we do not see many inhabitants of the besieged Kriekebeek throughout the album. Only near the end does Kriekebeek become the location where the visualized action takes place. However, as soon as Suske, Wiske, and Lambik manage, by means of a ruse, to get inside the walls of Spanish-controlled Brussels (Vandersteen, 1993, pp. 30–31), Kriekebeek’s besieged inhabitants are ‘represented’ by their hearty mayor, Van de Molenburg. Disguised as a ‘blind’ beggar, the mayor had been able to sneak through the Spanish troops to contact his spies in Brussels. In Lambik, he really fnds his match: both are brave men of action, typically Flemish ‘doers’ with a stereotypical Burgundian penchant for lavish and fatty food (Verschafel, 2007), who will accompany and support each other through thick and thin during the next 40 pages. While Lambik and Van de Molenburg are dealing with preventing or at least slowing down the progress of Spanish artillery from Brussels to Kriekebeek, Suske and Wiske are trying to get hold of the royal writ which is kept in the ofce of the Duke of Alba in the Brussels town hall. Therefore, Suske and Wiske especially operate among the Spanish and Brabant noblemen, whereas Lambik and Van de Molenburg undertake their actions among the lower-class peoples. This is likely why the witch Alwina magically transformed the children into nobles and Lambik into a Brabant peasant (cf. supra). One could surely say that outside of Kriekebeek, its besieged inhabitants are not only represented by Van de Molenburg but also by the kind-hearted Brabant farmers with whom the mayor and Lambik collaborate. The humble farm girl (Vandersteen, 1993, p. 45) who proposes the mayor and Lambik hide among the cows which she will be transporting through the heavily guarded city gate (not unlike Odysseus and his men escaping the Cyclops among the latter’s sheep!) symbolizes the simple helpfulness of the common people in Kriekebeek whom our heroes want to liberate. In sum, Vandersteen’s choice for the siege of a small town instead of a pitched battle has to do with the fact that it was more opportune to depict ordinary Flemings in the context of a siege than just male fghters on a battlefeld. With the former, he could express his Bruegelian qualities of presenting underdogs empathically much better than with the latter.

30 Michel De Dobbeleer

Outwitting the (Belgian/Flemish/Brabant) Past or Simply Making It Funny In this chapter, we have seen how Willy Vandersteen in ‘Het Spaanse spook’ managed to outwit the historical Flemish past. On the plot level, historical sieges during the Eighty Years’ War were normally not broken through adventurous chases for MacGufns, let alone without bloodshed. But Vandersteen made the past look ‘smarter’ and ‘happier’ or ‘merrier’, at times just ‘more familiar’, on other levels too. Often he does this by simply making it funny (rather than by making fun of it) but sometimes also by misrepresenting the sixteenth century in a way that has nothing to do with humour (as with the anachronistic drawings of the Brussels town hall, see note 10). Another case of misrepresentation is the ‘relocation’ of the famous Bruegel painting The Peasant Wedding. Vandersteen is not explicit about which museum Suske, Wiske, and Lambik visit, but it is clear that it cannot be the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (see note 8). Belgian comics characters do not just go to Vienna, on a free afternoon, to visit a museum. Most of Vandersteen’s readers must have thought – or still think – that in the opening scene the heroes are visiting one of the Belgian Fine Arts Museums, most probably that in Antwerp or Brussels.21 In any case, these are more likely locations than Vienna for a well-known Flemish Renaissance painting, especially if the heroes will be magically catapulted into sixteenth-century Brabant through that very painting (1993, p. 5). As we discussed, much of the humour in Suske en Wiske consists of (mostly Lambik’s) ‘silly stunts’, but Vandersteen also liked ironic winks at what he himself, as well as his young and older readers, had learned at school about the proud Belgian and Flemish past. The author’s remark, ‘The Spaniards attack fercely, but soon discover that Lambik belongs to the people of whom Caesar testifed that they were the bravest of all Gauls’ (Vandersteen, 1993, p. 54), is defnitely witty rather than nationalist.22 A comparable wink, now mostly on the visual plane, is seen two pages among, where Lambik congratulates Mayor Van de Molenburg: ‘Mayor, we are heroes! The convoy has been crushed! Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck are small beer against us!’ (1993, p. 56; Figure 2.7 [the speech balloon mistakenly points to the mayor]). Breydel and De Coninck were two resistance heroes in the 1302 Battle of the Golden Spurs, won by the Flemish against the French. The pose that Lambik and the mayor assume here is highly reminiscent of their statue in the Market Square in Bruges (by Paul De Vigne). Erected in 1887, this statue was a result of the success of Hendrik Conscience’s romanticized novel of the Battle of the Golden Spurs, De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders, 1838), in which Breydel and De Coninck play important roles. In 1948–1950, when ‘Het Spaanse spook’ appeared, Conscience’s novel and probably the statue too were much better known among Flemish children and adults alike than they are now. In spite of these somewhat bragging – though mostly witty – remarks, the defenders of Kriekebeek and their supporters are the underdogs with which

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FIGURE 2.7

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‘Het Spaanse spook’,Vandersteen, 1993, p. 56. © 2021 Standaard Uitgeverij.

Belgians traditionally like to associate themselves (Verschafel, 2007). Calling them ‘Belgians’ would have been an anachronism (although the term already existed in Caesar’s time, as we saw). And in a country like Belgium, with its community question, one always has to be careful with praising the courage of the ‘Flemings’ or the ‘Walloons’, for that matter, especially when creating comics that appear in a French- and Dutch-language version (as in the Tintin/Kuifje magazine). Therefore, Vandersteen did not call the common inhabitants of Kriekebeek (and Brussels) ‘Flemings’ (Vlamingen in Dutch, which they were, at least in the modern sense of the term ‘Flemish’, cf. note 14). Instead, he cleverly calls them – often through the Spanish characters – ‘Brabanters’ (Brabanders), after the historical region in the centre and north of present-day Belgium, Brabant. In its historical sense, the Brussels-based Tintin magazine, as well as Hergé – who was born and died in what are now municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region – and even Willy Vandersteen himself can all be considered ‘Brabantine’. Indeed, Vandersteen’s Antwerp, too, historically belonged to the Duchy of Brabant.23 What is more, the Dutch in Vandersteen’s earliest comics, ‘Het Spaanse spook’

32 Michel De Dobbeleer

included, was regionally coloured by the Antwerp vernacular (cf. Barnard, 1995), belonging to the Brabantine dialects. In other words, to indicate the good ones in ‘Het Spaanse spook’, Vandersteen could not have chosen a better ethnonym than Brabanters to promote a ‘sense of us’ among the heterogeneous readers of his frst story for the Tintin magazine. The ‘them’ in ‘Het Spaanse spook’ are ‘the Spaniards’ (Spanjaarden), more precisely, the troops of the Spanish king stationed in the Habsburg Netherlands, known as the Ejército de Flandes or ‘Army of Flanders’. Although this was a highly multinational army, it does not come as a surprise that Vandersteen presented it simply (cf. González de León, 2009, pp. 99–100). Just like the title character, all soldiers stationed in and around Brussels are portrayed as ethnically Spanish. This is made concrete by the trope, in Flemish family comics, of having characters of Spanish (or Latin American) descent talk in Dutch with recognizable Spanish endings, especially -os.24 For example, the very frst word spoken by Don Persilos is ‘Nenios’ (Vandersteen, 1993, p. 4), meaning ‘no’ or nee(n) in Dutch. The leader of the ‘them’, King Philip II of Spain, only visible in one panel during Don Persilos’ long fashback (cf. supra; Vandersteen, 1993, p. 8), shows more mercy towards the inhabitants of Kriekebeek than the actual antagonist in this Suske en Wiske story: the Duke of Alba (cf. supra), governor of the Netherlands from 1567 until 1573 (Kamen, 2004, pp. 80–124). Curiously, Alba, considered the devil incarnate in Belgium, does not use the funny -os-endings.25 Vandersteen likely wanted to show that the duke, more distinguished than these soldiers, could speak perfect French (evoked through his Dutch without any foreign endings). Or maybe he thought that an amusing, sympathetic idiom would not suit Alba’s status as the ultimate enemy. To make his character more tragic, on the penultimate page, Vandersteen once again stretches the historical truth by saying the duke would die ‘an inglorious death on the battlefeld’ (1993, p. 70), whereas historically he died, a sick man, in Lisbon in 1582, at the age of 75 (Kamen, 2004, pp. 154–156). In any case, possible anti-Spanish feelings (as suggested by Behiels, see note 25) in ‘Het Spaanse spook’ are certainly moderated by the positive, good-natured title character, Don Persilos y Vigoramba.

In Lieu of a Conclusion: The ‘Multifunctionality’ of Brabant It is clear from the above how Vandersteen in ‘Het Spaanse spook’ combines the humorous and the adventurous, according to the unwritten ‘laws’ of the Flemish family comics format. At the same time, not unlike Bruegel, he has interwoven the humorous with the documentary, thus empathically telling us more about Flemish history. In doing so, he likes to allude to auto-images (in the imagological sense of the term; Leerssen, 2016), on the one hand to instruct the younger readers and on the other – and at the same time – to amuse the adults. In the earlier years of his rich career, Vandersteen was known as an artist who exploited the Flemishness of his heroes, as evidenced most of all by their lively

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language. Without doubt, the author knew that his heroes to a great extent owed their success to this particular ‘juicy’ Flemish language (Meesters, 2010, p. 86). It was therefore all the more striking that in 1964, Vandersteen made the purely commercial decision to let Suske, Wiske, and the other characters – from one day to the next – only speak the ‘refned’ Dutch that was current at the time in the Netherlands (and which a majority of highly educated Flemings then wanted to become standard in Flanders).26 When in 1967, the so-called Vierkleurenreeks (‘Four Colours Series’) started, the idea was to reissue the older Suske en Wiske albums in between the new ones. The former were adapted to the new requirements (regarding colours, the fxed number of pages, etc.) and to the language of the largest target group: the Dutch from the Netherlands. ‘Het Spaanse spook’ may have been reworked earlier, but it is certainly remarkable that Vandersteen, or his publisher, waited so long to bring out this reworked version. It appeared in the new series only as the penultimate of the older (pre-1967) stories, in 1974 as number 150.27 Unlike some other older stories that were abridged hastily to ft the new Vierkleurenreeks, ‘Het Spaanse spook’ could keep its original length so that this album is much longer than the preceding ones in this series (70 pages instead of the usual 58). Probably Vandersteen and his entourage realized that extensive cutting of this classic would meet with dissatisfaction in Flanders. They may have waited until the jubilee number 150. The ‘jubilee issue’ (Figure 2.2) allowed them to come up with something special: a longer album (for the younger and/ or Dutch readers who did not know the original) and a classic (for the older Flemish readers who already knew it) together. At the same time, it is also possible that they waited so long to reissue ‘Het Spaanse spook’ and thus to adapt its juicy Flemish Dutch to ensure that the language change would not be surprising anymore for the older Flemish fans. If they were still Suske en Wiske fans in 1974, they would certainly have become used to the fact that their heroes now talked ‘Dutch’ Dutch. Of course, those fans who were against the ‘translation’ of the juicy Flemish – among them the Dutch poet and essayist Benno Barnard (1995) – may also have considered it strange, ridiculous, or even inappropriate that the Flemish cause was now being defended in ‘Dutch’ Dutch, whereas this might have irritated others much less or not at all. After all, the cause that Suske, Wiske, and Lambik serve in the album was that of the Low Countries as a whole. It is but a quirk of history that only the Northern Netherlands successfully revolted against the Spanish in those sixteenth- and seventeenth-century war years. A happy coincidence for Vandersteen – which once again illustrates the complexity of the Low Countries – is that the present-day Netherlands too also comprise a ‘Brabant’. In the country’s central south lies the province of North Brabant.28 A ‘South Brabant’ does not exist but should be situated in present-day Belgium, namely in what are now the provinces of Flemish Brabant (Vlaams-Brabant) and Walloon Brabant (Brabant wallon). A ‘Central Brabant’ does not exist either, although in 2014 certain politicians wanted the province of

34 Michel De Dobbeleer

Antwerp, north of Flemish Brabant, to be renamed into Midden-Brabant (‘Central Brabant’).29 As we saw, in a country like Belgium, with its complicated (institutional) history at the crossroads of Romanic and Germanic speaking Europe, one always has to be cautious with praising the bravery of the ‘Flemings’ or the ‘Walloons’, above all in publications appearing in both French and Dutch, such as the Tintin/Kuifje magazine. Whereas shortly after World War II – which had sharpened the divisions between the two groups – Vandersteen was able to exploit the fact that ‘Brabant’ connected the Flemish to the Francophone Belgians, in the seventies he could proft from the fact that the term was applicable to the Netherlands as well. That the Spanish in ‘Het Spaanse spook’ fght the Brabanters could thus be simply left unchanged (Vandersteen, 1974, pp. 46–47). For the Dutch readers too, Brabant could be associated with an ‘us’, yet another level on which Vandersteen, thanks to the multifunctionality of this geographical term, has outwitted the past, this time the particular Flemish past of his most successful comic series.30

Notes 1 Porteman (2005, p. 205). All translations from Dutch are mine. 2 For why the English translation ‘family comics’ – for this typical Flemish (sub)genre of familiestrips – is preferable to the apparently more obvious ‘family strips’, see De Dobbeleer (2021, pp. 35–41). 3 Lefèvre elaborates on the diferences with American, Francophone Belgian, and Dutch comics, publication formats, and/or markets (2013, pp. 257–261). 4 ‘Aunt Sidonia’ (Figure 2.1: second from left) was originally called ‘Sidonie’ and is in fact only the aunt of Wiske (she adopted Suske). 5 Cf. Meesters (2010, p. 89). Willy Vandersteen and his many collaborators and assistants are known as ‘Studio Vandersteen’ (since 1959, cf. Van Hooydonck, 1994, pp. 231–244). After Vandersteen’s death in 1990, they continued several of his more than ten series, including Suske en Wiske. 6 For ‘The very best albums: Suske en Wiske hit parade’, see http://suskeenwiske.ophetwww.net/hitlijst/totaal.php (accessed 10 May 2021). ‘Het Spaanse spook’ is only preceded by the slightly younger ‘De schat van Beersel’ (‘The treasure of Beersel’, 1952–1953), which is also set in Brabant: mostly in ffteenth-century Beersel, a town known for its medieval castle. Just like most other Suske en Wiske albums, ‘Het Spaanse spook’ appeared in French (in 1974 as ‘Le fantôme espagnol’). For the 34 languages and Dutch dialects in which Suske and Wiske’s adventures can be read, see http://suskeenwiske.ophetwww.net/talen/index.php (accessed 10 May 2021), including detailed information about the English and American versions. 7 His name alludes to two then well-known brands of washing powder, Persil and Vigor (Van der Made in Vandersteen, 2020a, p. 10). ‘Hence’, probably, the spectre’s spotless white sheet. 8 The same painting (housed in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum; cf. Van der Made in Vandersteen, 2020a, p. 9) would also play a role in René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s ‘Astérix chez les Belges’ (1979), where the fnal scene, the typical farewell dinner, clearly alludes to it (Screech, 2005, p. 85). As the dates reveal, the use of the painting in the 1565 context is a little anachronistic, but the spectre (and likely Vandersteen too) thinks it is a 1565 painting (Vandersteen, 1993, p. 5). 9 According to Peter Vandenabeele’s hypothesis (personal communication, 16 March 2009) this fctitious place is possibly modelled after Bierbeek, a municipality in

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10

11 12

13 14

15 16 17

18 19 20

21 22

35

Flemish Brabant. The transformation of ‘Bier’ (Dutch for ‘beer’) into ‘Kriek(e)’ (Kriek is a Belgian beer) makes this plausible. Vandersteen based his drawings of the gothic town hall on how it has looked since the nineteenth-century restorations (see Figure 2.6). So it is anachronistic, just like Alba’s very presence in the building in 1565 (he arrived in the Netherlands only in 1567; see Van der Made in Vandersteen, 2020a, p. 12). Van Hooydonck (1994, pp. 67, 273–275). Contrary to Vandersteen’s many other series, this series was not to be continued according to Vandersteen’s will. One could certainly think here of the legendary, world-famous Thyl Ulenspiegel, who has been identifed with Hannes, the protagonist of De Geuzen, and to whom Vandersteen had already devoted two long stories in 1951–1953 (Van Hooydonck, 1994, pp. 166–170: these Tijl Uilenspiegel stories frst appeared in Le journal de Tintin, cf. infra). As has been done by Van Hooydonck (1994, p. 174), whose 1994 Vandersteen biography has the subtitle: ‘De Bruegel van het beeldverhaal’ (‘The Bruegel of Comics’). Although many people call the Dutch spoken in Belgium ‘Flemish’, it is (a kind of ) Dutch (the degree of diference between ‘Flemish’ Dutch from Belgium and ‘Dutch’ Dutch from the Netherlands is comparable to that between British and American English). When I use the term ‘Flemish’ here, I mean ‘belonging to the (culture of the) northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and thus not to (that of ) the Netherlands’. The southern (Walloon) part of Belgium is French speaking. Brussels, the capital in the centre of the country, is ofcially bilingual (Dutch and French) but actually dominated by French and English (because of the presence of EU institutions). For Vandersteen’s borrowing from Hergé, see recently Huygens (2020). For the most recent treatment of Vandersteen’s cooperation with Tintin, see Wilmet’s and Van der Made’s introductory chapters in Vandersteen (2020a, pp. 3–32) and (2020b, pp. 3–28). See also Baetens (2007). Regarding comics, in those times ‘international’ in Flanders meant visible in the French-speaking world. Tintin, the famous series as well as the magazine of the same name, was infuential in France, and until today the Suske en Wiske albums appear in French (as Bob et Bobette, cf. supra). Because of the blue covers of the albums with the Suske en Wiske adventures that frst appeared in Tintin, they are known as the Blue Series (Blauwe reeks; for more details see Wilmet in Vandersteen, 2020a, esp. pp. 6–8). According to Van Hooydonck (1994, p. 174), Hergé could not always digest this. This aspect has already been discussed with reference to another Flemish comics siege narrative in De Dobbeleer (2009, pp. 121–122). The Dutch Revolt was characterized by its high number of sieges. One of the rare pitched battles, the 1600 Battle of Nieuwpoort (cf. Blokker, 2006, pp. 81–91), plays a role in the Suske en Wiske album ‘Jeanne Panne’ (2000, by Vandersteen’s successor Paul Geerts). Maybe because it was a pitched battle (won by the Dutch), it is not of central importance in the album’s plot. A more recent album, devoted to the times of the Dutch Revolt, is ‘Het lijdende Leiden’ (‘The Sufering Leiden’, 2011). The glorious relief of Leiden (1574) is still commemorated annually in the city, this memory cult being the reason why the Suske en Wiske creators devoted an album to it (see the back matter in Van Gucht & Morjaeu, 2011). In the same year, seventeenth-century sieges of Aardenburg and Sluis were thematized in the short album ‘De laaiende linies’ (‘The Blazing Lines’; Studio Vandersteen, 2011). The opening scene has been slightly changed and made less Flemish (cf. infra) in the 1974 version, but still no clue is given about the location of the museum. Vandersteen refers to the opening passage of De bello Gallico (On the Gallic War, ca. 54 BC) – every year read and discussed in Latin courses throughout Belgium – containing the phrase ‘Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae’ (‘Of all these [i.e., Gauls] the Belgians are the bravest’). It goes without saying that Caear’s Belgae have little to do with the inhabitants of Belgium (founded only in 1830; cf. Millett, 2012, p. 227).

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23 For the ‘imagined community/polity’ of Brabant, also after the autonomous Duchy of Brabant had ceased to exist in 1430, see Stein (2018), who expounds how the Brabant dukes traced back their origins to Pepin the Short and his son Charlemagne. 24 In Flemish Dutch, this ‘children’s Spanish’ is widely known as Jommekesspaans (see The Flemish Dictionary: www.vlaamswoordenboek.be/defnities/term/Jommekesspaans), ‘Jommeke Spanish’, after the Spanish in Jef Nys’s Jommeke (1955–now, a family comics series as popular as Suske en Wiske), but as ‘Het Spaanse spook’ demonstrates, this Spanish is actually older than Jommeke. 25 Cf. Behiels (1992) on the anti-Spanish Black Legend and how ‘Het Spaanse spook’ builds upon it. 26 From 1953 until 1964, two parallel versions of the Suske en Wiske albums appeared, a Flemish one and, for the Dutch market, a Dutch one (Meesters, 2010, p. 88). 27 Only ‘Rikki en Wiske in Chocowakije’ (‘Rikki and Wiske in Chocovakia’), historically the oldest album (with Rikki instead of Suske), (re)appeared later, in 1975, as number 154. Two pre-1967 stories ‘De gekalibreerde kwibus’ (‘The Calibrated Weirdo’, 1948–1950; cf. Baetens, 2007) and ‘De rammelende rally’ (‘The Rattling Rally’, 1958) did not appear in the Vierkleurenreeks (still running today). 28 For how the present-day local residents identify with North Brabant, see Wagemakers (2017). 29 Their aim was to reduce the misleading identifcation of the rest of the province with its biggest city (and administrative capital), Antwerp (Haeck, 2014). Possibly also because Midden-Brabant would emphasize too much the historical link with the (North) Brabant that has been Dutch for four centuries (in Belgium, there are still Orangists who want the country to return to the Netherlands), this idea of renaming the province of Antwerp was quickly dropped. 30 This article is an outcome of the COMICS project (Ghent University) funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 758502).

References Baetens, J. (2007) ‘Vue de Belgique francophone, la bande dessinée famande n'est pas une ... bande dessinée’, Textyles, 30, pp. 117–121. Bakhtin, M. M. (1982) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Translated from the Russian by Holquist, M. and Emerson, C., and edited by Holquist, M. Austin: University of Texas Press. Barnard, B. (1995) ‘Slobberen, nee! Dat is niet gezeverd’, in Grossey, R. and Van Bavel, J. (eds.) Ziet eens wat 'n schoon koleuren: Suske en Wiske en kunst. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij, pp. 37–46. Behiels, L. (1992) ‘El duque de Alba en la conciencia colectiva de los famencos’, Foro hispánico: revista hispánica de los Países Bajos, 3, pp. 31–43. Blokker, J. (2006) Waar is de Tachtigjarige Oorlog gebleven? Amsterdam: De Harmonie. De Dobbeleer, M. (2009) ‘“We hebben geen keuze... We moeten die Kogge vinden!!”: Belegering als avontuur in Bakelandts Het beleg van Nieuwpoort’, Van mensen en dingen, 7(1–2), pp. 120–139. De Dobbeleer, M. (2021) ‘Can Stereotypical Housewives in Flemish Family Comics Divorce? The Cases of Jommeke and De Kiekeboes’, Studies in Comics, 12(1), pp. 33–56. De Dobbeleer, M. and Dubois, A. (2013) ‘Der Chronotopos des Kriegsrates als Merkmal in Comics: Vom narratologischen Geschehen zur Geschichte in Attilio Micheluzzis Sibérie’, in Brunken, O. and Giesa, F. (eds.) Erzählen in Comic: Beiträge zur Comicforschung. Essen: Bachmann, pp. 113–127.

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De Weyer, G. (2005) België gestript: Alles over de Belgische strip: Feiten, genres en auteurs. Tielt: Lannoo. De Weyer, G. (2015) België gestript: Het ultieme naslagwerk over de Belgische strip. Antwerpen: Dragonetti. Geerts, P. (2000) ‘Jeanne Panne’, Suske en Wiske #264. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij. González de León, F. (2009) The Road to Rocroi: Class, Culture and Command in the Spanish Army of Flanders, 1567–1659. Leiden: Brill. Haeck, P. (2014) ‘Provincie Antwerpen moet Midden-Brabant worden’, De Tijd, 13 November. Available at: www.tijd.be/politiek-economie/belgie/vlaanderen/ provincie-antwerpen-moet-midden-brabant-worden/9567169.html (Accessed 12 May 2021). Hebron, M. (1997) The Medieval Siege: Theme and Image in Middle English Romance. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Huygens, F. (2020) ‘Suske en Wiske gaan Kuifje achterna’, Stripgids: Derde Reeks, 45(8), pp. 124–129. Kamen, H. (2004) The Duke of Alba. New Haven: Yale University Press. Keunen, B. (2011) Time and Imagination: Chronotopes in Western Narrative Culture. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Leerssen, J. (2016) ‘Imagology: On Using Ethnicity to Make Sense of the World’, Iberic@l: Revue d'études ibériques et ibéro-américaines, 10, 13–31. Lefèvre, P. (2013) ‘Narration in the Flemish Dual Publication System: The Crossover Genre of the Humoristic Adventure’, in Stein, D. and Thon, J.-N. (eds.) From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 255–269. Lowe, N. J. (2000) The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meesters, G. (2010) ‘Het Nederlands van Suske en Wiske: de taal is half het volk’, Knack, 7 October (Knack Special: De avonturen van Willy Vandersteen: 65 jaar Suske en Wiske), pp. 86–89. Millett, M. J. (2012) ‘Belgae’ in Hornblower, S., Spawforth, A. and Eidinow, E. (eds.) The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 227. Porteman, K. (2005) ‘Het Spaanse spook’, Spiegel der Letteren, 47(3), pp. 205–220. Romero Jódar, A. (2006) ‘The Quest For a Place in Culture: The Verbal-Iconical Production and the Evolution of Comic-Books Towards Graphic Novels’, Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, 14, pp. 93–110. Screech, M. (2005) Masters of the Ninth Art: Bandes dessinées and Franco-Belgian Identity. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Stein, R. (2018) ‘The Antwerp Clerk Jan van Boendale and the Creation of a Brabantine Ideology’, in Damen, M., Haemers, J. and Mann, A. M. (eds.) Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200–c. 1690). Leiden: Brill, pp. 205–224. Studio Vandersteen (2011) ‘De laaiende linies’ in Suske en Wiske. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij. Vandersteen, W. (1974 [1952]) ‘Het Spaanse spook’ in Suske en Wiske #150. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij. Vandersteen, W. (1993 [1952]) ‘Het Spaanse Spook’ in Suske en Wiske Klassiek: Blauwe Reeks #1. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij. Vandersteen, W. (2020a) De avonturen van Suske en Wiske: De blauwe reeks. Vol. 1. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij.

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Vandersteen, W. (2020b) De avonturen van Suske en Wiske: De blauwe reeks. Vol. 2. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij. Van Gucht, P. and Morjaeu, L. (2011) ‘Het lijdende Leiden’ in Suske en Wiske #314. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij. Van Hooydonck, P. (1994) Willy Vandersteen: De Bruegel van het beeldverhaal. Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij. Verschafel, T. (2007) ‘Belgium’ in Beller, M. and Leerssen, J. (eds.) Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters, a Critical Survey. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 108–113. Wagemakers, S. (2017) Brabant is Here: Making Sense of Regional Identifcation. PhD thesis. Tilburg University.

3 DISPLACEMENT, SPACE, AND QUESTIONS OF BELONGING German and Colombian Graphic Novels in Dialogue Felipe Gómez and Gabi Maier

As cultural products, graphic narratives are equipped to perform memory, national history, national identity, and human rights. A recent international boom in fctional and documentary graphic novels has focused on the depiction and discussion of asylum-seeking processes, pursuits of refuge, human migration, and territorial displacement, including the Finnish author Ville Tietäväinen’s Näkymättömät kädet ([Invisible Hands] 2011, Finnish), Carlos Spottorno and Guillermo Abril’s La Grieta ([The Crack] 2016, Spanish), Morten Dürr and Lars Horneman’s Zenobia (2018, Danish), and Yi Luo’s Running Girl (2016, German), among others. Whereas Tietäväinen or Spottorno and Abril’s books have found their way into other languages, such as German or French, they have not been translated into English. This refects a trend that can be seen with other graphic novels that address the topics of refugees and migration either from a European perspective, as in Paula Bulling’s Im Land der Frühaufsteher ([In the Land of the Early Risers] 2012), or from a Latin American point of view, as in Pablo Guerra and Camilo Aguirre’s La Palizúa: Ustedes no saben cómo ha sido esta lucha ([La Palizúa: You Don’t Know What This Struggle Has Been Like] 2018) and Pablo Guerra and Camilo Vieco’s Sin mascar palabra: Por los caminos de Tulapa ([Not Mincing Our Words: Through the Paths of Tulapa] 2018). These comics look at nationally or culturally located stories of displacement from diferent traditions, yet many of these stories remain unknown in Anglophone scholarship. Bulling’s Im Land der Frühaufsteher depicts the plight of refugees in remote Asylantenwohnheimen [asylum-seeker homes] in Germany. The story foregrounds not the physical journey undertaken by refugees to reach Europe but rather the excruciating stasis endured while awaiting a decision by the German authorities. Even though refugees have arrived at what, for all intents and purposes, appears to be their fnal destination, their existential displacement continues. On the other hand, Guerra and Aguirre’s La Palizúa and Guerra and Vieco’s DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-4

40 Felipe Gómez and Gabi Maier

Sin mascar palabra emphasize land theft and systemic and state-sponsored violence in the context of a decades-long armed confict in Colombia, the country with the world’s highest rate of internal displacement according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Through their stories, these graphic novels explore and refect family histories, memories of former homelands, the role space plays with regard to the arrival at a new location, and afective experiences and aspects of voluntary and involuntary migration. This chapter examines some of the visual and textual mechanisms used to construct such narratives in terms of how they imagine, represent, and conceptualize notions of space, home, and identity under early twenty-frst-century political conditions. How do European and Latin American approaches to describing and discussing these global subjects difer and converge? What kinds of answers to the aforementioned issues do they propose, if they propose any at all? Using sociological theories about space and migration, this chapter seeks to put the aforementioned texts in conversation with each other and intends to highlight the difculties – and sometimes impossibilities – of putting authentic stories into verbal and visual representations.

The Long Road to (Non-)Arrival in Paula Bulling’s Im Land der Frühaufsteher Paula Bulling’s Im Land der Frühaufsteher was published in 2012, following six months of research on asylum-seeker homes in the East German state of SaxonyAnhalt. In her graphic novel, Bulling explores the living conditions of multiple asylum seekers in small East German towns such as Halberstadt, Möhlau, and Bernburg and becomes increasingly aware – and critical – of the dire situation many of the people she meets are facing. As her illustrations demonstrate, bleakness and desolation are among the dominant characteristics of the places Bulling visits, as are prejudice and, at times, open racism among the German population. Im Land der Frühaufsteher showcases the underlying xenophobia and discrimination asylum seekers are subjected to on a regular basis, whether from security guards of the asylum-seeker homes, random people at the train station, police ofcers, or neo-Nazis, who allegedly contributed to the death of Azad Murat Hadji, a Kurdish asylum seeker from Georgia whose story is briefy mentioned at the end of the graphic novel. Thus, Bulling provides readers with a collage of diverse experiences in black, white, and various shades of grey that portrays the struggles refugees face in a country that ofers few spaces where People of Color can feel safe. Bulling’s Im Land der Frühaufsteher stands out because it deals with asylumseeker homes, spaces customarily hidden from the view of ordinary German citizens. Tucked away on the outskirts of towns or in remote parts of the German countryside, asylum seekers’ dire living conditions are rarely visible to the German public or discussed in the German media. Just as the 2016 novel Ohrfeige [A Slap in the Face] by the German–Iraqi author Abbas Khider is the frst

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novel about an asylum-seeker home in German literary history (see Encke, 2016, para. 3), Im Land der Frühaufsteher is the frst graphic novel about these homes. Although other works like Madgermanes (2016) by Birgit Weyhe include multiple panels about asylum-seeker homes and address the difcult conditions there, Im Land der Frühaufsteher takes the emphasis to a new level by dedicating close to half the narrative to them. In her infuential book, Space, Place, and Gender, Doreen Massey describes space as being ‘constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus’ (1994a, p. 154), echoing Edward Soja who, in Postmodern Geographies, states, ‘[s]ocial and spatial structures are dialectically intertwined in social life, not just mapped one onto the other as categorical projections’ (1989, p. 127). In particular, Massey stresses the importance of ‘race and gender’ when it comes to the experience of places since ‘women’s mobility, for instance, is restricted – in a thousand diferent ways, from physical violence to being ogled at or made to feel quite simply “out of place”… by men’ (1994a, p. 148), and the same holds true for People of Color as Bulling’s graphic novel so emphatically delineates. In Im Land der Frühaufsteher, we encounter several asylum seekers who have done ‘a lot of physical moving but who are not “in charge” ’ (Massey, 1994a, p. 149), who have no control over their fate, and no ‘control over mobility’ (Massey, 1994a, p. 150). In a similar vein, Wolfgang Hallet and Birgit Neumann stress the ‘enge Verfechtung zwischen Raum, Ordnung und Macht’ [close linkage between space, hierarchy, and power] (2009, p. 24), where power is derived from defning certain places as ‘inhabited by coherent and homogenous communities’ (Massey, 1994a, p. 147), be it the East German town or the asylum-seeker home which are then viewed as separate entities, with a boundary around those spaces to create clear demarcations ‘between “us” and “them” ‘ (Massey, 1994a, p. 152). Thus, spaces are used to marginalize and ostracize, to re-enforce power dynamics by imposing gendered or racist connotations on them in a seemingly random and destructive way. With asylum-seeker homes constituting a decisive part of the graphic novel, the notion of space becomes a core feature and defning factor of Bulling’s narrative which refects Massey’s theoretical observations. As the word Heim [home] in Asylantenwohnheim [asylum-seeker home] indicates, asylum seekers should feel protected in their present abodes, shielded from war, poverty, persecution, and discrimination now that they have reached an allegedly safe haven. Yet, as Bulling’s graphic novel illustrates repeatedly, life in German asylum-seeker homes equals life in a cage, behind bars, literally and fguratively, where individual freedom is absent. The asylum-seeker home in Halberstadt, for example, is surrounded by a fence and security cameras and monitored by a security guard. Before Bulling and her friend Ina are able to enter the building to visit asylum seeker Aziz, both are given a Besucherkarte [visitation permit] (p. 28),1 asked to show their IDs (p. 27), and then required to leave their documents with the guard until they exit the building, implying that visiting an asylum seeker is a suspicious undertaking necessitating strict surveillance. The need for vigilance is extended to the actual

42

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asylum seekers themselves, who, according to the security guard, will steal any bike not securely locked to a metal bar inside the fenced-in area of the asylumseeker home (p. 28). As the short episode suggests, entering the space of the home constitutes an act that turns innocent human beings into potential criminals. The similarity is deepened by the name of the institution – ZASt or Zentrale Aufnahmestelle für Asylbewerber [Main Arrival Center for Asylum Seekers] – which seemingly alludes to the German term Knast [jail]. The name assigns ‘single, fxed identities’ to asylum-seeker homes and to the people who reside there and depicts those spaces ‘as bounded and enclosed’ (Massey, 1994b, p. 114). The constraints of the asylum-seeker home are clearly underlined by Bulling’s black, grey, and white drawings that stress emptiness and desolation. The colour grey imbues Bulling’s narrative with a gloomy feel that echoes Aziz’s characterization of his home as ‘ziemlich bedrückend’ [quite depressing] (p. 32). Outside the home, we rarely encounter people on the sidewalks, and if we do, they appear small and vulnerable compared to the vastness of their surroundings. Tall streetlights (p. 29) in the panels (see Figure 3.1) loom above like the cameras at the security booth that are constantly recording what is going on around them.2 Hence, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Aziz openly calls the asylum-seeker home a ‘Knast’ (pp. 32–33) and longs to be transferred to someplace ‘besser als hier’ [better than here] (p. 37).

FIGURE 3.1

Im Land der Frühaufsteher, Bulling, 2012, p. 29. Courtesy of the artist.

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As interior spaces emulate the desolate outer spaces, they once again defy the idea of a genuine home for refugees. Shared rooms make it impossible for residents to maintain any kind of privacy. Bulling’s illustrations of the dorm emphasize a lack of warmth and humanity and depict the refugees’ precarity: a panel with only two stripped-down, white beds (p. 31) (Figure 3.2); another with two black beds without sheets, a locker-like wardrobe, and a small table with two chairs (p. 30); and another with unadorned hallways (p. 47). Furthermore, Aziz’s foor seemingly lacks a kitchen, replaced by two burners in the hallway where Paula and Fatma, a friend of Aziz’s, cook dinner. This suggests a lack of fundamental communal spaces shared by residents. Though Aziz’s room functions as a social space where Fatma watches TV and people gather to eat, the absence of plates on Aziz’s table is another sign of scarcity. These spaces stand in stark contrast to Ina’s apartment with an eat-in kitchen, dishware, and numerous gadgets on multiple tabletops. Aziz tells Bulling and Ina: ‘Das ist gut, wenn die Deutschen selbst sehen, wie das Leben geht hier. Ich fnde das sehr höfich’ (p. 57) [It’s a good thing when Germans see for themselves what life is here like. I think that’s very polite]. This points to the limited, even non-existent, interaction asylum seekers have with ordinary Germans and thus to ‘the precarity of spatial isolation, loneliness, and boredom that refugees experience’ (Stehle, 2018, p. 523). Consequently, all residents seem to harbour a desire to leave their asylumseeker homes – but invisible bars prevent them from entering regular German life. As Bulling’s aerial view of the route from dorm to town illustrates (p. 56), the asylum seekers’ home, located on a hill, is completely isolated. Public

FIGURE 3.2

Im Land der Frühaufsteher, Bulling, 2012. p. 31. Courtesy of the artist.

44 Felipe Gómez and Gabi Maier

transportation is unavailable, and the train station in Halberstadt is an hour-long walk away through nearby woods. As Fatma and her friends make their way to the train station, they are reduced to tiny outlines, almost invisible on the fullpage panel and seemingly in danger of being swallowed by the forest without a trace (p. 56) (Figure 3.3). Under these circumstances, leading a normal life seems impossible (p. 38), creating feelings of anxiety. ‘Jetzt ich bin wie verrückt’ (p. 37) [Now, I feel like I am crazy], says Aziz, unknowingly referencing the fact that a number of asylum-seeker homes used to be mental asylums intended to separate the sane from the insane, ‘us’ from ‘them’ (Massey, 1994a, p. 152). Asylum seekers are outcasts, if not downright criminals, shunned by German society. The restrictions asylum seekers face are augmented by the enforcement of the ‘Residenzpficht’ (p. 37) – ‘ein Gesetz, das Flüchtlingen verbietet, ihren Landkreis ohne Antrag auf Erlaubnis zu verlassen’ [a law that prohibits refugees from leaving their county without having ofcially requested a permit] (p. 87). A relic from colonial times, as a protester informs the reader during a smallsize rally in Merseburg, ‘Residenzpficht’ is unique to Germany and violates the Geneva Convention since it restricts the human right to free movement (p. 92). As highlighted by Massey, who states that ‘[d]iferential mobility can weaken

FIGURE 3.3

Im Land der Frühaufsteher, Bulling, 2012, p. 56. Courtesy of the artist.

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the leverage of the already weak’ (1994a, p. 150), movement is a privilege not granted to asylum seekers and is often restricted, as the graphic novel depicts, in a haphazard and damaging manner. As Bulling describes, transfers rarely lead to a life outside of governmental institutions but, more often than not, result in a stay in yet another desolate asylum-seeker home. While both Aziz and Fatma receive their transfers and leave Halberstadt behind, both end up in other facilities in equally small towns in Saxony-Anhalt. No signifcant improvement can be noted, indicated by Bulling’s stylistic choices: a large swastika sprayed on the building (pp. 60–61) in Harbke, the barbed wire and extraordinary tall streetlights illuminating the dorms (pp. 62–63) in Bernburg, or the pronounced emptiness and desolation in Möhlau (pp. 64–65). Again, Aziz and Fatma fnd themselves in remote places, disconnected from public transportation and with no direct contact with the German public. Being transferred does not improve one’s situation but only continues the endless stasis. Though refugees are removed from sight in their various Asylantenwohnheime, they do have spaces for themselves. Fatma and her friends make every efort to spend an evening at a discotheque they call ‘Afrika Disco’ (p. 51), whereas Aziz frequents the ‘Afroshop’ in Halle, a refuge for People of Color. The decision to attend the ‘Afrika Disco’, despite requiring a long walk through woods and a train ride, can be seen as a ‘defant attempt of forcefully displaced people to claim space’ (Stehle, 2018, p. 524). Similarly, the ‘Afroshop’ ofers a sanctuary for the refugee community, as Paula’s friend Farid remarks: ‘Dieser Afroshop ist nicht dein Raum [referring to Paula]! Natürlich sind die Leute misstrauisch. Das ist für sie ein Ort, wo sie die Regeln kennen und nicht du. … Und ich fnde auch man kann es den Leuten lassen einen Raum für sich zu haben! Enfn!’ [This Afroshop is not your space! Of course, people are suspicious. It is a space where they know the rules and you don’t. … And in my opinion, we should leave that space to them! Finally!] (pp. 24–25). Like the asylum-seeker home, the Afroshop constitutes a diferent world on German soil, but unlike the former, it comes closer to a space of belonging where like-minded people can care for and support each other before reality sets in again. Yet, spaces like the ‘Afroshop’ in Halle are an exception rather than the norm. Most public spaces expose the asylum seeker to intense scrutiny, verbal insults, or, in the case of Azad Hadji, discussed below, deadly physical violence. Train stations become places of racist attacks in colonial fashion, meant to diminish the asylum seeker (pp. 75–81), whereas a peaceful protest in Merseburg becomes a trap for a Black activist when two German policemen arrive on the scene and demand to see his ID. As the graphic novel emphasizes, such unexpected encounters with the police can have dire consequences for the asylum seeker, as in the case of Oury Jalloh who burned to death while in custody at a police station in Dessau: ‘Bei Oury hat alles mit einer Polizeikontrolle angefangen! … Sagt ihr es mir: Wo ist Oury Jalloh jetzt?!?’ [In the case of Oury Jalloh, everything started with a police check! … You tell me: Where is Oury Jalloh now?!?]

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(pp. 99–101). Bulling notes that nowhere is safe, making ‘Alltagsrassismus … ein ständiger Begleiter vieler Flüchtlinge’ [every-day racism … a constant companion of many refugees] (Daniel, 2012, para. 7). Germany is a prison asylum seekers cannot escape. The dark visual elements of Bulling’s artwork emphasize asylum seekers’ precarity. The graphic novel’s white, black, and grey colour palette makes it difcult to discern what panels depict and demands that readers slow down to carefully study and examine each frame. In addition, Bulling’s drawing style is eclectic. Hand-drawn panels have slightly crooked lines and diferent shapes and sizes, with some panels spanning over an entire page. At times, panels overlap and bleed into each other (see p. 16 and p. 87), have an unfnished or rather haphazard feel to them, and call on readers to complete an image in their head. When Farid is condescendingly addressed in English by a white German journalist at the train station in Raguhn and subsequently insulted by him – ‘Ah! Französisch! Das afrikanische Französisch ist aber anders als unseres. Primitiver oder? Mit weniger Wörtern?’ [Ah! French! But the African French is diferent from ours. More primitive, isn’t it? With fewer words?] (p. 78) – Farid, at frst, seems to merge with the furniture around him (p. 74), his body all transparent and barely outlined, before he regains colour and agency over the course of the conversation. Through this visual style, Bulling communicates the precarious state of asylum seekers, who are vulnerable to constant scrutiny, containment, and even death, as the case of Oury Jalloh demonstrates. Leaving numerous panels in a permanent state of incompletion also refects the difculties Bulling encounters as white narrator. As her former roommate Clemens notes, ‘weiße Bilder von schwarzen Menschen’ [white images of Black people] reproduces ‘die klassische Struktur’ [the classic structure] (p. 91): ‘[w]er nicht weiß ist, wird beschrieben, aber spricht nicht selber’ [who is not white is being described but does not speak for themselves] (p. 93). While Bulling does not provide an explicit answer to this dilemma in Im Land der Frühaufsteher, she engages with the issue of hegemonic storytelling elsewhere. In an interview following the release of the book, she stresses the importance of her friend Noel Kaboré from Burkina Faso, whose collaboration imbued her stories with a ‘ganz eigenen phantasievoll-melodischen Deutsch’ [quite unique, creative-melodious German] (Otte, 2013, para. 4) and verbatim quotes from asylum seekers themselves. This process allows her to convey the voices of marginalized people in sometimes humorous ways, such as when they use the word ‘Asylant’ [asylum seeker] to poke fun at each other. As Bulling states, ‘Das hätte ich nie gewusst, dass sie das Wort Asylant benutzen, um sich lustig zu machen, um etwas zu bezeichnen, was nicht funktioniert, irgendwie blöd ist’ [I would have never guessed that they use the word asylum seeker in order to poke fun at each other, in order to describe something that doesn’t work, that is somehow annoying] (Selg, 2012, para. 6). Yet, even with her friends’ help, Bulling realizes the challenges of translating asylum seekers’ feelings of isolation and trauma into her panels. Even photos

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only convey what observers want to see. Paula’s photo of Azad Hadji’s family members causes her friend Ina to exclaim enthusiastically, ‘Sieht idyllisch aus. … Multi-Kulti im Asylantenheim’ [Looks idyllic … multiculti in the asylum seekers’ home] (pp. 68–69). But this ‘idyllic’ image does not depict what Paula and the reader already know: the possibility of deportation looming over the family’s head. When a consternated Paula alerts Ina to the family’s precarious situation, Ina is quick to point out that the photos do not accurately depict their plight (p. 69). And this is Bulling’s point: The reality of someone else’s experience is always in a permanent state of untranslatability. Thus, leaving panels unfnished has to be regarded as Bulling’s strategy to avoid hegemonic storytelling (hinted at by the use of the rather derogatory term ‘Multi-Kulti’ by Ina) and highlights her inability to capture a reality and experience that is not her own. Bulling ends with the unresolved death of Azad Hadji, whose alleged murderers are never held responsible. The death of an asylum seeker, as Farid laments, is an unmistakable sign ‘dass es keinen interessiert, ob hier einer verreckt’ [that no-one cares if someone croaks here] (p. 122). Consequently, the last panel of the graphic novel pictures Azad’s asylum-seeker home in Möhlau where his bereaved wife Selma and her two girls still reside (p. 125) (Figure 3.4). The building takes up the entire upper half of the panel, a colossal monster staring at the reader with eye-like windows monitoring refugees’ every move. Again, the environment exudes forlorn anonymity, intensifed by the vast empty space in front of the building as well as an empty table in the foreground of the panel.

FIGURE 3.4

Im Land der Frühaufsteher, Bulling, 2012, p. 125. Courtesy of the artist.

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A few faint lines hint at the possible presence of children, but the fgures remain mere fgments of the imagination in a world of utter bleakness. In an interview with jetzt.de, Bulling states that ‘es ist sogar noch schlimmer, als ich es gezeichnet habe … Was man nicht zeichnen kann, ist die Permanenz, Tag für Tag wieder an diesem Ort aufzuwachen’ [it is even worse than the way I drew it … What I am unable to draw is the permanency, day after day, of growing up in such a place] (Heywinkel, 2012, para. 2). Ultimately, Isabelle Daniel’s statement in her newspaper article ‘Rassismus ist ständiger Begleiter’ [Racism is a steady companion] rings true: ‘Was am Ende von Paula Bullings erstem Buch bleibt, ist ein gutes Stück Desillusion’ [What remains of Paula Bulling’s frst book is quite a bit of disillusionment] (2012, para. 1). A ‘“sense of place”, of rootedness’, as Massey would say, cannot be found (1994a, p. 151). This ending refects the core message of Bulling’s graphic novel: the extraordinary psychological and spiritual toll rootlessness takes on the persons living just out of sight of German society.

Re-Membering Space: Memories of Displacement in Colombian Graphic Novels Guerra and Aguirre’s La Palizúa and Guerra and Vieco’s Sin mascar palabra narrate stories of forced internal migration, with characters attempting to return to their homes in lands that were stolen from them inside their own country. Guerra, Aguirre, and Vieco employ visual and textual mechanisms to narrate how their protagonists imagine, represent, and conceptualize ‘home’ and ‘identity’ under the political conditions of forced internal displacement. This conceptualization touches upon notions of space and absence of place and consequently reveals the disarticulation of social relations entwined with that place (Massey, 1994a; Soja, 1989). The context for these stories is the decades-long Colombian confict 3 and the systemic and state-sponsored violence and land grabbing that situate Colombia at the top of UNHCR’s list of countries with the highest rates of internal displacement.4 The graphic novels were published at a critical moment of the country’s recent history: the signature in 2016 of the Peace Accords between the Santos government (2010–2018) and the once most powerful guerrilla organization, FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia], after four years of negotiations attempting to end 50 years of armed confict. Notwithstanding the hope this event provided, the situation has continued to deteriorate, as evidenced by the more than 800 social leaders and human rights defenders killed since 2016, the highest number in any country in Latin America according to the UNHCR (2019, para. 20), and by the brutal repression with which the government in recent years has met instances of social protest and unrest (“UN Condemns”, 2021). Many experts consider land grabbing and the problem of land a central cause of the Colombian conficts, with attempts at addressing them such as the creation of the INCORA (Institute for agrarian reform, attached to the Ministry of Agriculture and founded in 1961), and the groundbreaking and

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forward-looking constitution signed in 2001 by multiple social actors deemed failures.5 While cultural, literary, and cinematic responses to violence and displacement in Colombia have been widely analyzed,6 comics have not usually been included in those types of studies. Recent eforts directed towards using the language of comics to tell stories based on historical violence include Los once ([Eleven] Jiménez, Jiménez, and Cruz, 2014), in which the events of the Palace of Justice siege are told from the perspective of a family of mice,7 and Ciervos de bronce ([Bronze Stags] Aguirre, 2014), an illustrated chronicle of labour unions in the city of Cali. On the specifc topic of land grabbing, in the early 1970s, the sociologist Orlando Fals Borda and artist Ulianov Chalarka developed illustrated works chronicling the history of forced territorial displacement of peasants on the Colombian Caribbean Coast (cf. Rappaport, 2018). Their pioneering work is evidently connected to La Palizúa and Sin mascar palabra, two graphic novels commissioned by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (CNMH, National Centre for the Preservation of Historical Memory) during the Santos administration in its bid to divulge information and testimonies from those afected by diferent forms of violence in the country.8 Both La Palizúa and Sin mascar palabra cover topics such as assassinations, repression, and land grabbing and place their main emphasis on forced territorial displacement focusing on two diferent geographical epicentres of paramilitary violence in the country’s Caribbean coast region. La Palizúa tells the stories of resilient communities who were afected by guerrilla and paramilitary violence and displacement in the Magdalena region in the North and follows them until they return to their lands, while Sin mascar palabra narrates experiences of peasants from municipalities in the Urabá antioqueño slightly to the Southwest who were killed and violently displaced in the 1990s by the paramilitary and economic project led by members of the Castaño family and businessmen in the area.9 What follows discusses how these two graphic novels imagine and represent forced displacement and the dynamics of land grabbing over the last 30 years, highlighting how communities have used comics as a tool for both communal healing and political denunciation and resistance. As Doreen Massey has described the connections between space, race, and gender, Donny Meertens, an activist and scholar of feminist political strategies related to land distribution, has focused on how women’s narratives point to social injustice and inequality in the rural areas of Colombia: ‘narratives about massacres, forced displacement and loss of land exposed the tragedy of the peasant population, squeezed between guerrilla, paramilitary groups, local power holders and the army, especially during the nineteen-nineties and the frst decade of the twenty-frst century’ (2019, p. 16). Graphic retellings of these communities’ displacements have been done before, drawing from collaborations between intellectuals, artists, and the communities as mentioned above. Indeed, one of the most important characteristics of these two graphic novels is how the afected parties employ them as part of a strategy of ‘[c]ontributing visibility and dignity

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to the community …, in order to be recognized as peasants, workers, and permanent activists in the struggle for the land, with the purpose of warranting their integral reparation’ (Guerra & Aguirre, 2018, p.7).10 It can be argued that these two cases go beyond the tradition of using the language, popularity, and marketability of comics to divulge both legal and non-binding verdicts for wider audiences (e.g. Cortázar’s Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales ([Fantomas Against the Multinational Vampires] 1994). As Núñez (2018) points out in her review of these two graphic novels, they ofer an important platform for the voices and testimonies of peasants displaced by the armed confict and afected by the land grabs of paramilitary and other illegal armed groups in Colombia. Furthermore, the medium in this case is an asserted tool of sustained solidarity invoked from the ground up, as the creation of the graphic novels was requested from the CNMH by those afected, among other measures of symbolic reparation. Indeed, the purpose, as declared in the introduction for each of the two works, is framed within the commitments assumed by the CNMH for each of these communities under the Law of Victims and Land Restitution, enacted in 2011, and in efect until 2021. The authors used fctionalized characters as narrative vehicles to tell communal stories that emerged from memorializing encounters, which were then documented as sources at the end of each volume, among interviews and newspaper articles. In this way, the process rehearsed traditions initiated in the early 1970s by the aforementioned Fals Borda and Chalarka in collaboration with indigenous and peasant organizations throughout Colombia to document and resist land grabs through the creation and publication of comic books. These eforts are thus being rekindled and reemployed by these communities under the current ofensives, attacks, and threats they face, emphasizing the communal legacy and the intention of establishing solid foundations for new generations, especially for those for whom these events meant the loss of their rural identity. Simultaneously, communities attempt to make it clear that these events are not unique and isolated but rather connected historically to instances of land grabbing that date back to the nineteenth century, with a resurgence in the 1950s, and a critical point in the 1990s, when violent land expropriations were executed as part of the economic and paramilitary projects the Castaños carried out in the region.11 Looking at these two graphic novels in their historical context allows us to precisely connect the forced migratory events depicted in their pages to a larger structural land grabbing violence deployed against rural communities in Colombia. It can also stress how these populations seek to use the medium and language of comics as tools for communal healing, political denunciation, and resistance. The retelling and visualization of these peoples’ stories enables a long view of history that reveals the massacres and forced displacements not simply as isolated actions but rather as traumatic events. Their systemic and systematic nature leads Aurora Vergara-Figueroa to avoid conventionally employed categories like ‘forced migration’ or ‘displacement’ and rather refer to them as processes of ‘deracination’, to more adequately describe or address processes

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by which communities are uprooted from the ground, while their communal relations are also ruptured (2018, p. 17), preventing them from recovering the ‘ “sense of place” of rootedness’ (Massey, 1994a, p. 151) even if they return. The storytelling afordances of graphic novels are used in this instance not as a cure but in an attempt to conceptualize, historicize, prevent, and mitigate the efects of this type of violence against these and other marginalized Colombian communities. In order to construct their narratives, both graphic novels use visual and textual mechanisms to highlight blatant diferences between the time before and after the events forcing the displacement. The changes in the visual scope depicted allow readers to recognize what was not initially easily seen: the new geographies and cartographies that violence has generated throughout the country (Ruiz, 2013). As the story unfolds, we can see at least two diferent ways these texts reconfgure the gaze after the traumatic event, as examined below. The variation in the regime of the gaze in these graphic novels can be seen for instance in images referring to the past, which are initially depicted using aerial and establishing shots with the purpose of ofering clear pictures of the territory where everything happened. Still in reference to the past, there is an emphasis on group portraits, where we see the ongoing collective and collaborative work relative to the foundation and frst years of establishing the community, in which the group adapts natural surroundings to ft their needs and dream together of a better future for their families. La Palizúa ofers multiple examples of mediumfull and full shots that allow one or multiple subjects to fll the frame while emphasizing the scenery. In contrast, images that refer to the diegetic present usually feature individual narrations about the past, focusing on loneliness and fragmentation. These panels often range between medium and extreme closeups, flling the frame with a part of the subject and revealing their emotions and reactions. Faces are often pictured, sometimes detailing the anguish of eyes lost on the horizon or hands that tighten nervously, but frames also frequently depict animals or objects that formed part of the subjects’ shared environment (Figure 3.5). Coronil and Skurski’s (2019) notion of violence as an assertion of power aimed at communities and inscribed on individual and collective bodies can help to interpret these diferences in representations of the ‘before and after’ of forced displacement: Violence is wielded and resisted in the idiom of a society’s distinctive history. … In the crisis of meaning that violence conceives, the territoriality of nations and the corporeality of people become privileged mediums for reorganizing the body politic and for forcibly controlling the movement of people and ideas within the nation’s material and cultural space. Statements to the collectivity are indelibly inscribed upon and made through the body, as it becomes a medium for searing assertions of power. (p. 172)

52 Felipe Gómez and Gabi Maier

FIGURE 3.5

La Palizúa. Art: Camilo Aguirre Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, pp. 10, 18. Sin mascar palabra.Art: Camilo Vieco, Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, pp. 2, 7.

Just as the violence of forced displacement has served a purpose in the creation of a new national cartography, these changes in the gaze point towards those inscriptions of the corporeal and emotional ruptures which have fragmented and dismembered the sense of self and identity of both the individual and the community. The fnal chapters in La Palizúa switch their focus to the ten years between the moment paramilitaries violently forced the communities to abandon their lands and their return, made possible by a mission overseen by the Organization

Displacement, Space, and Questions of Belonging

FIGURE 3.5

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Continued.

of American States (OAS) and the Red Cross in 2007. These pages communicate the dispersion, isolation, and separation endured by the characters while attempting to survive in the larger Colombian cities (Guerra and Aguirre, 2018, p. 39), in a painful process that the bittersweet reunion of some of the families and the survivors is only able to heal partially (Figure 3.6). These pages also bring to light something too often obscured after so many decades of desensitization

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FIGURE 3.5

Continued.

brought about by wave after wave of internal migrants forced into the larger cities: that these people have been robbed of their home and that, as for many asylum seekers in Europe, there is no safe haven for them in the city streets nor are there any real protections granted from war, poverty, persecution, and discrimination, not even on paper. This is just one more reason for them to try to return to their land and attempt to recover the place they considered home. But

Displacement, Space, and Questions of Belonging

FIGURE 3.5

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Continued.

instead of providing a happy conclusion, though, new problems are introduced upon their return, as the characters for instance have to search for the former location of their plots in a landscape that has been radically transformed (p. 49) while discovering that their own way of living as a community has also been altered. The story is framed at its resolution by characters being pressured to sign away the lands they recently reacquired (p. 56), leading into what may sound inevitable – a constant fear that history will repeat itself (p. 61), that they will

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FIGURE 3.6

La Palizúa.Art: Camilo Aguirre Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, p. 39.

be forced to fee their lands once again due to intense pressures combined with violence. In Sin mascar, the preference is for a spatial, geographical, type of organization, as clearly announced by the cartographic panels situating the readers on the frst pages (Guerra and Vieco, 2018, p. 7) (Figure 3.7). The story begins in the present, with the authors giving the characters – displaced community members

Displacement, Space, and Questions of Belonging

FIGURE 3.6

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Continued.

returning for the frst time to their lands – the urgent task of creating a map to visualize their route through memory and remembrance. ‘Vamos a pasar por los sitios donde sucedió todo’ [We will pass through the places where it all happened], reads a panel on the back cover of the book, referring to the places these characters were displaced from. The route has the purpose of recognizing the territory, contrasting what it used to be with its ruins after the displacement. The account of what happened during that period of time will emerge from the disparity between the two moments, with verbal testimony pointing to the past,

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FIGURE 3.7

Sin mascar palabra.Art: Camilo Vieco, Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, p. 8.

while the texture, quality, and stroke of the drawings indicate their diferences (Figure 3.8). La Palizúa is structured into a brief introduction, four chapters and an epigraph, with Chapter 1 contrasting the diegetic present with the memories of the community struggling to build their small town against the forces of nature in the past. The graphic novel is transparent in communicating the characters’ desire to render clear certain particulars for the readers, such as

Displacement, Space, and Questions of Belonging

FIGURE 3.7

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Continued.

the fact that these were legally their lands after they were adjudicated by the INCORA, a Colombian institute for agrarian reform attached to the Ministry of Agriculture and founded in 1961. The characters also emphasize the need to start over after the painful moments of displacement and return (p. 20) and the slow and difcult process through which ‘poco a poco uno vuelve a armar todo’ ([bit by bit one reassembles everything] p. 19). Towards this purpose, Guerra and Vieco use vignettes showing remaining pieces and fragments of that past:

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FIGURE 3.8

La Palizúa.Art: Camilo Aguirre Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, p. 36.

‘Mirar el pasado es lo que nos permite avanzar hacia el futuro y vivir en el presente’ [Looking at the past allows us to move toward the future and live in the present] (p. 22) and ‘Somos de esta tierra y luchamos por esto’ [We belong to this place and we fght for it] (p. 24) synthesize the communities’ insistence on not being defned and portrayed as victims, or from a point of view of pain,

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but rather ‘por cómo sobrevivieron’ [by how they survived] (Guerra cited in Andrade, 2018). Guerrilla groups are ubiquitous in both graphic novels from the moment the communities frst arrive in this region of the Colombian Caribbean Coast. The stories show the difculties and problems that stem from the existence of these threatening actors. This includes the assassination of some, such as community member Ana Argel, whose story is included in the epilogue. Nevertheless, it is made clear how the arrival of paramilitary commandos marks a distinctive breaking point and intensifcation of the confict. For example, the epigraph opening the second chapter is a verbatim statement by one of those afected, given to the Gestión de Restitución de Tierras Despojadas (an institute managing the restitution of expropriated lands, p. 33), while other chapters open with quotes from declarations by paramilitary leaders, including Salvatore Mancuso (p. 36) (Figure 3.9). These fragments detail the mechanisms by which land was forcefully or illegally purchased, the incidence these actions had in the creation of the paramilitary army of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) in 1997,12 and the strategies employed in the appropriation and control of the territory in three stages: through material dispossession, juridical means, and putting the land grabs to productive use. Especially towards the end of the third chapter, Guerra and Vieco insert press clippings from the 1990s to help confgure the memory map, complementing the historical archive with items from the afective one: e.g. illustrations of cut-out tree leaves that serve as reminders of paths traversed through the landscape with the afected while recounting their stories, as well as photocopied images of ofce supplies and implements used by the authors in their eforts to collaborate with the characters in this endeavour (pp. 50–53). The fnal chapter in Sin mascar shows the return of the characters of both authors and community members to their home base after performing a reconnaissance walk through the territory to note the changes. At that point, community members are asked by the authors to work on the map corresponding to the territory they just fnished walking, by including in it solutions to address the needs of the community. Here it becomes clear once again that, beyond telling a story silenced by violence or lack of interest, by creating this text the community seeks to visualize its own future and continue to move ahead in spite of the prejudice against them in the cities they were forced to inhabit during displacement, miles away from their true homes destroyed by internal war and violence. In La Palizúa, as in Sin mascar, the nationally and culturally located stories of displacement also succeed at placing an emphasis on land theft, pointing to a history of systemic and state-sponsored violence. The visual and textual mechanisms used to construct the stories in these graphic novels highlight the changes in the characters’ physical and afective notions of home, space, and identity, with the purpose of intervening afrmatively in that history, generating forward-looking records and maps for the beneft of the community and the nation.

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FIGURE 3.9

Sin mascar palabra.Art: Camilo Vieco, Script: Pablo Guerra, 2018, p. 33.

Conclusion As analyses of the German graphic novel Im Land der Frühaufsteher as well as the Colombian works La Palizúa and Sin mascar palabra demonstrated, loss of one’s traditional land and displacement of people feature prominently. Whereas in La Palizúa and Sin mascar palabra the former residents of these Caribbean coastal

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lands of Colombia are able to return after many years, only to be confronted by new difculties and challenges, in Bulling’s graphic novel, a return to one’s former homeland turns out to be impossible. Instead, asylum seekers fnd themselves in a no-man’s land that ofers neither genuine shelter nor security. This space is conceptualized as a prison that criminalizes its inhabitants just by the sheer fact of living there. Thus, in all three narratives, space becomes an indispensable actor that is crucial for the development of the plot and for the social interactions that take place on it. In addition, the close connection between social relations and space is emphasized again and again. As Im Land der Frühaufsteher showcases, there are very few spaces on German soil where a Black person can feel safe. Asylum-seeker homes are oftentimes located in remote places, which makes it challenging to connect to German society. Yet, public spaces present their own challenges since they expose the asylum seekers to the relentless German gaze and, at times, to racist attacks and verbal assaults. Private and public spaces become traps that leave asylum seekers vulnerable and without a place to hide. The characters in the Colombian works also lack a safe and private space of refuge, but it is through their attempts at returning to the place they have been evicted from that it is revealed – through their own vision as depicted in the frames – how that forceful displacement comes with the fragmentation and dismemberment of social and afective relations that are integral components of their identity and sense of self. All three graphic novels use storytelling as a way to come to terms with the experience of displacement in the hopes of making the voices of the marginalized heard. Furthermore, in the case of the works published by the CNMH in Colombia, the graphic storytelling becomes part of a decades-long efort at invoking solidarity through this medium in order to divulge the crimes while also preserving the history and dignity of those afected by land grabbing in the coastal regions. Yet, the act of storytelling, both with the help of verbal and visual components, is not entirely able to convey the experience of the displaced. The past remains partially untranslatable, which is clearly addressed in Bulling’s narrative in the form of unfnished panels and the questionable factuality of a photograph, and in Guerra, Vieco, and Aguirre´s work it is expressed through changes in visual paradigms and in approaches to the cartographical representations of space and place. Thus, in all of these graphic novels, spaces defy a sense of belonging or home and so does the attempt to put the story into truthful verbal and visual representations.

Notes 1 All numbers in parentheses in this section without further specifcations refer to Bulling (2012). 2 All fgures refer to Bulling (2012). 3 While the Colombian confict is too complex to explain here, included in this section are minimum facts and information that should help understand the gist of the issues and their analysis. Readers interested in further context and explanation can

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4

5

6 7

8

9

10

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fnd a useful primer in https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/colombias-civil-confict. Additional data and publications can be found here: https://esoc.princeton.edu/country/colombia Land grabbing is a process in which individuals are forcefully coerced to illegally give up their land or the otherwise illegal dispossession of land. It is a violation of human rights – the arbitrary deprivation of property outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 17). Some examples of recent literature on land redistribution and violence in Colombia include Salamanca Ospina and Egea Jiménez (2018); Uribe Lopez (2009); Reyes Posada (2016); Cárdenas Mesa (2016); Velásquez Ruiz (2017); Suelt-Cock (2017); González Pulgarín and Henao Guzmán (2012). See for instance, Suárez (2012), O´Bryen (2008), and Ospina (2019). In 1985, members of a leftist guerrilla group took over the Palace of Justice and held the Supreme Court hostage. A military raid left almost half of the 25 Supreme Court Justices dead and 11 civilians disappeared. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights described the military's role in the siege as a holocaust and massacre. Los once retells these events with nods to Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1991). The Duque administration (2018–2022) severely limited these eforts. Their appointed CNMH director has been accused of censorship and misconstruction of facts. See for instance ‘Nueva polémica con director del Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica’ (El Tiempo, 2019). Fidel and Carlos Castaño led the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC, United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, a Colombian paramilitary group listed on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization List) since the 1980s, receiving illegal support from army battalions in the killing and displacement of thousands of peasants in order to eradicate guerrillas and establish drug trafcking corridors. See for instance Sanford (2003). ‘[c]ontribuir a la visualización y la dignifcación de la comunidad …, que sean reconocidos como campesinos y campesinas, trabajadores del campo y luchadores permanentes por la tierra, con miras a garantizar su reparación integral’’ (Guerra and Aguirre, 2018, p.7). See note 9. Guerra and Vieco cite the military and economic project of the Castaño house and of various business people in the Department of Córdoba [‘el proyecto militar y económico de la casa Castaño y de varios empresarios cordobeses’ (2018, p. 6)], while Guerra and Aguirre mention the paramilitary actions directed by alias Jorge 40 and other midrange commanders [‘accionar paramilitar dirigido por alias Jorge 40 y otros mandos medios’ (2018, p. 6)] as responsible for the displacement of these communities. The United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC) was a coalition of right-wing death squads that used the confict to camoufage their illicit economic activities. These included drug trafcking, displacement, kidnapping, and extortion. The AUC once operated in two-thirds of the country with approximately 30,000 soldiers.

References Aguirre, C. (2014) Ciervos de Bronce. Bogotá: La Silueta. Bulling, P. (2012) Im Land der Frühaufsteher. Berlin: Avant-verlag. Cárdenas Mesa, J. A. (2016) ‘La Ley de Restitución de Tierras en Colombia de espaldas a los opositores de buena fe’, Revista Latinoamericana de Derechos Humanos, 26(2), pp. 139–167. https://doi.org/10.15359/rldh.26-2.7 Coronil, F. and Skurski, J. (2019) ‘Dismembering and Remembering the Nation: The Semantics of Political Violence in Venezuela’, in Coronil, M., and Pedersen, D.

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(eds.) The Fernando Coronil Reader: The Struggle for Life Is the Matter. Durham: Duke University Press, n.p. Daniel, I. (2012) ‘Asylbewerberheim in Sachsen-Anhalt. Rassismus ist ständige Begleiter’, ntv, 24 July. Available at: https://www.n-tv.de/leute/buecher/Rassismus -ist-staendiger-Begleiter-article6780121.html (Accessed: 28 July 2021). El Tiempo (2019) ‘Nueva polémica con director del Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica’, El Tiempo, n.p. Available at: https://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/conficto -y-narcotraf ico/polemica-de-director-del-cnmh-por-lanzamiento-de-informe -sobre-cultivadores-de-palma-367914 (Accessed May 20, 2020). Encke, J. (2016) ‘Vom Warten wird man immer blöder’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 March. Available at: www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/fuechtlingsroman -vom...-man-immer-bloeder-14030679.html?printPagedArticle=true#pageIndex_2 (Accessed: 15 October 2020). González Pulgarín, J. J., and Henao Guzmán, J. P. (2012) ‘Una nueva forma de concentración de la tierra en Colombia: La Ley 1448 de 2011’, Ecos de Economía, 16(34), pp. 75–109. https://doi.org/10.17230/ecos.2012.34.4 Guardian, The (2021) ‘UN condemns violent repression of Colombia protests after at least 18 die’, The Guardian, May 4. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com /global-development/2021/may/04/colombia-protests-violence-deaths-missing-un (Accessed: 5 May 2021). Guerra, P., and Aguirre, C. (2018) La Palizúa: Ustedes no saben cómo ha sido esta lucha. Bogotá: CNMH. Guerra, P., and Vieco, C. (2018) Sin mascar palabra: Por los caminos de Tulapa. Bogotá: CNMH. Hallet, W. and Neumann, B. (2009) ‘Raum und Bewegung in der Literatur: Zur Einführung’, in Hallet, W. and Neumann, B. (eds.) Raum und Bewegung in der Literatur. Die Literaturwissenschaften und der Spatial Turn. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 11–32. Heywinkel, M. (2012) ‘“Es gibt keine zuverlässigen Daten”’, jetzt.de, 8 July. Available at: www.jetzt.de/interview/es-gibt-keine-zuverlaessigen-daten-550628 (Accessed: 15 October 2020). Jiménez, M., Jiménez, J.L. and Cruz, A. (2014) Los once. Bogotá: Laguna Libros. Khider, A. (2016) Ohrfeige. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag. Massey, D. (1994a) Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. (1994b) ‘Double Articulation. A Place in the World’, in Bammer, A. (ed.) Displacements. Cultural Identities in Question. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 110–121. Meertens, D. (2019) Elusive Justice: Women, Land Rights and Colombian’s Transition to Peace. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Núñez, M. C. (2018) Entre la ciencia fcción y el paramilitarismo: 6 cómics colombianos publicados en 2018, Cartel Urbano, 27 December. Available at: https://cartelurbano .com/creadorescriollos/entre-la-ciencia-f iccion-y-el-paramilitarismo-6 -comics -colombianos-publicados-en-2018 (Accessed: March 6, 2019). O’Bryen, R. (2008) Literature, Testimony and Cinema in Contemporary Colombian Culture: Spectres of ‘La Violencia’. London: Tamesis. Ospina Pizano, M. (2019) El rompecabezas de la memoria: Literatura, cine y testimonio de comienzos del siglo en Colombia. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx ?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=2161253. (Accessed: 10 September 2020).

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Otte, R. (2013) ‘Auch in Grautönen politisch’, Deutsche Welle, 15 April. Available at: www.dw.com/de/auch-in-grautönen-politisch/a-16739962 (Accessed: 15 October 2020). Rappaport, J. (2018) ‘Visualidad y escritura como acción: Investigación Acción Participativa en la Costa Caribe colombiana’, Revista Colombiana De Sociología, 41(1), p. 133–156. https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v41n1.66272 (Accessed 20 August, 2019). Reyes Posada, A. (2016) Guerreros y campesinos: El despojo de la tierra en Colombia. Bogotá: Ariel. Ruiz Ruiz, N. Y. (2013) El desplazamiento forzado en Colombia: Población, territorio y violencia. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Salamanca Ospina, L., and Egea Jiménez, C. (2018) ‘Conficto por la tierra. Retorno y restitución de tierras en la Finca El Carpintero (Colombia)’, Documents d’anàlisi Geogràfca, 65(1), p. 115–138. Available at cmu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com, doi: https:// doi.org/10.5565/rev/dag.455 (Accessed 1 August, 2020). Sanford, V. (2003) ‘Learning to Kill by Proxy: Colombian Paramilitaries and the Legacy of Central American Death Squads, Contras, and Civil Patrols’, Social Justice, 30(3 (93)), 63–81. Retrieved May 27, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768209 Selg, A. (2012) ‘Paula Bulling: “Und dann war ich entfammt”’, Missy Magazine, 10 October. Available at: missy-magazine.de/blog/2012/10/10/paula-bulling-%E2 %80%9Eund-dann-war-ich-entfammt%E2%80%9C/ (Accessed: 15 October 2020). Soja, E.W. (1989) Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Stehle, M. (2018) ‘Willkommenskultur Documented: Precarious Heimat in Can't Be Silent (2013), Land in Sicht (2013), and Willkommen auf Deutsch (2015)’, Seminar, 54(4), pp. 522–538. Suárez, J. (2012) Critical Essays on Colombian Cinema and Culture: Cinembargo Colombia. 1st ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Suelt-Cock, V. (2017) ‘Reseña del libro Tierra y género. Dilemas y obstáculos en los procesos de negociación de la política de tierras en Colombia [Colección Pensar], de María Fernanda Sañudo Pazos’, Universitas Humanística, 84, pp. 339–344. doi: http://doi.org/10.11144/ Javeriana.uh84.tgdo (Accessed March 1, 2020). UN Human Rights Council (2019) ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders’, “Visit to Colombia,” UN Doc. A/HRC/43/51/Add.1, para. 20. Uribe López, M. (2009) ‘El veto de las elites rurales a la redistribución de la tierra en Colombia’, Revista de Economía Institucional, 11(21), pp. 93–106. Velásquez Ruiz, M. A. (2017) ‘La tenencia colectiva de la tierra en Colombia: Antecedentes y estado actual’, CIFOR infobrief 199 [online]. doi: https://doi.org/10 .17528/cifor/006684 (Accessed March 15, 2020). Weyhe, B. (2016) Madgermanes. Berlin: Avant-verlag.

4 VISUAL ASPECTS OF MODERN GREEK IDENTITY Ioanna Papaki

In the Greek society of the 1980s, while important changes were taking place across the country after the fall of the military regime, national identity was becoming increasingly signifcant. It was during this period that the state started negotiations for its admission in the European Union; captured in between their Eastern past and a desired Western future, Greek people strived to defne their ethnicity in comparison to their European counterparts. This efort was projected on the cultural production of the period; literature, music, and in this case comics illustrated the deep need for self-description. Comics are a key component of visual culture and are also able to add the artist’s personal perspective. Comics creator Giannis Kalaïtzis’ works thematize various aspects of national symbolism, as the artist demonstrates the ability to resonate with the contemporaneous national identity discourses – namely the country’s admission in the European Union which sparked the ongoing debate about Greek ethnicity – and engage with the cultural material of the 1970s and 1980s. The three comics in question, To Mavro Εidōlo tīs Afroditīs [The Black Statue of Aphrodite] (1990), Τyfōn [Typhon] (1997), and Tsiggάnikī Orchīstra [Gypsy Orchestra] (1984),1 can, in my opinion, be studied regarding Greek national identity discourses. The graphic narratives reproduce details of cultural memory and national references – as interpreted by the artist – from the Ottoman Occupation period up to the late twentieth century and can be employed to reconstruct aspects of modern Greek identity. Moreover, the comics describe the numerous oscillations and dichotomies related to modern Greek identity discourses. Giannis Kalaïtzis is one of the most important fgures among Greek cartoonists. His work, beginning with political newspaper strips and evolving, later, into complex graphic narrative forms, never reached beyond the national borders. Although highly infuential, his comics were never translated into English. He DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-5

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was born in Kokkinia (Nikaia), Attica, in 1945 and died in 2016. Kokkinia is a suburb developed as a refugee settlement after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and has since maintained a strong left political orientation, which has been a defning element for Kalaïtzis and his work. His family belonged to the left political spectrum, and Kalaïtzis himself was a member of various left-wing political organizations which were active in Greece during the turbulent years that followed the Nazi Occupation. He became known mostly through his satirical newspaper cartoons; a vital constituent of his cartooning was his caustic political satire through the lens of the opposition towards any corrupt right-wing establishment. The most notable aspect of his work was his cooperation with newspapers and magazines of the period, mostly the ones aligned with the Left; starting in the 1960s, he continued drawing professionally until the end of his life, within a very small break during the Junta years. The highpoint of his career was the founding of the magazine Galera (meaning ‘galley’ in Greek), a monthly publication with an overt political agenda; Galera gathered many acknowledged contemporary writers, journalists, and comics artists, serving as a platform for the circulation of political essays and cartoons. Furthermore, the magazine hosted many serialized comics as well. Kalaïtzis was among the few newspaper cartoonists of his generation who did not work solely on political cartoons but also created lengthier graphic narratives.2 The present contribution aims to showcase the increasing importance of comics as a vehicle for the representation of social, political, and historical discourses. Concentrating on Typhon, The Black Statue of Aphrodite, and Gypsy Orchestra, I aspire to situate Kalaïtzis within the framework of discussions on Greek national identity. Cultural and collective memory is an important factor of national identity discourses; I believe that Kalaïtzis’ signifcance rests, up to a certain extent on the illustration of numerous cultural and sociohistorical elements of Greece’s post-Junta reality and, subsequently, in my view, the description – deliberate or not – of various aspects of national identity. Naturally, the illustration of all the cultural details, as well as the information about modern Greek identity discourses that the reader can, in the end, deduce, is portrayed in the narratives as understood and interpreted by the artist. Culture and national identity are not monolithic concepts, and any attempt to illustrate them is, in a way, a construction of them. Therefore, that end product, that version of modern Greek identity, is rather a combination of the artist’s and reader’s imagination and interpretation of the panels. In my reading, the three comics are ‘imagining’ a modern Greek community in the way Benedict Anderson has described, and present its various determinants. The narratives draw on cultural memory along with references to the past and can be employed in order for the reader to construct a version – naturally, the artist’s version – or just some aspects of modern Greek identity. Here, the concepts of ‘archive’ and ‘communicative memory’, as discussed by Jan and Aleida Assmann, can prove very useful. On a second level, modern Greek identity discourses are very much related to numerous oscillations and dichotomies. Accordingly, I aim to highlight how these interesting splits are illustrated

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by the artist, not only in light of cultural references and information but also in light of two important themes related to modern Greek identity: the idolization of antiquity and the representation of national types. Taking advantage of the various possibilities the comics medium ofers – juxtaposition of diferent time levels, visualization of rituals, and representation of spaces and fgures – Kalaïtzis ofers an explicit, direct, and comprehensive picture of actual culture-, nation-, religious-, folklore-, and history-related information, creating some of the most important works in the history of Greek comics. In the frst part, I delineate the main political and historical facts that shape the Greek reality of the period linking them with developments in comics production. The second part of the chapter consists of an examination of the case studies with regard to the cultural references and memory involved. The matters of modern Greek identity discourses and the accompanying dichotomies and oscillations are central in my analysis and will be addressed in a twofold way: as described by scholars and fnally as portrayed by the artist. By tracing elements of cultural and national representation in Kalaïtzis’ works, the present study can yield results that will lead to a more profound understanding of modern Greek identity through visual strategies.

Greek Context of Kalaïtzis’ Publications: Politics and Comics Culture After a very destructive Civil War and a military Junta (1967–1973) that disrupted the parliamentary governance of the country, Greece was experiencing the Metapolitefsi period – namely, the transition to multiparty democracy. The resistance to the colonels’ regime by students and various political groups and the Polytechnic school uprising in November 1973, which gradually led to the end of the military rule, were directly infuenced by the events of May 1968 (Kassimeris, 2015, pp. 745–750). Under the oppressive circumstances during the dictatorship period, the control of the press, and the abolition of civil rights, any progressive political, social, and cultural movement from beyond the national borders took around ten years to reach Greece. However, despite the change of rhetoric and constitution after the end of the Junta, the main state apparatus (police forces and public sector) was still in the hands of the old order, leaving the people who had fought for the change of regime frustrated and disillusioned, believing that the revolution they expected had not yet come. Fragmentation and intense politization characterize this period of Metapolitefsi in Greece, as disappointed left-wingers, anarchist groups, progressive centrist politicians, and radicalized extreme-left terrorists were trying to deal with the deep ideological gap left after the elimination of nationalism as the dominant discourse (Gazi, 2015, pp. 246–260; Kornetis, 2013, 292–303; Kassimeris, 2015, pp. 750–762). Nationalistic rhetoric remained, but it was now expressed diferently: through anti-imperialistic, anti-right and European-oriented perspectives, while ‘nation’ was being identifed with ‘people’ (Gazi, 2015, p, 248).

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The year 1981 marked the actual democratization of the country and the vindication of the antidictatorship movements: the socialist political party PASOK won full autonomy and took over the state apparatus, placing functionaries in pivotal positions on the basis of their association with the party. As the state was turning towards a more stable era and the governments were trying to right the wrongs of the past, everything soon became politicized. Using their antithesis with the military regime as a weapon and their focus on the ‘underprivileged’ and while all diferent opinions were being severely discredited, leaders and politicians in power cultivated Manichean rhetoric, extreme populism, and clientelism; the modern history of Greece has been bedeviled by all three (Zahariadis & Kalaitzidis, 2015, pp. 1–5;3 Malakos, 2013, pp. 9–13; Theodoropoulou, 2016, p. 204–205). It was during this period and through the legalization of the left parties that the reign of the left ideology at every level – symbols, culture, and national discourses – began (Soloup, 2012, p. 66). Democratization had fnally been accomplished, albeit carrying many problems mostly with regard to individual social responsibility and meritocracy. In parallel, Greece tried to align itself with European politics and culture after seven years of extreme-nationalist frenzy, aiming for its admission in the European Union (Soloup, 2012, pp. 64–67). To that end, the state attempted to invest in parliamentary democracy and maintain socioeconomic stability; after 1974, Karamanlis’ government set the stage for the European Union accession, which was complete – aided by false economic statistics – in 1981 (Zahariadis & Kalaitzidis, 2015, pp. 4–11; Malakos, 2013, p. 12). In this sociopolitical framework, it is not surprising that that there was at least a ten-year gap between the international comics trends and Greek production of comics. During the 1970s, comics started experiencing a considerable surge in quantity and a change in content; they focused more on social and political issues and started graphically experimenting and addressing, much more than before, an adult readership. The time frame of the political changeover was indeed very signifcant as the communication with European ideological trends was restored. The rise in comics production during the Metapolitefsi coincided with the general democratization process and the people’s need for new ideas and means of expression, while comics themselves brought the new ideologies that had been spread in Europe ten years ago (Soloup, 2012, pp. 164–165). This period is considered by Greek comics scholars as the Greek comics’ renaissance that led to the growth of the medium and the formation of a generation of well-known, highly politicized, and intellectual artists and an informed, adult, demanding readership. Decisive for this development was the publication of Greek comics magazines, modelled after Écho des Savanes or Hara-Kiri. Coming back from the European countries where they had been self-exiled or studying, dissidents started setting up small publishing units. Due to the sociopolitical circumstances, the Greek cultural ground was conducive to such attempts and citizens were looking for an accessible, free, and creative means for political contestation. The audience ardently embraced the international and new experimental graphic forms that

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these new magazines were introducing; translations of European and American comics were countless. Whereas the comics market in Greece was familiar mostly with the American comics scene and the superhero genre up until that point, new comics concepts started fowing into the country: the French bande dessinée, the Italian fumetti, the American underground and alternative comics. The true ancestors of Greek comics include Crumb, Shelton, Pazienza, Edika, Reiser, Pratt, Gotlib, Bilal, Manara, and Crepax; these connections and the experimentalism in line with foreign prototypes allowed Greek comics to take form and establish a reputation distinct from children’s stories (Soloup, 2012, pp. 64, 94–97, 156–157, 162–167). Two of these newly launched magazines (Anti, a left-oriented political magazine and Vavel, a comics magazine), crucial for the circulation of adult comics in Greece, became the venues where Kalaïtzis frst started publishing his works (Soloup, 2012, pp. 102–103, 125–126). The general cultural change during the 1990s in Greece (again induced by the sociopolitical circumstances of the unstable ‘European modernization’ period, the fall of the communist regimes in the neighbouring countries, and the turbulences in the Balkan area) and the shift towards more commercial publishing strategies afected the circulation of comics magazines and, consequently, the publications of comics addressed to adults. There was a reduction of political comics, while artists turned more towards introspective and fantasy themes: The Black Statue of Aphrodite and Typhon are both considered pioneering works in this category. The magazines also tried to fnd new ways of approaching their already alienated readers and cope with the new ideological framework – namely, the turn of the population towards more ‘life-style’ choices that were for the frst time possible through the emerging popularity of entertainment TV shows. These developments afected the circulation of comics in general. The fnancial crisis of the 2000s delivered the fnishing blow to the Greek comics magazines which, one by one, declared bankruptcy, while general comics production in general underwent a severe crisis (Soloup, 2012, pp. 236–240).

Case Studies The works in question, Gypsy Orchestra (1984), The Black Statue of Aphrodite (1990), and Typhon (1997), narrate everyday life events against a historical background. Gypsy Orchestra portrays a journalist’s odyssey in 1980s Athens, while the other two recount a quest for Aphrodite’s statue around 1700 AD. Despite each comic’s diferent plot and setting, they have an important element in common: the illustration of various cultural and social elements and, therefore, aspects of modern Greek identity and mentality as constructed by Kalaïtzis. These three texts, in my reading, provide an overview of modern Greek identity discourses, featuring the diversity of the national identity’s components and the country’s challenging orientation towards Europe as interpreted by the artist. Gypsy Orchestra represents the Greek 1980s and revolves around an ordinary day in post-Junta Athens. Kostas, a cartoonist working at a newspaper, and Ef,

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a young woman, are having their frst date; in the course of the day, they walk around Athens in search for a place to spend their afternoon. Like in a road movie, the characters move through the city with a constantly shifting series of locations and characters in the background: old members of the Resistance, cops, workers, typical housewives, barfies, and taxi drivers. In parallel, various events in the streets of Athens are unfold gradually in front of Kostas’ eyes, who turns into a faneur: road demonstrations, political meetings, building committees, and celebrations for tourists. Athens is depicted as a chaotic place. Kalaïtzis captures human types and creates an account of everyday culture: advertisements, murals, slogans, clothes, songs, and habits. Everything could be then employed in order to reconstruct aspects of modern Greek identity during an era that has been described as one of ‘constant transitions and discontinuities’ (Soloup, 2012, p. 222). Kalaïtzis, in Gypsy Orchestra, clearly illustrates dichotomies, confusions, and chasms which seem to be indeed vital constituents of modern Greek identity discourses. The other two works, The Black Statue of Aphrodite and Typhon, have related plots and characters; both take place around 1700 on the island of Santorini, still under Ottoman rule. The primary theme here is Dionysus’ trip as it was depicted on a kylix by Execias, an ancient potter. Surrounding this thematic core, the plots revolve around a quest for an ancient statue of Aphrodite and vampires’ exorcisms in the countryside, which are conducted by a crowd consisting of Greeks, Turks, French and English sailors, priests, prostitutes, and Western European aristocrats. Both narratives are mostly a parade of human types and events following the fortune-seekers’ quarrels, conversations, and travels; both quests end up as failures. Once again, it is not the plot but rather the depiction of cultural references that steers the graphic narratives: everyday life, behavioural patterns, anthropological facts, social features, human types, customs, doctrines, and folklore stories.

Modern Greek Identity Discourses All three works constitute vehicles for the cultural memory of diferent periods as interpreted by Kalaïtzis and can therefore be employed in order to reconstruct aspects of Greek national identity’s formative process as construed by him. To realize the cultural signifcance of this matter and subsequently Kalaïtzis’ take on it, one would have to retrace the unstable history of the Greek state since the national revolution in 1821 or even earlier. However, with regard to the national identity concept, one would also have to stress the diference between ethnic origins and cultural backgrounds and understand the term as a combination of both – and many other things as well – and not as a notion strictly based on ethnic origins (Agelopoulos, 1995, p. 248). National identity is many times just an imagined identity or simply a collective identity based on numerous determinants, tangible or not, which relate the individual to their surrounding society. This is also the way that the term ‘national

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identity’ is used in this chapter; the focus here is mostly on the diverse, cultural elements and determinants that are part of a potential national identity. This is exactly what I focus on in Kalaïtzis’ comics: the actual details that seem, in the narratives, as essential to ‘Greekness’, these distinctive details – whether they are habits, songs, rituals, religion, doctrines, stories, convictions, symbols, language, or objects – that give to the people who identify as Greeks in the narratives a subjective sense of belonging to a cohesive whole; in other words, the common reference points that compose a national consciousness and the feeling of sharing a common background. Benedict Anderson has argued exactly for this constructed nature of nationality and nation-ness; ‘nationality, or, as one might prefer to put it in view of that word's multiple signifcations, nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artefacts of a particular kind’ (Anderson, 2006, p. 4). Furthermore, Anderson focuses on the nation as an imagined political community: it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings. (Anderson, 2006, p. 7) In this case, it is the narratives that construct and subsequently illustrate a modern Greek identity, by highlighting its cultural memory and diverse components. As Anderson notes, ‘communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/ genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined’ (Anderson, 2006, p. 6). In the multiethnic mosaic of the Ottoman Empire, people were primarily divided according to their faith – and not language or shared history – and the concept of Greek nationality – or Albanian or Vlach – was not yet fully articulated (Agelopoulos, 1995, p. 250). In places like Macedonia, the choice of nationality was merely a political decision ‘often irrelevant to the ethnic or cultural identity’ (Agelopoulos, 1995, p. 257). Therefore, during the national revolution and the foundation of the independent Greek state (1830), the question of national identifcation remained, mostly with regard to the distinction between Eastern and Western, Hellenic (classical antiquity and Western traditions), and Romaic (Byzantine and Christian infuences and traditions). ‘Helleno-Christianity’ was employed by scholars and politicians of the period to express the duality and highlight the link between antiquity and Byzantium since there was no racial homogeneity or evidence of continuity since classical antiquity. The use of the term led to an ambiguity that would haunt the Greek state until today albeit often serving as an element of uniqueness in Greek culture and national discourses (cf. Molokotos-Liederman, 2003, p. 292; Tsoukalas, 1999, pp. 11–13). The general use of the term was also quite advantageous for the Church of Greece, which was recognized as a key part for national unity.

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However, the populations who fought against the Ottomans in 1821 did not have a broad knowledge of classical antiquity and did not acknowledge it as their cultural heritage. There are, thus, two approaches on the matter: either that they re-discovered their classical and Byzantine past or that they simply re-invented themselves as the heirs of classical and Byzantine culture (Mackridge, 2016). It is of no relevance here which view somebody would endorse and whether the unbroken continuity of Greek civilization is a fact or a fabrication, although, historically speaking, the second is easier to prove. Nevertheless, if it is true that Western European enlightenment thinkers fantasized in particular ways that the measure of all things was Greece, re-inventing a Greece that never existed (and thus imposing a paradoxical tyranny of Greece over themselves), then it is not paradoxical that people, living in what used to be Greece and its periphery, took these fantasies to heart. (Malakos, 2013, p. 3) The notion of ‘Greece’ at the time was up to a large extent imported by the European thinkers who aided the Greek revolution. As Tsoukalas argues, ‘the classic Hellenic past, which had captured the romantic imagination of Enlightenment intellectuals’ was consequently ‘applied’ to the nineteenthcentury Greeks and was reinforced by the presence of ancient ruins. Western European modernity constructed the so-called ‘Greek myth’ idealizing the Greek-speaking populations, which, up to that point, had been probably selfidentifying as just ‘Romans’ (‘Romios’) or ‘Christians’ (Tsoukalas 1999, pp. 7–10). During the course of this transformation, the ecclesiastical apparatus, afraid of this rapidly progressing Westernized Hellenism, glorifed the Byzantine traditions with which Greek-speaking populations were already familiar through church rituals. Later on, Greek intellectuals saw in Byzantium the missing link in their newly launched claim to classical antiquity (Mackridge, 2008, pp. 6–7). Byzantium, this ‘oriental’ middle-age, which was seen as a very dark time and had been quite discredited by the Europeans, was then historicized not as an antithesis to the ancient Hellas but as its natural descendant (Tsoukalas, 1999, pp. 11–12). Nonetheless, this whole process was not devoid of problems: the burden of the myth of eternal Greece was as difcult to bear as its beauty. In fact ... the principal exceptionalisms of modern Greek identity can be explained in terms of the congenital difculties faced by a politically weak and economically underdeveloped state to cope with its glorious ancestors. (Tsoukalas, 1999, p. 10) The oscillation between the glorious past and the less glorious present, combined with the issue of Greece’s position in between the West and the East, is the theme that I address in the present case studies.

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Trying to bridge all these diverging positions, during the last decades of the twentieth century, the difcult debate was directed towards Greece’s European integration. Many people saw Greece as a true part of Europe due to its geographical position and possible ancestral past, which has been positioned as the stepping stone of European civilization. On the other hand, there are those who stated Greece’s incompatibility with Western modernity and highlighted the dominance of Orthodox and oriental traditions (Molokotos-Liederman, 2003, p. 307). The dualism of the fragile modern Greek identity is an everlasting problem which has often been translated as a lack of national orientation and an identity crisis. Furthermore, it has many times caused severe political and social polarization, extreme nationalistic movements (expressed as a kind of reconstruction of the ancient Greek glory, a path followed very much by the military regime in 1967), and a kind of ‘national narcissism’ or complexes with respect to the comparison with other European states (Gazi, 2015, pp. 255–258). This short retrospection perhaps explains more lucidly my engagement with the depiction of the aforementioned dichotomies in the works in question and underscores once more the signifcance of Kalaïtzis’ work in the context of the national identity discourses.

Cultural Archives into Comics The various references to the past and the salient memories that Kalaïtzis interprets and represents are the means for the reader to put together aspects of modern Greek identity – aspects, as mentioned earlier, as understood by the artist. The three works indeed serve as a graphic mosaic of collective and historical memory; using cultural memory, the artist builds, in my opinion, his version of a collective identity. In my reading, The Black Statue of Aphrodite (1990), Typhon (1997), and Gypsy Orchestra (1984) could function as a kind of cultural memory archive, in the sense that Aleida Assmann has described: ‘passively stored memory that preserves the past past’ (A. Assmann, 2008, p. 98). The three comics accumulate and graphically represent cultural information, historical memories, experiences, habits, and rituals; all these elements are stored unofcially in these graphic narratives, which passively preserve, recall, connect, comment on, and reproduce them across time and generations while creating a conducive environment for a version of modern Greek identity to develop. According to Aleida Assmann, an archive is the reference memory of a society, [and] provides a kind of counterbalance against the necessarily reductive and restrictive drive of the working memory. It creates a meta-memory, a second-order memory that preserves what has been forgotten. The archive is a kind of ‘lost-and-found ofce’ for what is no longer needed or immediately understood. (A. Assmann, 2008, p. 106)

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Kalaïtzis’ narratives present this ‘second-order’ memory of Greek society, from the seventeenth century and up to the 1980s, and connect these two ends. The survival of the ancient Dionysian worship during the Byzantine and Ottoman years and the vampire exorcism rituals which combine Christian, pagan, Ottoman, and European traditions are indeed such reference memories in The Black Statue of Aphrodite and Typhon; passively preserved habits, knowledge, and relics of the past are depicted in the two comics as an essential feature of the Greek countryside (Kritikos & Sampanikou, 2005, pp. 18–22). Greek folklore such as vampire superstitions (A51–54, 78-79, T7–14) and the prominent fgure of Dionysus construct a metaphysical graphic reality, within which ancient myths come to life and Dionysian celebrations and orgies take place (A22-27, 40–44, 81-88, T36-39, 89–93) (Figure 4.1). Kalaïtzis’ graphic style points to this Dionysian atmosphere as well: there is often no logic that would connect the storylines but rather an abundance of hectic panel sequences and extremely detailed imagery loaded with too much information and crude sexuality. The atmosphere that the artist describes is visually rendered through the highly populated frames, and the frantic climate at the narrative level is visually conveyed by a realistic cinematic style with many zoom-ins and sequences of the same scene presented through a diferent angle each time (T27). The emphasis is placed on the performativity of these ritual reenactments and ceremonies in the way sociologist Paul Connerton has described the phenomenon (Connerton, 2010, pp. 44–71): specifc body postures and moves are communicated through Kalaïtzis’ detailed drawing style, and his frequent repetitions of similar panels present the ritualistic action as an element of cardinal signifcance for Kalaïtzis’ description of Greek folklore culture (A30–37). In my point of view, the fgure of Dionysus functions in these two narratives as the main carrier of cultural reference memory and is constantly transformed (priest, vampire, Jesus, Adonis, prostitute, king, and medieval intellectual), acquiring all sorts of diferent connotations. This multiplicity of roles ofers a narrative trigger for various elements of Greek folklore, which are by now forgotten, to unfold: habits of vampires (A39), Easter customs (A49), and legends (A57) and also, pieces of information related, for example, to commerce (A15), diseases (A17), language particularities (Τ32), painting techniques (T55), stories of the community (T22), Iconoclasm (T44), and Shakespeare plays (T53). There is an interesting set of panels in Typhon (T36–39), where Greeks and Western Europeans (French, English, Polish, and Danish visitors) are compare information with regard to the Feast of the Ass, a medieval Christian celebration with pagan roots related to biblical stories about donkeys. The Western Europeans mention the hymn Orientis Partibus and their Greek companions’ comment on the Orthodox version of the feast, which includes the exorcism of vampires and the excessive consumption of wine, together with a distorted version of Orientis Partibus interspersed with swear words. In the next panels, Kalaïtzis illustrates this Greek version of the Feast of the Ass, as the protagonists are draw donkeys on the walls of the church (T38). This constant accumulation of diverse, sometimes

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Kalaïtzis, To Mavro Εidōlo tīs Afroditīs, Ars Longa/Nemo (Athens 1990), p. 40. Courtesy of the family of Giannis Kalaïtzis.

insignifcant cultural details points towards the direction of an archive including aspects of Greek culture that are no longer remembered and can contribute to the imagining of aspects of national identity. As mentioned earlier, I perceive cultural memory in Kalaïtzis’ works as a basis that can create a version of modern Greek identity. Dionysus’ continuous

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transformations also represent the confict between the duality and various cultural aspects of Greek identity explained above. Following on from this, the reader realizes that the vampire which the people are trying to fght is no one else than the god himself; this highly symbolic incident could be interpreted as a way for the artist to communicate that the efort for national identifcation is a never-ending process which sometimes undermines itself, while the everchanging fgure of Dionysus becomes a caustic metaphor for the struggle for a clear-cut ethnicity (Skarpelos, 2000, pp. 110–113). Gypsy Orchestra also functions as a visual cultural memory archive; specifcally, what would best describe its content could be the concept of ‘communicative memory’ formed by Jan Assmann to highlight the two diferent types of Halbwachs’ collective memory. Gypsy Orchestra portrays a much more recent past than the two other case studies; moreover, instead of illustrating rituals and various traditions, it focuses more on the everyday, living memory and communication. Jan Assmann argues that ‘communicative memory is non-institutional; it is not supported by any institutions of learning, transmission, and interpretation; it is not cultivated by specialists and is not summoned or celebrated on special occasions; it is not formalized and stabilized by any forms of material symbolization; it lives in everyday interaction and communication and, for this very reason, has only a limited time depth which normally reaches no farther back than eighty years, the time span of three interacting generations.’ Still, there are frames, ‘communicative genres, traditions of communication and thematization and, above all, the afective ties that bind together families, groups, and generations’ ( J. Assmann, 2008, p. 111). This is exactly what the reader encounters in Gypsy Orchestra: the difuse participation of a group in informal communicative memory and the knowledge which is communicated through everyday interaction ( J. Assmann, 2008, p. 114) and not the text-, ritual- and performance-mediated quite formalized cultural memory, but autobiographical memory, informal traditions and genres of everyday communication, and embodied memory ( J. Assmann, 2008, p. 117). As mentioned, aspects of everyday culture are in focus here and rendered visually: songs of the period, murals, slogans, shops, habits, meetings, and ways of celebrating. The protagonists in Gypsy Orchestra carry and transmit this type of everyday memory, which very much also reveals the splits and oscillations involved in modern Greek identity discourses. The opening panel of Gypsy Orchestra (O5) depicts a fsh-selling truck: a very common, almost emblematic sight in a modern Greek context up to today; these trucks are still used for selling vegetables or fsh on the streets. The irony of the chasm between the European orientation and the Balkan roots is immediately communicated to the reader and strengthened as the always-smoking fgures of Greek protagonists are slowly introduced (O8). Gossip and tedious talks among tenants (O10–15), snapshots of corruption and incidents of bribery in various professions (O15, 43), street and bar fghts (O38–39, 65–66), constant singing and dancing (O38, 49, 63–68), bending of the rules and lack of social responsibility (O69–70), and even the portrayal of the ‘Greek mother’ type who is patronizing

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her 30-year old son are some of the most well-known Greek clichés. All these are sketched in a cheerful mood; nevertheless, the highlighted social problems point to a diferent side of modern Greek identity from the Westernized one that was projected in light of Greece’s admission to the European Union. All the signs and advertisements in the centre of Athens may be in English (O19, 27, 36, 42, 50, 52, 61, 63), but the social order indicates a state quite diferent from the Western European ones of the period. The cultural chasm and dualism through everyday cultural details is even more striking on the panels of page 35, where an old fatbed truck with a speaker on top is depicted side by side with a ‘Monopoly’ board game, the ultimate symbol of Westernization. I consider that the ‘Westernized’ youth and its strong urge for free political activity and sexuality is also underlined in Gypsy Orchestra; in essence, Kostas and Ef are only in pursuit of a sexual encounter (O44–47). The atmosphere of the narrative is overall sexually charged; the frst panels depict Ef’s fgure wearing a transparent t-shirt (O6) and sexual images are present in almost every frame (O27, 35, 39–40). In parallel, prostitutes are also frequently illustrated, showing the gap between older and contemporary forms of sexuality and women types (O39) and focusing on the ongoing efort for equality in terms of sexual expression: the father of a boy insults a prostitute on account of her sexuality but is immensely relieved when he learns that his son had fnally had sex and forgives her because ’she was doing her job’ instead of ‘having sex for her own pleasure’ (O63). The need for redefning sexuality, nudism, and feminist ideologies had been a fundamental element of the transition from dictatorship to democracy. In the framework of building the national identity, gender and class relations were reconsidered and ‘sexual openness’ and experimentation – highly infuenced by the US and European sexual revolution of the 1960s – were initiated, assisted by the Greek leftist parties and left-wing youth cultural politics (Papadogiannis, 2015, pp. 1–17, 252–292). These discussions had been very popular during the Metapolitefsi, becoming, later, an integral part of the everyday culture and memory of the period. The efort by the artist to realistically render his surrounding world also touches upon the representation of political turbulence. As early as the fourth page of the narrative, the political chaos of 1980s Greece is omnipresent (O8) (Figure 4.2). Everyday political interaction and communication through the actions of everyday people and outside ofcial narratives or institutional information is one of the main narrative cores. Kostas’ discussion with an old partisan who is still afraid of being arrested despite democratization uncovers Greece’s modern history and typical dialogues of that period, through references to the Nazi Occupation, the Civil War (1946–1949), and the division within the Communist Party of Greece (O20–21). Later on, the Metapolitefsi mix of diferent groups and the intense politization of the period are vividly illustrated through murals depicting Civil War partisans (O19), a trade union meeting (O29), the usual, at that times, suppression of a demonstration by the police forces (O28), and the exchange of words like ‘fascist’ in a fght (O36). The left-wing militancy

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FIGURE 4.2

Kalaïtzis, Tsiggάnikī Orchīstra, Polytypo (Athens 1984), p. 8. Courtesy of the family of Giannis Kalaïtzis.

appears very often in the panels and extends to almost every sector of public life, becoming, also, an integral part of the aspects of ‘communicative memory’ portrayed. Kalaïtzis exploits the combination of visual and textual elements in comics to produce simultaneous levels of information: on page 35, the reader gets almost

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an overview of the Greek reality of the period, as construed by the artist. The fatbed truck in the top panel, crowds on the streets in the second panel, the representation of people’s inner desires (sex and material wealth), a caption with a popular song, a slogan on the wall, clothes brands, and street names are all displayed in one page. The same strategy of simultaneously displaying elements of everyday culture visually as well as textually (names of bars, songs, signs, trafc, newspapers, street images, advertisements, taxis, habits, etc.) is present elsewhere too (O8, 19, 27, 47, 50, 63). Almost in a documentary efort, Kalaïtzis is integrates lots of actual names from companies, bars, hospitals, shops, and streets (O49, 37, 35, 52) which are cited next to each other, strengthening the perception of Gypsy Orchestra as a graphic cultural archive which can add to the construction of aspects of modern Greek identity.

Oscillations and Dichotomies Cultural and communicative memory representations in the comics as understood by Kalaïtzis can be used, in my viewpoint, as a ground for the reader to reconstruct aspects of modern Greek identity and consciousness and to describe its multiple components, naturally as they emerge through Kalaïtzis’ mediation. As mentioned briefy above, according to some scholars and researchers, modern Greek identity discourses seem to involve lots of dichotomies: between Eastern and Western civilization, between classical antiquity and Byzantine culture, between European and Ottoman rule, between Christian and ancient pagan doctrines, as well as issues about continuity. Kalaïtzis, as shown briefy already, illustrates his version of the various splits through the cultural references that he depicts. Making use of the unique afordances of the comics medium, that is, the juxtaposition of images which allows for the simultaneous portrayal of the various elements in question, Kalaïtzis displays the issue in the most vivid way. Apart from all these elements however, Kalaïtzis’ panels convey, as I see it, the aforementioned oscillations via two central themes, inextricably linked to modern Greek identity discourses: the idolization of antiquity and the visualization of various national types. At the same time, through these themes, the reader is able to notice the artist’s satirical understanding from his leftist position; Kalaïtzis does not overtly criticize the modern realities and political situation, but his comments come mostly in the form of sideswipes and subtle references. In all three works, anyway, there is no recognizable or specifc political rhetoric conveyed, as politics are only communicated through everyday life experiences, as a setting (Soloup, 2012, p. 223). The idolization of antiquity is an important part of modern Greek identity discourses, strongly related to issues such as the dualisms and oscillations involved as well as the continuity of the Greek civilization, as mentioned above. In Typhon and The Black Statue of Aphrodite, this matter is conveyed through the quest for valuable ancient objects. In The Black Statue of Aphrodite, the dealing of ancient objects and the commercialization of antiquity is the basis of the plot

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and in Typhon, statues and pillars are constantly portrayed together with references to ancient texts (T12–15, 26, 71, 91, 93). The most signifcant panels in this respect are the silent ones of Typhon (T12), where a Christian ritual takes place against the backdrop of an archaeological site; deserted statues are sinking in mud together with vampire skeletons, and the protagonists mix up pagan and Christian elements of worship during an exorcism rite. The statues do not play any active role in the exorcism; they function as a mere background, adding to the mystical atmosphere of the scene. The panels showing ancient Greek statues sinking in the mud (T12) become an intelligent metaphor for the collapse of this imported claim to antiquity which had been so much celebrated by the colonels during the military dictatorship. In parallel, the obsession with the reconstructed, by the regime, classical and Byzantine glory is also cautiously satirized: the greatness of the past, Aphrodite’s statue, turns into an object surrounded by superstitions and illiterate smugglers. I argue that Kalaïtzis, probably in an attempt to show the catastrophic results of the colonels’ regime with regard to the handling of classical antiquity, proves through his panels the absurdity of these practices and the lack of real knowledge. The satirical element is enhanced by the ironic grin the sinking statues seem to have (T13) (Figure 4.3). Following on from this, in Gypsy Orchestra, the idolization of antiquity is present more directly through the perspective of Junta legacies and subtly ridiculed. The most caustic remark on the disoriented state of modern Greek identity and on the Junta cultural legacy emerges with the illustration of the very much praised, by the dictators, so-called ‘return to the roots’ principle: kitsch, modern Greek folklore, obsession with the Byzantine and ancient past and their constructed glory, bucolic snapshots, and reproduction of eighteenth-century uniforms. In other words, the oscillation between the past and the present and the fxation on former glories are depicted as haunting the Greek society of the period. Kostas and Ef encounter a feld with ancient Greek statues and a pseudofolk celebration for tourists (O58–61), more like a cheap reenactment which reproduces the utter Greek cliché: dancing and drinking in traditional attire. The focus on this imported claim to antiquity and its subsequent exploitation for the sake of mass tourism are subtly ridiculed through the show host’s terrible use of English (O60) (Figure 4.4). The oscillation between the past and the present through this event, combined with Kalaïtzis’ leftist political views, constructs a satirical understanding of modern Greek identity discourses of that time: efort to maintain the old glory while, at the same time, selling it for $25 per day, as the tourist brochures advertise (O60). While folk dances, culture, and music are still a fundamental aspect of the Greek identity, their association with the colonels’ regime and the attention they received by the Junta often bring about unpleasant connotations; needless to say, that folklore has been considered a variable quite conficting to the European orientation, as it groups Greece together with its neighbouring Balkan counterparts (Mackridge, 2016). The illustration of various national types is also one of the most interesting themes of Kalaïtzis’ comics in terms of dichotomies and oscillations involved

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Kalaïtzis, Τyfōn, Komos (Athens 1997), 13. Source: Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI), Giannis Kalaïtzis Archives. Courtesy of the family of Giannis Kalaïtzis.

in the modern Greek identity discourses, especially with regard to the 1980s European orientation of the country and the dualism mentioned above. Once more, his take seems satirical as he highlights the diferences between people of West European background and the ones who identify as Greeks. In general,

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FIGURE 4.4

Kalaïtzis, Tsiggάnikī Orchīstra, Polytypo (Athens 1984), p. 60. Courtesy of the family of Giannis Kalaïtzis.

Kalaïtzis is taking full advantage of the comics’ visual properties, juxtaposing the various national types on the same page in Typhon and focusing on their appearance, making, therefore, their diferences more striking – characteristic hats and accessories, expressions and mannerisms for the French marquise, the Danish Hans Christiansen, the Greek witch, the Greek Captain-Greco, and the

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Ottoman Suleyman Salik (T4, 54, 55, 63, 79). In Typhon, Greek women are all wearing headscarves and traditional clothes in what seems to be a very oriental picture. Greek men (illiterate villagers most of the time) are also notably diferent from their intellectual European companions, who seem to have a much more profound knowledge and appreciation of the classical, while their Greek friends see the statues and ancient objects as a mere source of proft. Greek men look more Eastern than Western in terms of clothing, physique, and conduct (T4, 24, 32, 36, 51–52, 88, A4). Various clichés are also reproduced here; a representative example would be the way that the French marquise Jean-Francois is portrayed (T53): a bit of a frivolous bon viveur, always depicted having a dreamy expression on his face. Jean-Francois interrupts a discussion about history, mentioning ‘the cooler refreshments are served by “The Frozen Danube” in Vienna. Bring me one and let the Abbe continue destroying the statues!’ The main character, the slave Gogosis/Karampampas, present both in Typhon and in The Black Statue of Aphrodite, is himself a country Greek national type of the period but also a point of convergence between the modern Greek, Byzantine, classical, and Ottoman culture: modelled in terms of appearance and behaviour probably after Karagiozis (Greek- and Turkish-originated shadow puppet character), Gogosis is a bit vulgar, a bit illiterate, a bit cunning, and a bit opportunistic; at the same time, he is respectful to the Orthodox church, kind hearted deep down, and a source of a huge amount of information regarding folk stories, customs, doctrines, secret recipes, and ancient remedies (A10–19). In the appendix to Typhon, a brilliant graphic trick is employed: Gogosis is portrayed as Lucky Luke or Asterix, taking part in diferent adventures which are advertised as potential sequels – ‘Gogosis and the Alligators of Mississippi’, ‘Gogosis as a Mormon’, ‘Hamlet, the Barber of Elsinore’, and ‘The Path to the West’ (T100–101); some of these comics also feature other national types, such as Hans Christiansen and the Polish monk Stanislas. Once more, Kalaïtzis juxtaposes various cultural backgrounds and national types and fuses together diferent levels of information. In my viewpoint, he renders visually his understanding of the diversity and dichotomies related to modern Greek identity discourses, especially in light of the representation of other national characters. Gogosis looks ‘Westernized’ in a satirical way, perhaps in an attempt to satirically comment on the process of Greece’s contemporaneous Westernization. In my reading and following on from the representation of national types and their diferences, the European orientation of the 1980s is also challenged in Gypsy Orchestra through the reproduction of diferent generic stereotypes for the Greeks and cultural traits diferent from what is usually thought as strictly ‘European’: women wearing headscarves stand in stark contrast to the Westernized young people with long hair and hippy clothes (O25, 27). The protagonist of Gypsy Orchestra is portrayed in the narrative as one of many Greek types. Young, cool, and relatively poor, Kostas seems to be quite undecided on issues of political ideology and a bit lost; what is clear is that he wants to have a good time. His attitude could be explained by the circumstances of the period

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after the Metapolitefsi, when the polarization of the Junta period was substituted by fragmentation and a feeling of general confusion among the population, especially among the younger generations. Kostas attends a trade union meeting but does not seem to be politically convinced or interested at all. On the contrary, he lies in order to escape the gathering and meet Ef (O30–31). Perhaps the most caustic comment by Kalaïtzis with regard to the ongoing dichotomies and comparison between Greek and European citizens is what Kostas argues (O17): ‘I will head towards Syntagma and order a ‘frappé’ with the proper accent. To hell with it! A Greek speaking French badly is considered to be poorly educated, while a foreigner speaking Greek badly is considered a polyglot!’ This speech balloon, a mix of inferiority and superiority complex at the same time, is perhaps indicative of the average contemporaneous Greek citizen’s feelings concerning the state’s turn towards Europe: like Kostas, confused, undecided, and at times frustrated. Connecting the idolization of antiquity, the representation of the diferences between national types and Greece’s relation to Europe, Kalaïtzis makes in Typhon a direct reference to the problems of continuity of Greek civilization and thus the dichotomies and oscillations that modern Greek identity discourses entail. After some sharp remarks by the Greek and Polish protagonists (both Orthodox) on the transfer and vandalization of various classical statues and manuscripts to Europe during the Byzantine and Ottoman years and beyond, under ‘the fake excuse of the statues’ rescue’ (T49-51), the Danish Hans Christiansen declares: He [a French antique dealer] is a bit stupid. When he frst arrived in Greece, he thought that every Greek is a philosopher, and because he was disappointed, he started believing that HE is the genuine descendant of the ancient Greeks. Gogosis responds: That’s true! Those ancient Greeks were so arrogant that they thought that they had achieved God’s glory. Their just punishment came like a lightning bolt. Wisdom, glory and power were scattered. The Frankish people [meaning, in a Greek language context, the people coming from Western Europe] are the descendants of those ancient Greeks. Now they have come back to their land to fnd their buried ancestors. To tidy up the destroyed castles and restore their status as rulers. The Ottoman Salik then replies, ‘What sort of rulers are these, that search in the garbage for stones and junk? Shame to pick up the remains of an immoral religion’ (T51). It is interesting that Kalaïtzis portrays various sides of the argument with regard to modern Greeks’ relation to ancient Greeks and their relationship with Western European intellectuals, openly pointing to the problem that up to this day haunts the concept of national identity and consciousness.

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I have aspired to delineate how the elements of cultural memory in Kalaïtzis’ works, as interpreted by him, could be employed in order to showcase aspects of modern Greek identity and national identity discourses as understood by the artist. Secondly, how the numerous oscillations and dichotomies accompanying modern Greek identity discourses are illustrated by him, not only in light of cultural references and information but also in light of two important related themes: the idolization of antiquity and the representation of national types. These comics, however, seem to require from the readers some cultural knowledge that would be necessary in order for somebody to interpret what is described. Apart from the highly contextualized imagery, the language is also very much interconnected with contemporary Greek reality (songs and expressions), and notwithstanding all these diferent components and diverse cultural references which would perhaps be recognizable by non-Greek audiences as well, the three works would probably be understood properly only in their modern Greek context. The potential translating difculties, though, do not infuence the fact that these remarkable works prove exactly that comics may very well turn into rich cultural archives and contribute to the promulgation of any type of historical discourse.

Notes 1 Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own. References to these texts are: (Opage number) for Gypsy Orchestra, (Tpage number) for Typhon, and (Apage number) for The Black Statue of Aphrodite. 2 Kalaïtzis’ biographical details can be found on his personal webpage http://www. giannisKalaïtzis.gr/index.php/cv and the Wikipedia entry el.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Γιάννης_Καλαϊτζής 3 In the present article, references to this volume correspond to its online publication on journals.openedition.org, where pagination is diferent.

References Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities: Refections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Assmann, A. (2008) ‘Canon and Archive’, in Erll, A. and Nünning, A. (eds.) Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 97–107. Assmann, J. (2008) ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, in Erll, A. and Nünning, A. (eds.) Cultural Memory Studies; An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 109–118. Agelopoulos, G. (1995) ‘Perceptions, Construction and Defnition of Greek National Identity in Late Nineteenth – Early Twentieth Century Macedonia’, Balkan Studies, 36(2), pp. 247–263. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27380274 _Perceptions_construction_and_defnition_of_Greek_national_identity_in_the _late_nineteenth-early_twentieth_century_Macedonia. Connerton, P. (2010) How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gazi, E. (2015) ‘Metaplaseis tis Ellinikis Ideologias kai Taftotitas sti Metapolitefsi’, in Avgeridis, M., Gazi, E. and Kornetis, K. (eds.) Metapolitefsi: H Ellada sto Metaichmio Dyo Aionon. Athens: Themelio, pp. 246–260.

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Kalaïtzis, G. (1990) To Mavro Εidōlo tīs Afroditīs. Athens: Ars Longa/Nemo. Kalaïtzis, G (1984), Tsiggάnikī Orchīstra. Athens: Polytypo. Kalaïtzis, G. (1997) Τyfōn. Athens: Komos. Kassimeris, G. (2015) ‘Junta by Another Name? The 1974 Metapolitefsi and the Greek Extra-parliamentary Left’, Journal of Contemporary History, 40(4), pp. 745–762. Kornetis, K. (2013) Children of the Dictatorship: Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the ‘Long 1960s’ in Greece. New York & Oxford: Berghahn. Kritikos, P. and Sampanikou, E. (2005) Ichnilatontas to Fantastiko: Ta Ellinika Komiks tou Fantastikou 1978-2004. Athens: Futura (Athens 2005). Available at: https://www .academia.edu/39000501/Tracing _the_Fantastic_in _greek _by_Panos _Kritikos _and_Evi_Sampanikou_plus_Abraham_Kawa_editing_and_one_text_. Mackridge, P. (2008) ‘Cultural Diference as National Identity in Modern Greece’, in Zacharia, K. (ed.) Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 297–320. Available at: https://www.academia .edu/2070236/Cultural_Diference_as_National_Identity_in_Modern_Greece. ——— (2016). ‘Some Greek Literary Representations of Greek Life and Language in the Late Eighteenth Century’. Revista De Istorie Şi Teorie Literară, 10 (1-4), pp. 171–194. Malakos, T. (2013) ‘Greece Facing Herself: The Past and Present as Fate’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 15(1), pp. 1–15. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net /publication/272001799_Greece_Facing_Herself_The_Past_and_Present_as_Fate. Molokotos-Liederman, L. (2003) ‘Identity Crisis: Greece, Orthodoxy, and the European Union’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 18(3), pp. 291–315. https://doi.org/10.1080 /13537900310001601677. Papadogiannis, N. (2015) Militant Around the Clock? Left-Wing Youth Politics, Leisure, And Sexuality in Post-Dictatorship Greece 1974–1981. New York & Oxford: Berghahn. Skarpelos, G. (2000) Istoriki Mnimi kai Ellinikotita sta Komiks. Athens: Kritiki. Soloup, Ta Ellinika Comics: Antanaklaseis Ideon stis Selides ton Komiks. Athens: Τopos. Theodoropoulou, A. (2016) ‘Cardinal Bessarion on Hellenic Identity and a Peloponnesian State: A Comparison with the Modern Greek Crisis’, in Steiris, G., Mitralexis, S. and Arabatzis, G. (eds.) The Problem of the Modern Greek Identity: From the Ecumene to the Nation-State. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishers, pp. 201–214. Tsoukalas, C. (1999) ‘European Modernity and Greek National Identity’, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 1(1), pp. 7–14. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080 /14613199908413983. Zahariadis, N. and Kalaitzidis, A. (2015) ‘Greece’s Trouble with European Union Accession’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 90, pp. 71–84. Available at: http://journals .openedition.org/cdlm/7951.

5 MEXICO’S CONQUEST, INDEPENDENCE, AND REVOLUTION ACCORDING TO RIUS Annick Pellegrin

While ‘colonialism’ pertains to particular times in history when certain powers exerted imperial domination over other countries, ‘coloniality’ refers to the internal logic of colonialism (regardless of the period or the countries involved), which seeks to control and dominate the world (Mignolo 2005, p. 7). According to Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón Grosfoguel (2007), the administrative independence obtained by former Spanish colonies did not lead to the removal of any of the power relations in terms of race, gender, sex, economy, or epistemology so that the now-former colonies continue to be in a colonial power relationship with the centre, as well as within the borders, and boundaries of nation-states, and regions of the colonized world (p. 17). The years 2009 and 2010 were two milestone years for several Latin American countries: for many, they marked the bicentenary of independence from Spain. In the case of Mexico, 2010 was a double anniversary as it marked both the bicentenary of Mexico’s independence and the centenary of the Mexican Revolution. That same year, Eduardo del Río (henceforth referred to by his pen name, Rius) released a book titled 2010: ni independencia ni revolución [2010: neither independence nor revolution] (Rius 2010a). This was not the frst time that Rius posited Mexico as neither being independent nor having had a real revolution as made obvious, for instance, in his book La interminable conquista de México [The never-ending conquest of Mexico], which was frst released in 1981. The cover of this book aptly illustrates his argument, clearly depicting an ‘Indian’ being chased by a slightly bigger conquistador, himself being chased by an even bigger Uncle Sam (2007). Another monograph, La revolucioncita mexicana [The little Mexican Revolution] (2014b), seeks to make this long and complicated portion of Mexican history accessible to the general public while also giving a critical reading of these events. In this chapter, I consider Rius’s critical history of Mexico’s economic, political, and cultural dependence from the Spanish conquest to the DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-6

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present day, through the lens of decolonial thought, with a focus on the comics 2010: Ni independencia ni revolución (2010a) and La interminable conquista de México (2007). With this focus always in mind, references may still be made to other works by Rius that share the same concerns, and interests, such as La revolucioncita mexicana (2014b). Prior to this, I start with a more elaborate introduction to Rius, and his œuvre, a quick overview of the moments of Mexican history relevant to the discussion, as well as decolonial thought. I then go on to show how Rius uses a layperson’s language to argue that the goals of the independence struggles and those of the Mexican Revolution were never in fact reached. Deceased in 2017, Rius is amongst Mexico’s best-known, most infuential, and most prolifc comics authors (Sánchez González 2017, n.p.; Morelos et al. 2017, n.p.; Palapa Quijas & Martínez 2017, n.p.; Palapa et al. 2017, n.p.). Perhaps most immediately recognized as the creator of the comic series Los supermachos [The supermales] and Los agachados [The stooped ones], Rius has also released volumes in comics form on various topics, some of which were collections of previous issues of Los agachados with a shared theme. Today countless volumes on a wide array of topics are available, ranging from religion, sexuality, and sexual education; to cooking and nutrition; and to politics and history, to name but a few. As Agustín Sánchez González (2017) writes, ‘La obra de Rius es kilométrica: se calcula que ha realizado más de cincuenta mil dibujos, cerca de 130 libros’ [Rius’s œuvre is kilometric: it is estimated that he has created more than 50,000 drawings, close to 130 books] (n.p.). In addition, his works have been adapted to the screen and stage (Alfonso Arau 1973; Rius 2014d, p. 219; Rius 2010b, p. 275; Rius 2008, pp. 157–158). While some of Rius’s works have been translated into several languages, most of them remain available only in the original Spanish. Amongst Rius’s recurring topics is Mexico’s lack of efective economic, political, and cultural independence as well as the uneven distribution of wealth within the country, despite the independence and the Mexican Revolution. For example, the volume ¿Quién ganó la Revolución mexicana? [Who won the Mexican Revolution?] is a compilation of fve former issues of Los agachados on the topic of the Mexican Revolution. Rius (1994d) opens the volume with a small introduction that states: ‘En Los agachados siempre fue materia prima de historietas, el tema de la revolución mexicana’ [In Los agachados the topic of the Mexican Revolution has always been the raw material of comics] (p. 3). As regards the colonization of the Americas, Rius is also the author of the monographs Descubriendo a Colón: la verdadera historia del ‘descubridor’ de América [Discovering Columbus: the real story of the ‘discoverer’ of America] (2011) and 500 años fregados pero cristianos [500 years of being screwed but Christian] (2014a). The latter was published in response to many Latin American governments’ wish to join Spain in celebrating the 500th anniversary of Spain’s so-called discovery of the Americas. Rius (2014f ) states clearly in his prologue, however, ‘Este libro … no está hecho para celebrar los 500 años, sino más bien para demostrar que la “leyenda negra” no fue leyenda, sino pura y triste realidad …’ [This book … is not made to celebrate the 500 years, but rather to prove that the ‘black legend’ was not a legend, but rather

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the pure and sad truth …] (p. 7).1 While the topics of the conquest of Mexico, the Mexican Revolution, and Mexico’s relationship with the USA also appeared in issues 25, 28, 42, 46, 77, and 81 of Los supermachos (Rius 2004a, b; 2009; 2012; 2010c; 2014e), neither these episodes nor episodes from Los agachados will be in the foreground of the current chapter.2 The reason for this choice is that in the chosen monographs, Rius has a sole argument that he fully develops over numerous pages, whereas in his two series, his commentary is often embedded within other stories, and the argument is not always as fully developed, albeit present, or a part of Mexican history is recounted but not necessarily fully commented. Yet another monograph that is partly linked with the concerns of this chapter but that cannot be explored in too much detail here is La trukulenta historia del kapitalismo [The trukulent history of kapitalism] [sic], which tells the story of how capitalism came to be and the horrors that have been committed in its name over centuries (Rius 2015); in many ways, it points to the same problems as the group modernidad/colonialidad does.

Modernity/Coloniality, and Decolonial Thought3 Walter Mignolo (2005) of the group modernidad/colonialidad [modernity/coloniality] describes coloniality as ‘the untold and unrecognized historical counterpart of modernity’ (p. xi). According to him, the Americas were neither ‘found’ nor ‘discovered’ but rather invented, as the mass of land now referred to as the Americas was not conceived of as a unit by its original inhabitants prior to its ‘discovery’ nor did it exist in the imaginary of the rest of the world (p. 2). As he puts it: America came, literally, out of the blue sky that Amerigo Vespucci was looking at when he realized that the stars he was seeing from what is now southern Brazil were not the same stars he had seen in his familiar Mediterranean. … ‘America’, then, was never a continent waiting to be discovered. Rather it was an invention forged in the process of European colonial history and the consolidation and expansion of the Western world view and institutions. (p. 2) The group colonialidad/modernidad bears in its name one of the central concepts that it propounds: that coloniality is the fipside of modernity. Indeed, one of the very valuable ideas that decolonial thought brings to this study is that the global capitalist world we live in began spatially and temporally in the sixteenth century, with the colonization of the Americas (Quijano 2008, pp. 181, 195). To paraphrase Aníbal Quijano (2008), Europe was able to emerge as an entity through the exploitation of (un)free labour, and local technology in the Americas, and by becoming the place that controlled the sea routes to the Americas (p. 200). That is to say, if European modernity can be traced back to the European Renaissance

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or the European Enlightenment, from the perspective of the former colonies of North, South, and Central America and the Caribbean, modernity was made possible through the colonial exploitation of human and natural resources in America or in plainer terms, the beginning of mercantilism and imperial expansion (Mignolo 2005, pp. xi, 5). This colonization process was the starting point of the global organization of a racial, sexual, epistemic, and economic hierarchy (Castro-Gómez & Grosfoguel 2007, p. 19), or as Quijano puts it: ‘starting with America, a new space/time was constituted materially and subjectively: this is what the concept of modernity names’ (p. 195). However, through evolutionist discourse, from the mid-seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century, Europe adopted ‘the Eurocentric pretension to be the exclusive producer and protagonist of modernity’, thus casting the Americas in the pre-modern, and efectively denying their coevalness with Europe (Quijano 2008, pp. 192, 200–201). Moreover, decolonial thought sees capitalism as a system that afects all aspects of daily life rather than solely economic relations between centres and peripheries. Thus, Castro-Gómez and Grosfoguel argue that the global division of labour, ‘vinculó en red una serie de jerarquías de poder: etno-racial, espiritual, epistémica, sexual y de género’ [linked up a series of power hierarchies in a network: ethno-racial, spiritual, epistemic, sexual and gender-based] (p. 19). In addition, and aside from pointing out the fact that the globalized capitalist world began with the colonization of the Americas, decolonial thought is focused on the fact that the decolonization process did not lead to the removal of any of the existing power relations. For this reason, they argue that a decolonial process is necessary, in order to ‘complement’ the decolonization process (Castro-Gómez & Grosfoguel 2007, p. 17). Decolonial thought, nonetheless, does not suggest an utter and complete rejection of all systems inherited from colonial times but rather a subversion of the established power relations. Indeed, they refer to a ‘complicidad subversiva’ [subversive complicity] that works to resemanticize hegemonic knowledge through the incorporation of those ‘lesser’ knowledges (Castro-Gómez & Grosfoguel 2007, pp. 20–21).

What Happened, in as Few Words as Possible It is simply impossible to cover all of the details of more than fve centuries of Mexican history in one chapter, let alone in a small portion of that chapter, and it can quickly become unwieldy. This section is therefore dedicated to providing the bare minimum of dates and events required to later grasp the ongoing coloniality that Rius criticizes in the chosen works. This is not to be understood as an attempt to turn a blind eye to the horrors of history, or to downplay them, and some of them will in fact be discussed further ahead in this chapter. While it is safe to assume that most have heard of Christopher Columbus’s so-called ‘discovery’ of the Americas in 1492, and the ensuing colonization, it may be easier to forget that the ‘discovery’ of what is now known as Mexico

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came later and that the colonization of Mexico was led by Hernán Cortés, beginning in 1519 (Rosas 2006, pp. 207–215). Colonization and the colonial times came with inequalities and abuses that have been written about since as early as colonial times themselves, such as in the case of Bartolomé de las Casas’s (2006) famous report to Spain: Brevísima relación de la destruyción de las Indias [A short account of the destruction of the Indies]. The bicentenary mentioned earlier in this chapter, as explained, was the 200year anniversary of the beginning of the independence movement in most Latin American countries. In some countries, this began in 1809 and, in the case of Mexico, in 1810 (Rosas 2006, pp. 27–32). One should not forget, however, that it was not until 1821 that independence was in fact obtained in Mexico (Rosas 2006, pp. 117, 165). One century after its independence, Mexico continued to have several social and political problems that eventually led to the uprising that came to be known as the Mexican Revolution. This armed confict that lasted from 1910 to 1920 (Rosas 2006, pp. 41–48, 137–141) and sought to end social injustice was complex and ever shifting, as alliances were formed and then broken multiple times.

Rius’s Critical History At the beginning of the second chapter of Ni independencia ni revolución, Rius (2010a) states ‘Se notifca por enésima vez (y penúltima) que este no es un libro de historia de México’ [It is notifed for the nth (and penultimate) time that this is not a history book of Mexico] (p. 30, emphasis in original). While at frst it may seem like a false claim, as Rius does take his readers through several historical events, it later becomes clear that he explains what history says in order to make his argument regarding Mexico’s current situation. Using his usual graphic style, a combination of collage, and his own drawings, and in simple colloquial Mexican Spanish, Rius instead engages in what I label a critical history of Mexico. The gist of Rius’s argument is plainly stated in the titles of the two main texts under consideration in this chapter: it amounts to the fact that Mexico never attained independence nor even started its Revolution as it remains subjected to a foreign power, although the power may have shifted from the original colonizing country, Spain, to the USA. This is then developed at great length but in as simple terms as possible. In both books, he starts from pre-Columbian times rather than the ‘discovery’ and conquest of Mexico. This is important as it reminds readers that the land known as Mexico today had cultures and societies that pre-existed the arrival of the Spaniards and, more importantly, that Mexico was not always Mexico, that is to say, that the existence of a country known as Mexico is the result of colonization. Thus, the frst chapter of Ni independencia ni revolución is titled ‘Cuando no había mexicanos: sólo indios’ [When there were no Mexicans: only Indians]. It refers to the foundation of Tenochtitlán (today Mexico City), the birth of Mesoamerican civilizations prior to the arrival of the

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Spaniards, as well as the deliberate destruction of Mesoamerican cultures, and the birth of Mexico as a country of children born from the rape of indigenous mothers (Rius 2010a, pp. 11–28). Similarly, although it does not talk of the foundation of Tenochtitlán, La interminable conquista de Mexico presents the arrival of the Spaniards being witnessed by Aztecs and also points out that La Malinche was not a traitor to Mexico insofar as there was no Mexico at the time, and ‘todas las tribus estaban peleadas entre sí’ [all the tribes were fghting amongst themselves] (Rius 2007, p. 17).4 However, roughly half of La interminable conquista de México is dedicated to the arrival of the Spaniards, the conquest, colonization, and independence of Mexico, while almost all of the second half is dedicated specifcally to ‘New Conquistadores’ [sic], that is to say the transition from Spanish colonial times to coloniality, but under the USA more so than under Spain.5 The third, and fnal part, spanning only a few pages, explains the hows and the whys of the Mexican national debt. Ni independencia ni revolución, for its part, covers the same periods as the frst chapter of La interminable conquista de México but goes on to cover the Reform and the Revolution and to explain how nothing was truly achieved in terms of independence or revolution, in his opinion. Read together, these books complement each other, and the shorter La interminable conquista de México provides the missing link to explain the transition from a colonial relationship with Spain to a relationship of coloniality with the USA. The rest of this chapter is dedicated to explaining why there is no independence in Mexico in the eyes of Rius and also why he argues that there has been no revolution. While these are two distinct events, and terms that he takes issue with, the two are interlinked and refer back to the concepts put forward by the group modernidad/colonialidad.

Mexico is Not Independent As mentioned earlier, La interminable conquista de México is dedicated to showing, more than anything, how Mexico went from being a Spanish colony to being an unofcial colony of the USA. Not only does Rius (2007) argue that ‘Desde el momento en que México celebraba su dizque nacimiento como “nación libre,” los Estados Unidos decidieron quedarse con México.… [sic]’ [From the moment that Mexico celebrated its supposed birth as a ‘free nation’, the United States decided to take Mexico.…] (p. 65), but he also lists in great (and yet incomplete) detail the various methods through which the once much smaller USA acquired more and more land that was under Mexican control. These methods included, amongst others, invasion, war, appropriation, and purchase (Rius 2007, pp. 64–87). Aside from the loss of 51% of Mexico’s original territory (Rius 2007, p. 73) to the USA, Rius speaks of other ways in which present-day Mexico is not an independent country. As he has one of his recurring lead characters, Gumaro, say, ‘Aquí el coloniaje es por debajo del agua: nos invaden con la televisión, las revistas, la literatura…/…las industrías, el comercio…¡ Dependemos para todo de

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Estados Unidos!’ [Here the colonisation is under the water: they invade us with television, magazines, literature…/… industries, commerce… We depend on the United States for everything!] (2007, p. 52). In both La interminable conquista de México and Ni independencia ni revolución, as well as various other works, Rius speaks of the place occupied by the USA in the day-to-day life in Mexico. On the topic of the economy, he states that ‘México no dejó de ser colonia española así nomás por una simple frma del rey de España: el control de la economía del país nunca pasó a manos de los mexicanos’ [Mexico did not stop being a Spanish colony just like that through a simple signature from the king of Spain: the control of the country’s economy never was transferred into the Mexicans’ hands] (2007, p. 55). Instead, he explains that in 1821, that is to say at the time of independence, the government, the mines, commerce, transport, schools, customs, the church, the army, and culture were still controlled by the Spanish and the criollos (2007, p. 59).6 When the infamous Porfrio Díaz – who will be discussed in more detail later – came into power, a new approach came into play: ‘Don Porfrio logró apaciguar la voracidad anexionista … entregando territorios a las compañías gringas y concesiones de todo tipo’ [Mr Porfrio succeeded in appeasing the annexationist voracity … by giving territories to gringo companies and all kinds of concessions] (Rius 2007, p. 87). As a result, Rius (2007) reports that under Díaz, Mexican ownership of capital amounted to 8%, while the rest was shared between the USA (44%), England (23%), France (13%), Spain (9%), and Germany (3%); the areas that were dominated by foreign capital included banking, agriculture, petrol, mining, industries, railways, commerce, and electricity (pp. 91, 92). Despite the Mexican attempts at regaining control of the petrol after the Mexican Revolution, Rius (2007) explains that these eforts came to nought as the law stating that all that lay under the Mexican soil was Mexican national property was not repealed but rather declared non-applicable to concessions obtained by US citizens between 1876 and 1917 (pp. 94–99). Rius also argues that while during his presidency Lázaro Cárdenas del Río nationalized many important sectors including petrol and railways (1994a, pp. 150–151), the presidents who followed opened the door to foreign investments to the point where it is simply not possible to buy Mexican products (2007, pp. 100–114). Finally, in the economic aspect, Rius (2010a) argues that with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (henceforth NAFTA) in late 1992, Mexico did away with the little independence that it still had (p. 146). Rius (2007) asserts that ‘Ni el charro más ultranacionalista, macho y bebedor de tequilas y demás porquerías puede ya negar que México es una colonia de los Estados Unidos…’ [Not even the most ultranationalist, macho, and tequila and other garbage drinking charro7 can deny anymore that Mexico is a colony of the United States] (p. 112) and that ‘sin independencia económica no hay independencia!’ [without economic independence there is no independence!] (p. 144). However, he goes beyond the question of economics to show the extent of US control of Mexico in the felds of culture and epistemology, two of the aspects

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that the group modernidad/colonialidad points to as felds of domination outside of formal colonial relationships. In the introductory pages to his book 2010: Ni independencia ni revolución, Rius states that No faltan quienes defenden (en México inclusive) la colonización española, diciendo: ‘Vean que España nos trajo la civilización, la lengua, los caminos, los hospitales, las escuelas, la cultura, y sobre todo la verdadera religión … si no hubiera sido así, seguiríamos siendo salvajes…’ [There is no lack of people who defend (including in Mexico) the Spanish colonisation, saying: ‘See Spain brought us civilisation, our language, streets, hospitals, schools, culture, and above all the real religion… had it not been this way, we would go on being savages…’]. (p. 45) In 500 años fregados pero cristianos (2014a), he counters such an argument, stating instead that ‘Los europeos no nos trajeron la cultura, nos trajeron su cultura’ [Europeans did not bring us culture, they brought us their culture] (p. 76, emphasis in original). In fact, the systematic erasure of indigenous cultures and knowledges that were present at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards is repeatedly criticized by Rius in various works. He points out time and again that at the time the Spaniards arrived in what is now known as Mexico, there was a living Mesoamerican civilization ‘que desarrolló brillantemente la astronomía, las matemáticas, la medicina, la agricultura, la pintura, ¡la gran escultura!, la arquitectura, la literatura, la herbolaria, la educación, el tejido de telas, la artesanía…’ [that brilliantly developed astronomy, mathematics, medicine, agriculture, painting, great sculpture!, architecture, herbology, education, weaving of fabrics, handicrafts] (2010a, p. 15; see also Rius 2014a, pp. 71–104). These were largely destroyed by forcing the indigenous population to abandon their religious beliefs and ways; in addition, indigenous people were enslaved and fell victim to genocide (Rius 2010a, pp. 34–46; Rius 2014a, passim). Rius (2014a) further argues that instead of being truly taught catechism or any of the knowledges that might have given them a chance to fnd their way in a system that was imposed on them (most were not taught Spanish, for instance), and that was contrary to their values, they were taught to be submissive under the guise of being instructed in Christianity, and they were used to serve the colonizers, including priests and friars (pp. 125, 171–173, 184–188, 253). As regards the post-Independence years, Rius makes the same observation about the activities of US citizens in Mexico. Thus, not only are food and drink items as well as clothing companies from the USA, but more intangible cultural products also dominate in Mexico (Rius 2007, pp. 104–105). Rius (2007) refers to the presence of such cultural products as music, cinema, and television programs as well as books and the printed press with the aim of promoting ‘the American way of

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life’, especially amongst students (pp. 106, 114). He also points to the presence of numerous societies that are present in every possible aspect of life, from the birth rate to health, religion, and animal welfare (2007, pp. 118–121). As for education, not only does he list numerous institutions at all levels (pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary), but he argues that these institutions have the function of educating Mexicans either for further studies in the USA or to work at or manage US-owned companies in Mexico, while the US owners of said companies rake the profts (2007, pp. 120–127). In light of all the aspects of life that have been shown to frst have been dominated by Spain, then by the USA, in Mexico, it is clear that Mexico is in a relationship of coloniality with the USA, and Rius is right in saying that ‘Actualmente no es necesario tener ocupado a un país con tanques y ejércitos para volverlo colonia como se usaba antes: basta controlar su economía y sus medios de comunicación…’ [Currently it is not necessary to occupy a country with tanks and armies to turn it into a colony like it used to be before: it is sufcient to control its economy and its media…] (Rius 2007, p. 109).

There Has Been No Revolution In Ni independencia ni revolución, Rius spends relatively little time discussing the events of the Revolution per se, referring readers several times to his book La revolucioncita mexicana instead if they want to know more about it. In the latter work, he reports the events that occurred roughly between 1910 and 1920 and only really comments on it in the last few pages (2014b, pp. 192–193). In Ni independencia ni revolución, on the other hand, most of the part dedicated to the Revolution is in fact more of a commentary on said events. The Mexican Revolution started as a reaction to the period known as the Porfriato, that is to say, Porfrio Díaz’s presidency. After having fought alongside the liberals for the Reform of Mexico (which ended up being a second war of independence as Maximilian of Habsburg was sent by Napoleon III to be emperor of Mexico in 1864), Porfrio Díaz eventually became ‘¡un viejito conservador…!’ [a conservative little old man] (Rius 2010a, p. 123, emphasis in original) and a dictator who stayed in power for some three decades (Rius 2010a, pp. 93–126). Rius takes the time in his work to point out that Francisco I. Madero, usually considered to be the one who started the Mexican Revolution, was not in fact the frst one to question the porfriato. He spends a lot of time in La revolucioncita mexicana presenting precursors such as the Flores Magón brothers (2014b, pp. 33–49), and he dedicated an entire issue of Los agachados to Ricardo Flores Magón, one of the Flores Magón brothers (1994b). However, the uprising did start in many parts of Mexico on the date announced by Madero as the beginning of the Revolution (20 November 1910), and Madero did indeed end up being elected (Rius 2014b, pp. 76–98). Having said that, Rius argues that the Revolution itself never in fact started although there certainly were several uprisings. First, he presents the four main

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fgures of the Mexican Revolution (Ricardo Flores Magón, Madero, Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata) in a table comparing their origins, beliefs, funding, and methods of fghting for change (2010a, p. 132). He asserts that Madero, the man who became president after the Porfriato, merely sought to change who was at the head of the country, while the three other men were seeking social justice and the return of land that had been taken from the indigenous people (2010a, p. 133). Secondly, both in La revolucioncita mexicana and in Ni independencia ni revolución, he points out that the revolutionaries did not win the Mexican Revolution. He shows that by 1914, the still standing four main fgures of the Revolution were Álvaro Obregón, Villa, Zapata, and Venustiano Carranza (2014b, pp. 142–149). Summing them up once more in a table, he places Zapata and Villa on the left, Obregón in the centre but with a tendency towards capitalism, and Carranza on the right (2014b, p. 149). He then explains that by then: El país todo es un relajo derivado de las luchas entre las cuatro tendencias en contra del porfrismo representado por los hacendados y ricos que se niegan a soltar sus propiedades al primero que llega… y de las luchas entre las cuatro tendencias, que fnalmente se vuelven dos: la izquierda campesina y la derecha burguesa. O sea, Villa y Zapata contra Carranza y Obregón [The whole country is a mess derived from the fghts between the four tendencies against Porfrismo represented by the landowners and the rich who refuse to cede their properties to just anyone … and the fghts between the four tendencies, which fnally turn into two: the peasant left and the bourgeois right. That is to say, Villa and Zapata against Carranza and Obregón]. (2014b, p. 150)

To Rius (2014b), with Villa and Zapata killed, the Revolution itself was killed, leaving the space open to reformism rather than revolution (p. 192). He makes a similar point in a more concise manner in Ni independencia ni revolución: muertos Madero y Huerta (su asesino) quedaron frente a frente las dos corrientes ZAPATA Y VILLA vs. OBREGÓN Y CARRANZA. Por un lado los que querían una verdadera Revolución, y por el otro, los que NO la querían. Todos sabemos cuál ganó, así que… ¿QUÉ REVOLUCIÓN FESTEJAMOS? [With Madero and Huerta (his assassin) dead two currents remained facing each other ZAPATA AND VILLA vs. OBREGÓN AND CARRANZA. On one side those who wanted a real Revolution, and on the other, those who did NOT want it.

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We all know which won, so… WHAT REVOLUTION ARE WE CELEBRATING?]. (2010a, p. 137, emphasis in the original) Rius therefore reminds readers that although there may have been several actors in the Mexican Revolution, not all those who fought were revolutionaries. As he puts it: En México nos han hecho creer que los vencidos (Villa, Zapata, Flores Magón) fueron los que ganaron... y que sus ideales y exigencias fueron respetados y llevados a la práctica… […] y nos han hecho creer también que Obregón y Carranza luchaban por lo mismo que Villa y Zapata… ¡Y no fue así! [In Mexico they have made us believe that the vanquished (Villa, Zapata, Flores Magón) were those who won… and that their ideals and exigencies were respected and put to practice… […] and they have made us believe as well that Obregón and Carranza fought for the same thing as Villa and Zapata… And it wasn’t like that!]. (2010a, p. 149, emphasis in original) Finally, Rius asserts that the very meaning of the word ‘revolution’ is being ignored when this decade-long fght is referred to as the Mexican Revolution. Indeed, he argues that the war for revolution may have started in 1910, but with the revolutionaries defeated, the Revolution never in fact came about: ‘una revolución empieza cuando se incian las transformaciones, cuando se ponen en práctica las teorías y se cristalizan los anhelos’ [a revolution begins when transformations start, when theories are put into practice and yearnings come to materialise] (2010a, p. 152, emphasis in the original). While Rius recognizes that his relative Cárdenas took several steps towards achieving the goals of the Mexican Revolution (including the return of lands to the indigenous people of Mexico) during his presidency (1934-1940), as mentioned previously in the section about independence, he argues that all these eforts were reversed by subsequent presidents (Rius 2014g, p. 40; 1994a, pp. 150–151; 2007, pp. 100–114, 140; 2010a, pp. 158–170). As he has one of his characters comment after the explanation of what Cárdenas achieved, and the work of the governments that followed his: ‘O sea que el “segundo aire” de la revolución… ¿nomás duró seis años?’ [So, the ‘second wind’ of the Revolution… lasted no more than six years?] (2010a, p. 170, emphasis in original). This is why, in 1968, Rius (1994c) was already arguing that ‘Lo único que ha habido en este país en los últimos 60 años ha sido, no una revolución, sino una evolucion [sic]’ [All that there has been in this country in the last 60 years has been, not a revolution, but an evolution] (p. 34).8 So far, the discussion about independence and revolution has been focused primarily on economics, epistemology, and the spiritual, showing how, from

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a formal colonial relationship with Spain, Mexico transitioned to a relation of coloniality primarily with the USA. While Rius’s work pertaining to the matter of independence and revolution says very little about sexual and gender relationships beyond the fact that the Mexican nation was originally born from the rape of indigenous women by Spanish colonizers (2010a, p. 24–27), there is an underlying concern with race that could go unnoticed. Indeed, Ni independencia ni revolución is punctuated with a question and an automated response: ‘¿Y los indios? Bien, gracias’ [And the Indians? Good, thank you] (Rius 2010a, pp. 67, 127). Much like one might answer ‘good, thank you’ when asked how they are, even if it is untrue because the question is accepted more as a greeting than a genuine query as to one’s well-being, the almost rhetorical question about the situation of the indigenous peoples of Mexico is repeatedly answered with ‘good, thank you’ even though the situation is far from good for them. This question is asked twice in Ni independencia ni revolución: once at the end of the section dedicated to independence and once at the end of the section leading up to the Revolution, and this concern is more feshed out in the concluding pages of the book. At the end of the part on independence, Rius (2010a) explains that the indigenous population benefted in no way from their support of the independence movement: ‘siguieron siendo pobres y, peor todavía, se les castigó por haber luchado al lado de Hidalgo y Morelos’ [they continued to be poor and, even worse, they were punished for having fought alongside Hidalgo and Morelos] (p. 67). At the end of the section on the lead-up to the Revolution, Rius (2010a) takes another look at the situation of the indigenous people of Mexico and points out that even Benito Juárez, who was an indigenous man himself, did not do right by them (p. 127). Instead, he reminds readers that neither of Mexico’s ‘Indian’ presidents were in favour of the indigenous peoples: Porque, si bien Juárez no atacó a los indios, como lo hizo don Porfs, tampoco se preocupó por ellos, salvo en su empeño por ‘acercarlos’ a la ‘civilización’ por medio de la educación escolar… [Because, if Juárez did not attack the ‘Indians’, as Mr Porfrio did, neither was he preoccupied about them, except in his insistence on ‘bringing them closer’ to ‘civilisation’ through formal schooling…]. (2010a, p. 121, emphasis in original) Rius goes further in the concluding remarks of Ni independencia ni revolución, pointing out that from the time of the colonization of Mexico to the time of publication of his book, ‘Indians’ have been treated as a problem insofar as no-one knows what place to assign them in Mexico. While during colonial times a need was felt to determine whether they were human, but they were prevented from either living in their culture or adopting Spanish ways, by the time of the Reform they had been stripped of most of their lands as the laws recognized private ownership of land but they recognize communal

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ownership of land. As stated earlier, Juárez, for his part, wanted to educate them to western ways, and Rius (2010a) asserts that ‘la revolución mexicana nos hizo sentirnos orgullosos de nuestro pasado’ [the Mexican Revolution made us feel proud of our past] (p. 185, emphasis in original), but the living present-day indigenous peoples of Mexico continue to be kept outside as they cannot access the museums, and the shows glorifying the indigenous past, while they continue to ask for their lands to be returned to them (2010a, pp. 176–188). Rius’s (2010a) criticism of most of the government policies towards the indigenous peoples of Mexico is aptly summed up in his commentary on Juárez’s approach: ¿Cómo le suena a usted? Volver al indio ciudadano mexicano, que vista como los demás mexicanos, que vuelva productivo su pedazo de tierra de su propiedad… ¡que deje de ser indio y se vuelva mexicano…! [How does that sound to you? Turning the ‘Indian’ into a Mexican citizen, that he dress like the other Mexicans, that he make his piece of land of his ownership productive… that he stop being ‘Indian’ and that he become Mexican…!]. (p. 180, emphasis in original) Rius (2010a) concludes that when it comes to the indigenous peoples, overwhelmingly, the policy has been to consider the past and now dead indigenous people as good and as part of a glorious past to recover, but those living in the present day have been considered a problem (pp. 176, 177, 187). The fnal part of Rius’s (2010a) argument in Ni independencia ni revolución is that these very indigenous peoples in present day continue to ask that their lands be returned to them and much more: ‘¡Queremos pan, queremos salud, justicia, agua, luz, vivienda digna! ¡Queremos nuestra tierra! ¡Queremos educación y trabajo justo!’ [We want bread, we want health, justice, water, electricity, decent housing! We want our land! We want education and fair work!] (p. 188). The people he is alluding to are the Zapatistas, that is to say the members of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, henceforth EZLN), who rose in reaction to the signing of NAFTA (Campbell 2009, p. 1). Rius (2010a) traces a clear fliation between the ideas of Subcomandante Marcos (one of the leaders of EZLN) and those of Zapata (188), which is unsurprising given the fact that the very name Zapatista suggests shared values. Indeed, claiming its roots in Villa’s and Zapata’s revolutionary ideals and having an ‘indigenous rights agenda’ (Campbell 2009, p. 3) EZLN fghts for a real change in Mexican society (Mignolo 2005, p. 13). Rius (2010a) argues that the demands of the Zapatistas echo the demands of those who started the independence war as well as the demands of the revolutionaries and that as long as these demands are not met for all Mexicans, including the indigenous peoples, there is nothing to celebrate (pp. 188-189). In other words, to Rius, Mexico remains in a

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state of coloniality 200 years after the beginning of the war for independence and 100 years after the beginning of the so-called Mexican Revolution. Without ever explicitly naming complex theory, Rius takes his readers by the hand, showing them why the war for independence and the Mexican Revolution were started. Always making sure to explain words that might be unclear in a humorous way, Rius drives home the same point as the group modernidad/colonialidad. He shows how coloniality has played out in Mexico in the areas of economics, race, religion, knowledges, sex, and gender and, in his own words, also touches upon the denial of coevalness (Quijano 2008, pp. 192, 200–201). Carlos Monsiváis has referred to Rius as one of Mexico’s three ‘instituciones educativas’ [educational institutions], while Rius, for his part, said ‘He dedicado mi trabajo de toda la vida a tratar no de educar, sino de crear un poco de conciencia en las personas’ [I have dedicated my entire life’s work to trying not to educate, but to create a little conscience in people] (quoted in Morelos et al. 2017). Rius’s eforts in raising the awareness of fellow Mexicans in a layperson’s language about the conquest, independence, and Revolution in the midst of the 2010 celebrations of the bicentenary and the centenary are consistent with the work he has produced since the 1960s, and his work has clearly borne at least some fruits as evidenced by statements made by Subcomandante Marcos. Indeed, the latter has recognized Rius’s work for Los supermachos and Los agachados amongst his frst political readings and Rius was invited to meet the EZLN in 1994. There was therefore a mutual recognition of shared ideas between the two men (Rius 2008, pp. 278–280).

Notes 1 In the words of the Cuban Roberto Fernández Retamar: ‘since the 16th century, Spain and all things Spanish had come under the stigma of the “Black Legend”, which made the word “Spanish” synonymous with purblind reactionary cruelty. Many Spanish Americans rejected their Hispanic heritage as a result. The Black Legend was apparently the product of an understandable revulsion against the monstrous crimes committed in the Americas by the Spanish conquistadors. But even a minimal respect for historical truth shows that this is simply false. Of course, there were crimes, and monstrous crimes at that. But when compared with others committed in following centuries, they were no more monstrous than those of the metropolitan powers that followed the Spanish imperial example, sowing death and destruction throughout the world’. (Fernández Retamar 1977, p. 58) 2 There is one exception: the content of Los agachados issue 10 has been recycled and integrated into La interminable conquista de México. As a result, the content of Los agachados is considered closely, due to its presence in La interminable conquista de México.

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3 A previous version of this section was published in International Journal of Comic Art (Pellegrin 2014). Published here courtesy of IJOCA and John A. Lent. 4 La Malinche, Doña Marina, or Malintzin was ofered as a present to Hernán Cortés. Multi-lingual, she became Cortés’s interpreter and his lover. She is popularly remembered as such a traitor to Mexico that the term ‘malinchista’ was coined to refer to those who are perceived as betraying Mexico (Bernand 2008, pp. 3–4). 5 In La interminable conquista de México, a large portion of the section dedicated to the conquest of Mexico was originally published in Los agachados issue 10. Specifcally, that content that is reproduced spans from the 2nd strip of the 7th page to the end of the 29th page (Rius 2014c, pp. 257-279). While this represents a small portion of La interminable conquista de México (Rius 2007, pp. 5-27) as a whole, it represents most of the 10th issue of Los agachados. 6 Criollos are children of Spaniards, but born in Mexico, in this case. 7 Mexican cowboy. 8 While the edition of the book ¿Quién ganó la revolución mexicana? being used here was released in 1994, issue 109 of Los agachados was originally released in 1968.

References Bernand, C. (2008). Celles par qui les métissages arrivent : Malintzin, Pocahontas, Lucía et la Maldonada, [Those through whom mestizajes happen: Malintzin, Pocahontas, Lucía and la Maldonada]. Clio: Histoire‚ femmes et sociétés [online]. 27(Amériques métisses), 101–113. [Viewed 19 August 2020]. Available from: https://journals .openedition.org/clio/pdf/7432 Calzonzin [sic] inspector. (1973). [DVD]. Directed by Alfonso Arau. Mexico: Estudios Churubusco - Azteca. Campbell, B. (2009). ¡Viva la historieta!: Mexican comics, NAFTA, and the politics of globalization. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Casas, B. de las (2006). Brevísima relación de la destruyción de las Indias [A short account of the destruction of the Indies]. Buenos Aires: Stockcero. Castro-Gómez, S. and Grosfoguel, R. (2007). Giro decolonial, teoría crítica y pensamiento heterárquico [Decolonial turn, critical theory and heterarchical thinking]. In: El giro decolonial: Refexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores, Universidad Central, Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos and Pontifcia Universidad Javeriana, Instituto Pensar. pp. 9–23. Fernández Retamar, R. (1977). Debunking the ‘Black Legend’: A hard look at the historical role of Spain in Latin America. The UNESCO Courrier [online]. August– September (Latin America: composite profle of a continent), 54–59. [Viewed 5 June 2020]. Available from: https://en.unesco.org/courier/august-september-1977 Mignolo, W. D. (2005). The Idea of Latin America. Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing. Morelos, R., Palapa, F., Rodríguez, A. M., Martínez, R. and Vargas, Á., (2017). Rius, una vida entre el amor y el humor [Rius, a life spent between love and humour]. La Jornada [online]. 9 August. 2. [Viewed 5 June 2020]. Available from: https://www .jornada.com.mx/2017/08/09/politica/002n1pol Palapa, F., Rodríguez, A. M. and Martínez, R., (2017). Lloran al creador de la caricatura crítica [Mourning the creator of critical caricature]. La Jornada [online]. 9 August. 4. [Viewed 5 June 2020]. Available from: https://www.jornada.com.mx/2017/08/09/ politica/004n1pol

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Palapa Quijas, F. and Martínez, R. (2017). Funeral sin misas ni símbolos religiosos [Funeral without masses nor religious symbols]. La Jornada [online]. 9 August. 3. [Viewed 5 June 2020]. Available from: https://www.jornada.com.mx/2017/08/09/ politica/003n1pol Pellegrin, A. (2014). Nothing New Under the Western Sun: The (Necessity and Inevitability of the) Conquest of the Americas in U.K.R.O.N.I.A. / Les Brigades du temps and Helldorado. International Journal of Comic Art 16(2), 91–110. Quijano, A. (2008). Coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and social classifcation. In: M. Moraña, E. Dussel and C. A. Jáuregui (eds.) Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate. Durham: Duke University Press. pp. 181–224. Rius (1994a). El Tata [Lázaro Cárdenas] (Los agachados 63). In: ¿Quién ganó la revolución mexicana?, 5th ed. México, D.F.: Editorial Posada. pp. 127–159. Rius (1994b). Flores Magón: El arrumbado [Flores Magón: The one who was set aside] (Los agachados 81). In: ¿Quién ganó la revolución mexicana?, 5th ed. México, D.F.: Editorial Posada. pp. 37–68. Rius (1994c). Los agachados [The stooped ones] (Los agachados 109). In: ¿Quién ganó la revolución mexicana?, 5th ed. México, D.F.: Editorial Posada. pp. 5–35. Rius (1994d). ¿Quién ganó la Revolución mexicana? [Who won the Mexican Revolution?], Los agachados, 5th ed. México, D.F.: Editorial Posada. Rius (2004a). Los supermachos de San Garabato [The supermales from San Garabato] (Los supermachos 28). In: Mis supermachos. vol. 1. México, D.F: Grijalbo. pp. 169–194. Rius (2004b). Los supermachos de San Garabato, Gar. [The supermales from San Garabato] (Los supermachos 25). In: Mis supermachos. vol. 1. México, D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 143–168. Rius (2007). La interminable conquista de México [The never ending conquest of Mexico]. México, D.F.: Debolsillo. Rius (2008). Rius para principiantes [Rius for beginners]. México, D.F.: Grijalbo. Rius (2009). Los supermachos [The supermales] (Los supermachos 42). In: Mis supermachos. vol. 2 México, D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 171–196. Rius (2010a). 2010: Ni independencia ni revolución [2010: neither independence nor revolution]. México, D. F.: Planeta. Rius (2010b). Los supermachos [The supermales] (Los supermachos 85). In: Mis supermachos. vol. 3 México, D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 273–298. Rius (2010c). Los supermachos de San Garabato [The supermales from San Garabato] (Los supermachos 81). In: Mis supermachos. vol. 3 México, D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 247–272. Rius (2011). Descubriendo a Colón: La verdadera historia del “descubridor” de América [Discovering Columbus: The real story of the “discoverer” of America]. México, D.F.: Editorial Planeta. Rius (2012). Los supermachos de San Garabato, Cucuchán [The supermales from San Garabato, Cucuchán] (Los supermachos 46). In: Mis supermachos. vol. 4 Mexico,D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 163–188. Rius (2014a). 500 años fregados pero cristianos, [500 years of being screwed but Christian] [Kindle]. México, D.F.: Grijalbo. Available from: Amazon.com Rius (2014b). La revolucioncita mexicana, [The little Mexican Revolution] [Kindle]. México, D.F.: Penguin Random House. Available from: Amazon.com Rius (2014c). Los agachados [The stooped ones] (Los agachados 10). [Kindle]. In: México a través de los popolucos. México, D.F.: Penguin Random House, pp. 250–282. Available from: Amazon.com Rius (2014d). Los supermachos [The supermales] (Los supermachos 84). In: Mis supermachos. vol. 5 México, D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 217–242.

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Rius (2014e). Los supermachos de San Garabato [The supermales from San Garabato] (Los supermachos 77). In: Mis supermachos. vol. 5 México, D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 141–164. Rius (2014f ). Prólogo [Prologue]. [Kindle]. In: 500 años fregados pero cristianos. México, D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 5–7. Available from: Amazon.com Rius (2014g). ¿Todavía hay machos en México? [Are there still men in Mexico?] (Los agachados 60). [Kindle]. In: Machismo, feminismo y homosexualismo. México, D.F.: Grijalbo. pp. 9–40. Available from: Amazon.com Rius (2015). La trukulenta historia del kapitalismo, [The trukulent history of kapitalism] [Kindle]. México, D.F.: Penguin Random House. Available from: Amazon.com Rosas, A. (2006). Mitos de la historia mexicana: De Hidalgo a Zedillo [Myths of Mexican history: from Hidalgo to Zedillo]. México, D. F.: Planeta. Sánchez González, A. (2017). Rius: La historia y el historietista, [Rius: History and the comic author]. Relatos e historias [online]. 102 (1 February). Available from: Relatos e historias App.

PART 2

Radicalisms

6 SOCIALIST SWEDISH COMICS Anticapitalism, International Solidarity and Whiteness in Johan Vilde and The Phantom Robert Aman

After a vicious pirate attack on a British merchant ship in 1525, the lone survivor, Sir Christopher Walker, is washed up on a remote shore on the African coast. The last thing he remembers before falling into the water is witnessing the killing of his father. He later discovers the body of his father’s murderer and swears a solemn oath on his skull ‘to devote [his] life to the destruction of all forms of piracy, greed and cruelty’ as the Phantom – a task to be inherited by each frst-born son in his lineage. A dynasty of vigilantes is thus born where each succeeding generation will protect and rule the jungle and everyone living in it. This unbroken succession, kept secret for centuries, has led many across the globe to believe that he is the same man, and he is subsequently believed to be immortal – hence the Phantom’s nickname, ‘the Ghost Who Walks – the Man Who Cannot Die’. A century later, in 1648, a merchant ship from Sweden makes the same journey. On board is a young Johan Klasson Tay, a cabin boy who is forced to escape after being accused of mutiny. After jumping ship, he foats ashore in Cabo Corso – a Swedish colony (1649–1663) located in modern-day Ghana – where he encounters the Ayoko clan. Taken to their village, he is eventually adopted by a local family and grows up in an African kingdom. From there, he will go on to witness the harshness and brutality of the slave trade with his own eyes. With the looming threat of capture by Swedish slave traders and his family being sent to work on plantations in the Caribbean, Johan is faced with a new challenge in each album and must use all his wiles and talent in order to save both himself and his adoptive family from the men of his country of birth. The story is narrated in retrospect as the reader encounters Johan at the autumn of his life, locked in a prison cell outside Stockholm. He is on death row awaiting execution. On a piece of paper, Johan, with a gaze almost as heavy as the chains around his ankles, scribbles down his life story to reveal not only why he has been sentenced to DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-8

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death as ‘mutineer, defector, robber, and idolator’ but also the source of his new nickname.1 Johan Klasson Tay is now referred to as Johan Vilde – Johan Savage – as he has fully embraced another way of living among people deemed uncivilized in European eyes. In addition to sharing the trope of shipwreck and making a new life for themselves on the African continent, these titles, as I will argue in this chapter, are two stern examples of the ways in which the New Left and its emphasis on international solidarity came to impact the medium of comics in Sweden during the 1970s. In the case of the Phantom, this may seem strikingly odd. Not only is the series an American creation with a protagonist of British heritage, but several academic commentators have labelled the comic as racist: the product of a colonialist era full of imperialist fantasies (e.g. Aman, 2020; Lundin, 1971; Strömberg, 2012). At the same time, the comic reached its peak sales during the 1960s and 1970s in Sweden as the country developed into the most progressive antifascist and antiracist nation in the West (Hübinette & Lundström, 2011). The reasons for this commercial success, according to several comics scholars, is that some of the most active contributors to the series in recent decades have been the Sweden-based creators known as Team Fantomen (e.g. Aman, 2018a; Gudmundsson, 2015; Strömberg, 2003). Although they had provided sporadic episodes since 1963, Team Fantomen became an international publication node in The Phantom franchise in 1972 when they set up their ofcial production of licensed scripts. The frst to arrive was Janne Lundström who had started his career on The Phantom editing, rewriting and sometimes even commissioning new artwork to adapt storylines purchased from elsewhere for use in the Swedish comic book. Frustrated with the general quality of the adventures, Lundström began writing his own original stories and was soon after joined by Magnus Knutsson. While Lundström and Knutsson shared writing duties, Heiner Bade, Özkan Eralp, and Jaime Vallvé were hired as artists. Speaking about editorial decisions retrospectively, the editor-in-chief Ulf Granberg (2003, p. 2) describes the 1970s as the ‘golden age’ for the masked hero, a decade when Team Fantomen, in his account, instilled in the Ghost Who Walks ‘new humanistic characteristics and a social consciousness’. While researching a future Phantom adventure, Lundström came across accounts about what academic commentators have referred to as a concealed part of Swedish history – Sweden’s involvement in the slave trade during the seventeenth century ( Jonsson, 2005). Lundström wrote a synopsis about the Swedish slave fortress on the African Gold Coast involving an ancestor to the current Phantom but quickly realized that the subject, in his words, was too intriguing ‘to be wasted on the Phantom’ (Granberg, 2019). Instead he invented the character Johan Vilde who, like the Phantom, acts out his personal adventure narrative in the presence of unfamiliar people and wild animals on a foreign continent but with a diferent political leaning than the ‘jungle comics’ of the post-war period that shared the trope of white European authority over native

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people (Costello, 2009). Totalling four albums published between 1977 and 1982, Lundström’s scripts were drawn by his Phantom colleague, Jaime Vallvé. The frst two stories, Johan Vilde: Flyktingen ( John Savage: the Fugitive) and Johan Vilde: Slavfortet ( John Savage: in the Slave Fortress), were originally published in the widely read Sunday edition of the major daily, Aftonbladet. They were later converted into albums – 48 pages long and printed in A4 format – by the publisher Rabén & Sjögren. Since then, the series has been published and reprinted in several magazines and papers. The argument advanced here is that Johan Vilde and The Phantom are two prime examples of the ways in which Swedish comics during the rise of the New Left and other social movements in the 1970s became a medium for teaching and informing readers about various forms of injustices and inequality – as well as utopian futures – by adding social, political, and economic commentary. These books treated and commented upon contemporary concerns such as the exploitation of the Third World, pollution, and racism, and they ofered heroes and heroines to deal with such problems. Based on sales fgures – with the introduction of Swedish-produced original stories, The Phantom sold an average of 180,000 copies bi-weekly throughout the 1970s and the frst album of Johan Vilde sold 50,0002 – it seems fair to suggest that the radical changes instilled in the books resonated with the political worldviews of individual readers whose afnity with the comic book indicates a shared investment in the progressive ideals of antiracism, internationalism, and equality. It is equally reasonable to contend that the stories, through their capacity to imaginatively address historical as well as contemporary political concerns, also played a part in shaping and infuencing readers’ worldviews. This may also explain their enduring popularity in a Swedish context. Akin to Team Fantomen’s re-invention of the Phantom, Johan Vilde made its frst appearance in the midst of this changed Swedish political landscape, with its increased focus on Global South issues in general and on Africa in particular – the institutionalization of foreign aid, the founding of various solidarity movements with Africa, and the state-funded construction of folk high schools on the African continent, to mention a few of the many salient initiatives. Recent studies more broadly summarize the New Left to emphasize not only the importance of class struggle and the rejection of capitalism and imperialism but also radical ideas advocating gender equality, decentralization, and environmental thinking (Hobsbawm, 2011). Yet the common denominator in a Swedish context, historian Kjell Östberg (2008) asserts, was international solidarity. In response to growing domestic pressure, and to its own inclinations, the Social Democratic government began contributing generously to movements in Southern Africa fghting against the injustices of colonial or postcolonial rule. Public engagement with the plight of black people in diferent parts of Africa went so far that the countries particularly targeted by the various governmental aid programmes became household names in Sweden and behind the word was the image of people struggling for racial equality and independence against their white overlords

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(Gleijeses, 2005; Sellström, 1999). In an expression of the government’s ideological compass at the time, future Prime Minister Olof Palme, in a 1965 speech, made it abundantly clear that to be a socialist implies solidarity with the so-called Third World. As a member of the Agency for International Assistance and in charge of inquiries into assistance to developing countries, Palme (2006, p. 234) stated that ‘The basic moral values of democratic socialism oblige us to stand with the oppressed against the oppressors, on the miserable and poor people’s side against their exploiters and masters’. As a token of the depth of focus on issues in the Third World across Swedish society, ‘international solidarity’ was emphasized as a key value in school curricula from 1962 until 1980 (Hedin & Lahdenperä, 2000). Central to this chapter is sociologist Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s conception of ‘white on black’ representation. This phrase is not ‘simply about images of blacks, but about white images of blacks’, which Nederveen Pieterse sees as part of a ‘whole spectrum of relations in which Western interests were dominant’. As Pieterse notes, [t]he question that keeps arising is, what interests of whites are being served by these representations? […] Generally, in examining images of ‘others’, one has frst to ask, who are the producers and consumers of these images, and only then to question who are the objects of representations. The key that unlocks these images is what whites have made of blacks and why. (Nederveen Pieterse, 1992, p. 10) In the cases of The Phantom and Johan Vilde, the reader encounters two diferent ways in which Africa and the continent’s black population are used. In terms of the Phantom, the colonial framing of a comic book about a heroic white European who on a daily basis has to deal with savage beasts, ferocious animals, and starving cannibals is, in a Swedish context, transformed into a postcolonial resource. The Phantom is present in that Africa which had been placed centre stage in the national political debate. Behind the black mask, his eyes witness the social injustices that solidarity movements in Sweden emphasize, he intervenes in the armed conficts discussed in the Swedish parliament, and he helps the people that Swedish foreign aid seeks to reach. In many ways throughout the 1970s, the Phantom embodies the ambition behind Swedish foreign policy, without having to consider the principle of neutrality, the interests of great powers, or diplomatic relationships (Aman, 2018b). Johan Vilde, on the other hand, does not only become a medium for teaching the implied reader about Sweden’s brief yet active involvement in the triangular trade and the interconnection between capitalism and colonialism (e.g. Quijano, 2000), but Africa and, from a Eurocentric perspective, the primordial practices of its inhabitants also serve as an allegory for the possibility of a non-capitalistic world order. The ostensibly exotic environment of the Other becomes a springboard to speak about and critique the Global North.

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Blue-Yellow Antiracism In political scientist Jan Jämte’s (2013) observation, the 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of antiracist ideas more broadly in Swedish society as part of a national discourse of a Sweden characterized by equality, solidarity, and tolerance. This was repeated with such frequency that democracy and antiracism were transformed into Swedish national brands as the country, on the international arena, became a leading Western voice for antiracism and a political, economic, and moral supporter of anticolonial movements around the world (Hübinette & Lundström, 2014). Simultaneously, advocates of the New Left questioned and critiqued what they perceived as Sweden’s Janus face, with an emphasis on class politics. One of the New Left’s most prominent voices, poet Göran Palm (2004, p. 132), wrote: ‘In Scandinavia the clean political hand pretends to never know what the dirty economic hand does’. What Palm refers to in his infuential pamphlet is the ways in which Sweden, on the one hand, plays the part of moral agent advocating for decolonization and liberation, while, on the other, it partakes in economic imperialism and exploitation of, predominantly, the African continent. Palm was far from alone. Sara Lidman, a prolifc author and signifcant political opinion maker, shared the same conviction in 1960, stressing that ‘the blacks have shouldered the whites’ burden for centuries’. In her view, all of us in the West have blood on our hands and are guilty of what is occurring on the African continent ( Jonsson, 2005). The albums about Johan Vilde can be read in this light as an attempt to deconstruct glorifed national self-images by zooming in on Sweden’s historical contribution to a slave-based economy. In the albums, the Swedes view the people in Cabo Corso and their civilization no diferently than Francisco Pizarro viewed the land of the Incas, as David Livingstone viewed Sigunga, as European nations traditionally view ‘primitive’ lands and cultures – as treasure trove, as the observers’ rightful possession (Torgovnick, 1991). Thus, it becomes Johan Vilde’s task to save not only the clan but also their way of life from external threats. Naturally, when Johan Vilde arrives on the African continent, he has no knowledge of what sort of alien creatures might inhabit its lands. He has only heard the rest of the ship’s crew refer to them as ‘black pagans’ and ‘savages’. While in their immediate custody, however, Johan Vilde becomes fascinated by the locals. A consequence of his interest involves unlearning the violence of stereotypes that determine the colonizing perspective – a process initiated already in his frst encounter with members of the Ayoko: The pagans surrounded me and those black, athletic men seemed to me to be more wild and warlike than the people on the coast. Again, I was gripped by panic ... But their leader smiled and held out a bowl of fresh water. ‘Akwabo ohoho!’ ‘They are friendly…’ I quenched my thirst, but was overpowered again by fatigue and fell asleep in the black man’s arms. (Lundström & Vallvé, 1977a, p. 45)

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After this incident, Johan Vilde accompanies the clan to their village. Sympathetic to the white boy’s precarious situation all alone on foreign soil, they decide to adopt him. Faster than anyone could ever expect, Johan Vilde’s proximity to the Others – in particular, his adopted family – gradually breaks down his identity as a white European orphan. In a textbook example of sidestepping all complexities of intercultural contact, Johan Vilde settles in with ease: he immediately picks up the language, grows accustomed to the local customs, and learns the Ayoko rituals (cf. Aman, 2017). Such tropes are far from unique in Western fction, which is full of white heroes who become part of a supposedly more primitive culture while exhibiting the belief that, to paraphrase Edward Said (1979, p. 160), whites can imitate the Other without the opposite being true. This trope, familiar from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1757), also extends itself to comics. Renowned examples include Tomahawk, White Indian, and Scalphunter that all share the trope of a white hero pretending to be native American, having absorbed all things seemingly positive about a certain indigenous way of life (e.g. Chireau, 2020; Sheyahshe, 2008). Similarly, Johan Vilde is progressively becoming a clan member, an Ayoko – he is now one of ‘them’. In previous writings on the series, this frmly rooted desire for Otherness has been conceptualized as a ‘transracial fantasy’ (Hübinette and Arvanitakis, 2012) – that is, a symptom of the way in which the desire to live among, and eventually become, the Other was transformed into an antiracist and anticolonial discourse during the emergence of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s. As part of such antiracist discourse, Johan more or less fully identifes with, and performs, a nonEuropean position. A particular manifestation of this is the way he dresses – or rather, the contrast between what he wears and what he used to wear. Having exchanged his long trousers, shirt, and shoes for a pair of trunks and a bare chest, a certain situation demands that he returns to familiar attire. In the act of masquerading to save his family and their clan, Johan Vilde puts on the clothes of a captured Swedish ofcer while asserting that ‘I cannot understand how the white men can walk around in these thick clothes!’ (Lundström & Vallvé, 1980, p. 36). Here the clothes are not simply garments; they act as a metaphor for a change of identifcation – when Johan Vilde took of his trousers, he simultaneously stripped down his identity as a white man. By extension, Johan Vilde’s metamorphosis into, in his own words, one of ‘us Africans’ has even turned his adoptive father colour blind. At one point, he lovingly confesses to his pale-skinned son that ‘Sometimes I forget that you’re a white man … that’s how close you are to me!’ (Lundström & Vallvé, 1980, p. 34). In line with the politics of the comic, the Ayokos here come to embody the very colour blindness with which the Swedish Left identifed (Aman, 2016; Hübinette and Arvanitakis, 2012). Though Johan Vilde’s ability to pass as native remains partly suspended by his physical diference from the rest of the clan, he does perform a long-standing European and exoticist dream of being able to ‘pass’ as the Other (Nyman, 2001). Additionally, this reversed version of the postcolonial identity dilemma of being ‘almost but not quite’ plays out to his advantage. In the second album, he and

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many other Ayokos – including his father and siblings – are captured by slave traders and brought to the Swedish fortress, Karlsborg, awaiting a ship that is set to transport them all across the Atlantic. Locked in a cage with countless others, Johan Vilde testifes from inside this death cabinet of European imperialism that ‘[w]ithin a few years these men and women would be dead – victims of febrile diseases, shipwreck, slave whips, hunger and homesickness’ (Lundström & Vallvé, 1977b, p. 21). Vallvé’s artwork exposed readers to some of the most horrifc sides of the slave trade, such as body inspections to determine market value and human branding, as the symbol of the owner was burnt into the skin of a human reduced to a commodity. Against the grain of a national self-image that according to academic commentators does not include direct involvement in the slave trade (Thomasson, 2014), awful deeds often associated with other colonial powers are here committed by Swedes and in the name of the Swedish nation fuelled by predatory capitalist greed. When it is Johan Vilde’s turn to be examined, however, he not only fears the humiliating procedure at hand but is also distressed by the risk of being exposed – the guards carrying out the inspections are the same ones he once escaped from on the ship. Instead of having his ‘true’ identity revealed, he leaves the examiners bafed by his sheer physical appearance: is he a ‘white boy that has lived too long among savages’ they wonder or is he an ‘albino-negro’? (Lundström & Vallvé, 1977b, p. 19). When Johan Vilde insults them in an unfamiliar vernacular, they conclude that he speaks ‘the same monkey-chatter as the rest of the savages’, and his racial identity is also confrmed by his ‘low forehead and stupid soulless eyes’. The discussion among the Swedish guards is not merely a detail that adds to the plot, in a larger perspective it is intended to illustrate how race, albeit reliant on a rhetoric of biological justifcations, is merely a social construction produced by colonial discourse to enable and justify oppression and exploitation (e.g. Mignolo, 1999; Spivak, 1988; Young, 1995). In a subtle manner, the sequence interlinks Sweden’s involvement in the practice of the slave trade with the nation’s scientifc contribution to colonial discourse. True enough, it was the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist, Carl Linnaeus, who introduced the modern scientifc system of racial classifcation that placed all beings in creation in a hierarchical schema. In Linnaeus’s system, humanity could be subdivided into varieties based on continent of origin and skin colour. In his scheme, it is the historical development of Europe and the white man that forms the ideal model for understanding historical progress as a whole. At the same time, it needs to be pointed out that the sequence relies on an anachronistic projection as this form of ‘scientifc racism’ had yet to be invented in the time the comic is set. Nevertheless, whether deliberate or not, the way Lundström constructs the above dialogue among the guards about the slaves’ lack of human traits closely resembles the observations made by Linnaeus’s disciple, Carl Petter Thunberg, on a visit to South Africa. He described the black population as lazy, stupid, and, at times, ‘not above soulless animals’ (Lindquist, 1991).

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This argument is also supported by Johan Vilde’s relationship with Björn, the hard-nosed skipper who serves as the main antagonist throughout the series. Björn makes Johan Vilde’s life miserable on board, which ultimately leads to his escape. It is also Björn who guards the cell in which the slaves are imprisoned, and the two men will have several subsequent run-ins with each other over the course of the series. Later, as the two of them have their fnal settling of scores, it is revealed that Björn merely repeated the same humiliating procedures on Johan Vilde to which he himself was once exposed. Through such comparative foci, the narrative afrms that it is the absorption of the Other, experience of another way of being, living, and knowing that has furnished Johan Vilde with his humane and anti-imperial politics. We know this because he too carried prejudices against the locals: fed by stories about the brutality of the natives, during his frst encounter with black people, he consequently reacts with fear and expresses surprise over the fact that they look ‘moderately civilized’. What he learns from the African Other is another perspective on life. Similar to Swedish travel writers from the 1950s and 1960s who often used experiences of ways of living in Europe’s former colonies as a way to critique contemporary life in Europe (see Edman, 2017; Jonsson, 2010), Johan Vilde has in his Africa discovered the peace, sincerity, and sense of community that he missed at home. It is his new African family that allows him to live naturally and unadorned without the greed, corruption, and inhumanity that govern elsewhere. And nowhere does this become more apparent when Johan Vilde is confronted with his past life, standing before a Swedish slave trader that represents the brutality and cruelty of European colonialism. With Björn’s destiny in his hands, Johan Vilde acknowledges that the man kneeling before him ‘has destroyed my life. Because of him I can never return to Sweden’ (Lundström & Vallvé, 1977b, p. 45). Yet that was another life to which he has no desire to return, ‘it is in Wassaw that I feel at home and we are on our way there! So why should I retaliate?’, he asks while leaving Björn to his fate surrounded by hungry predators which at the same time reveals that the comic also relies on an exoticist view of an Africa full of dangerous creatures (Lundström & Vallvé, 1977b, p. 45). In the frst album alone, our hero not only has to escape ruthless soldiers and stranded fortune hunters who seem to lurk around every corner, he is also forced to wrestle a gigantic snake and almost falls prey to hungry alligators. Despite the anticolonial aim of the series, what these descriptions also bring to life is the imagery of African wilderness and danger. The efect is a representation of an impenetrable, disordered, and intimidating Africa full of creature-infested jungles – in essence, the Africa of nineteenth-century colonial novels (Schutte, 2003). In short, antiracist politics is paradoxically packaged with exoticism.

The Evil of Apartheid Antiracist politics is equally a major part of the Swedish creators’ revamp of the Phantom’s universe. At this point in Swedish history, during the 1970s, with

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the increased focus on so-called Third World issues in general and on Southern Africa in particular, there was no more efective way to steer the plot towards the dominant discourse than to have the Phantom speak up openly against racism. After all, Magnus Knutsson (2003) explains in an account of his time with Team Fantomen during the 1970s that there was no greater injustice in the world to him than the ways in which a white ruling class oppressed the black population in Southern Africa. This view was shared by a large part of the Swedish population. The Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960, in which the South African police opened fre on several thousand black protestors, killing 69, galvanized Swedish public opinion into greater action. Shortly afterwards, representatives of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) visited Sweden pleading for an international boycott of South African commodities. Both the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and the Co-operative Union and Wholesale Society decided to immediately join the embargo of goods produced in South Africa. Committees and associations in solidarity with Southern Africa were formed all over the country, and Per Wästberg, who had been expelled from Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) in 1959, published an anti-apartheid book, På svarta listan (On the Black List). Ninety thousand copies were sold in Sweden alone, representing a watershed in reporting on Southern Africa. The book would become a staple of discussion in study circles across the country (Sellström, 2002). By the mid-1960s, all of these initiatives had placed the issue of South Africa at the centre of the national political debate. Less known is that the various antiapartheid movements also had the support of the Phantom. The inaugural episode by Team Fantomen, ‘Den döda foden’ (The Dead River), appearing in issue 1/1972, is a representative example of the diferent meaning that The Phantom takes on when reimagined through the prism of New Left politics. The caption on the frst panel informs the reader of what is at stake: ‘The jungle is untouched by the blessings of civilization. One of these “blessings” is pollution. Therefore the Alua people didn’t understand what had happened to their beautiful, rich river’. The focus on ecological issues is no coincidence considering the direct links between the New Left and the broader environmentalist movement (e.g. Klimke & Scharloth, 2008). In the wake of 1968, critiques of the raison d’etre of capitalism – profts and continual growth – were melded together with new understandings of the impact of economic growth on the environment. When the Phantom arrives at the river bank, he manages to broker peace while being briefed about the war that erupted when one tribe started fshing in the rivers belonging to another because their own had been polluted. As the authoritative voice in the jungle, the Phantom decides that the tribes will have to share fshing waters until he can fnd the source of the pollution. The trail leads to a nearby factory. Didactic in its intent, the comic pinpoints the role of capitalism as a catalyst for local conficts, where industrialists, in their constant pursuit of proft, destroy the natural resources on which other people are dependent for survival. At the same time, the scene does little to dispel The Phantom’s colonial

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overtones; the members of the two tribes instantly recognize the white man’s dominance and superiority. Although the resolution to the confict may allude to the diplomatic neutrality that became a Swedish hallmark during the Cold War and played an important part in Sweden’s positioning of itself as an international moral authority (Nilsson, 1991; Ottosson, 2003), the Phantom is a typical example of how colonialists desired to be looked upon by the ‘lesser species’: as noble, civilized, and inspiring teachers. In conversation with his long-time friend, President Luaga, the Phantom learns that the factory is owned by a former government minister (‘Minister Stevens? Yes, that’s what I feared’) – the new recurring villain introduced by Team Fantomen, representing the white colonial elite clinging on to considerable power and infuence despite the nation’s process of decolonization. The head of state explains that the Stevens family were among the frst whites to establish themselves in Bangalla. Under British rule, the Stevens started Africa’s frst weapons factory, and their most important customer is the neighbouring nation of Rodia. The Phantom listens carefully as the nation’s president clarifes that the government ceased all forms of trade with Rodia when ‘the white population brutally started to repress the natives’. The speech bubble stretches over an image of a park where a defenceless black man is being brutally beaten by two police ofcers. Like a snapshot of the perverse logic of racial separation implemented by the South African regime, there is a bench behind the man being assaulted with ‘For whites only’ written on it, indicating that the felony the black man likely committed was to have a seat in a park. Minister Stevens resigned when he was unable to get the boycott against Rodia abolished, President Luaga informs his inquisitive guest. The invention of Rodia – a fctional amalgam of South Africa and Rhodesia – allowed the Sweden-based scriptwriters to attempt to reconcile an antiracist discourse with the conventions of a typical Phantom narrative. That Rodia is an invention intended to please a Swedish audience is confrmed by the creators. In an exchange with readers, writer Janne Lundström lists Rodia as the foremost example of the progressive direction that the Swedish interpretation of the Phantom’s universe has taken. ‘This is not something that we brag about’, Lundström explains. ‘Most people in Sweden fnd the racial persecution in South Africa and Rhodesia to be abominable. But the examples show that we seek to adapt The Phantom series so that it contains things that most Swedes fnd to be good’ (Lundström, 1972, p. 26). What Scandinavian readers are perceived to sympathize with, however, may go against the grain of what is generally expected of the Phantom. Particularly revealing of the political content of the comic is not the measures taken by the hero to protect the environment and put Stevens behind bars, but the ways in which the Phantom’s new political leanings are revealed in his sympathy for organizations devoted to armed struggle. Equipped with extraordinary deductive capabilities, the Phantom concludes that Minister Stevens is smuggling weapons across the border to Rodia. Shadowing a caravan of trucks loaded with arms, the Phantom watches as the convoy is

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stopped by a group of armed men. They present themselves as soldiers from the Rodian Liberation Army (RLA) – a fctional reference to, at the time, the outlawed and exiled organization ANC – with a clear motive: ‘We need weapons and ammunition to liberate Rodia’s population from the white oppressors’ (Knutsson & Vallvé, 1972a, p. 20). Having surveyed the situation, the Phantom takes charge by revealing himself to the surprised soldiers. In an unexpected turn of events, the Phantom, instead of confscating or destroying the weapons in the name of peace and non-violence, informs the revolutionary troops that they ‘can consider the weapons a gift from the people of Bangalla’. What cannot be overlooked is how the plot, intentionally or subconsciously, ofers a direct commentary on the polarized debate taking place at the time regarding the nature of Swedish foreign aid. Besides the ANC with whom the Social Democratic government engaged in direct cooperation, Stockholm provided fnancial aid to other liberation movements espousing armed struggle against their white rulers in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Rhodesia, and South Africa. Government ofcials developed warm relationships with several leaders of these revolutionary armies, and the program was supported by a large cross-section of the Swedish public, bridging the deep divisions that characterized Swedish domestic politics (Gleijeses, 2005). In Piero Gleijeses’ (2005) view, however, Sweden’s position on foreign aid to liberation movements was hypocritical. On the one hand, Stockholm was providing non-military assistance to the armed struggle of the guerrillas because it deemed their cause to be just. On the other hand, the various governments consistently refused to supply these movements with the tools most essential to their cause: weapons. In practice, this hardly had any efect as these liberation armies, which were predominantly Marxist or Leninist in orientation, received their arms from the Soviet Union. Yet many Swedes, Gleijeses (2005) notes, criticized this restriction. Afliates of the New Left in particular often saw armed struggle as necessary to achieve change and, eventually, emancipation (Gilcher-Holtey, 2000). Through his actions, the Phantom informs the reader about his position in the debate and that of the people of Bangalla whom he claims to represent in the account above: arming liberation movements is necessary to aid their cause. The Phantom’s engagement with the thinly disguised fctional version of ANC does not end there. In another issue, ‘Slavarbetarna’ (The Slaves) 14/1972, he goes as far as to join the guerrilla in attacking strategic targets to hurt Rodia’s material base. As radical as this may seem to readers only familiar with Lee Falk’s storylines, it needs to be underlined that support for revolutionary movements fghting for liberation was frm in Sweden during the 1970s, at least on the political left (Berntson & Nordin, 2017). Radical leftists celebrated social and political movements in the Third World as a renewal of the socialist tradition and as a forceful push for their own projects of transforming First World societies. With Marxism as a tool for changing and interpreting the world, the New Left was committed to taking action. The ‘put your body on the line’ tradition ran strong among New Left activist, where Che Guevara’s eforts to bring revolution to

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other parts of Latin America were admiringly seen as theory and practice in perfect harmony (Elbaum, 2018) – a conviction not least shared by key authorship of the New Left in Sweden such as Jan Myrdal and Göran Palm. Or as the Phantom himself declares in the fnal panel of the story, in response to his close confdant Guran’s recitation of a newspaper article about the humanitarian abuses in the mines of Rodia: ‘To read is not enough – you have to act too!’ (Knutsson & Vallvé, 1972b, p. 24).

Alternatives to Capitalism Another trope that Johan Vilde and the Phantom share, in addition to fghting both for and with the non-European Other, is the anticapitalistic rhetoric invested in both series. In Johan Vilde, the message is less direct than in the Phantom, who actively promotes another economic system, as we will soon see. Instead Johan Vilde presents what Thomas Hodgkin (1957, pp. 174–175) refers to as ‘the Rousseauian picture of an African golden age of perfect liberty, equality and fraternity’ – an image that in this comic serves as a metaphor for a world order before the advent of capitalism. As the frst album ends with hero being adopted, the succeeding ones all begin with a short recap of how a blonde and white-skinned boy ended up with a black clan in Africa. While the aim of these introductions is to provide the reader with short descriptions of the alien people among whom the protagonist now resides and brief accounts of governance (‘the Ayokos are the most powerful clan with a matriarchal system’) and religion (‘the alligator is a totem animal’), they also include images of an alternative economic system. The various captions inform us that the Ayokos ‘live by hunting, farming, crafts and panning for gold’. The images portray Johan Vilde with bow and arrow or helping to plough the felds as he explains that ‘I took part in the family’s daily chores. We cultivated sorghum, millet and yams […] and when the yields were harvested we panned gold in the sandbars of the Anokbra river’ (Lundström & Vallvé, 1977b, p. 3). Everyone is equally involved: while we see men with hacks, women are balancing large baskets on the tops of their heads. Their common dedication to the chores is conveyed primarily through images of caresses (suggesting afectivity and love) and embraces (suggesting fraternity and equality). In strictly Marxist terms, what we are presented with is an image of the means of production before the entrance of private property which presupposes a class division between the owners and the producers. Subsequently, the Ayokos represent the social world before its break-up by capitalism in which most people, however diferently situated, had access to food and shelter, land, and work, without having to go through labour markets (Fraser, 2014). As a consequence of the way in which such arrangements were unwaveringly annulled by capitalism, the comic associates the idealizing practices of Johan Vilde’s new African family with a pre-capitalist past such as manual labour and conservation of nature – the closer to nature, the closer to Eden (Pieterse, 1992). Not limited to the Johan

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Vilde series alone, the same phenomenon of the presumed wildness of the Other and as a radical alternative way of living continues to live on in contemporary reality-TV productions around Europe such as Tribe Wife (Berg, 2012). Yet, as Nancy Fraser (2014) stresses, such appeals to what is imagined to be capitalism’s outside often end up recycling capitalist stereotypes, as female nurturing is counterposed to male aggression (men hunt and fght and women nest), spontaneous cooperation to economic calculation (material sustenance solely based on needs), and nature’s holistic organicism to anthropocentric individualism (belief in the inseparability of environment, economy, and spirituality). Hence, the anticapitalist critique in Johan Vilde, when premised on these oppositions, does not contest but unconsciously reproduces the institutionalized social order of capitalist society. Nor does it seem to account for Europe’s ‘mal-development’ of the colonized continent through its ‘imperial extraction’, as chronicled by Rodney in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). In the wake of Europe’s overseas adventures, exotic places and people, with their perceived elementariness and primitiveness, supplied their European spectators with a therapeutic image. From this viewpoint, the populations of the colonies were thought to possess an innocence and purity that had been eradicated by civilization. The comic in question plays part in reproducing an idea that what is lacking in the present existed once upon a time in a more or less distant past – a past in which the various modern alienations did not yet exist. As such, the very people deemed primitive and subordinate in colonial discourse can from such a point of view be positioned as morally superior: by living in a pre-capitalist past, or at least a past in which the modern socioeconomic system was not fully developed, they are able, for instance, to stand above the desire for material goods equated with Western societies (Duncan, 1993). Or as Johan Vilde himself summarizes life on the African continent: ‘I was in paradise’ (Lundström & Vallvé, 1977b, p. 3). Similar patterns of reproducing colonial patterns as part of critiquing the economic system are visible also in The Phantom. The most notable example is the storyline, ‘Handelskriget’ (The Trade War) from 3/1973, which is a fctional foray into a postcolonial debate on debt and dependency. The storyline begins with a farm worker, Toro, informing his co-workers that he needs to buy a new spade as a thought bubble gives away his suspicion that they are being duped (‘I don’t like the whites in the store. Everything is more expensive every time one goes there’) before admitting the reason for his lack of certainty (‘I wish that I knew how to read and count’) (Lundström & Wilhelmsson, 1973, p. 4). Far from any urban areas, there is only one wholesale store in the entire region, which means that the unscrupulous white owner can raise the prices on the commodities to unafordable levels. In order to purchase the necessary equipment to perform their labour, the black worker sees no other option than to accept the proposed ofer to hand over a part of the harvest as compensation. The panel shows a puzzled Toro struggling with the mathematics before signing the debenture with the owner laughing behind his back. When armed men arrive at the plantation demanding the

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harvest, the peasants realize that they have been tricked and are indebted for life. In this moment of clarity, the workers start planning a violent revenge to take back what they have worked for. Before the situation gets violent, the Phantom arrives on the scene where he is briefed about what is happening by the enraged work force. What is interesting in this story arc is not the typical action-packed way in which the Phantom goes about resolving the confict with the villains, but the measures he takes to ensure that a similar situation will not arise again. Calling upon his friend, Trader Joe, to help the workers set up their own store, the Phantom informs them that ‘He [Trader Joe] will also teach you what is meant by co-operative society, coownership and proft distribution!’ (Lundström & Wilhelmsson, 1973, p. 12). After being taught the ideas underpinning a co-operative society over supper, the caption states that it does not take long before the workers’ co-owned store blossoms. The story reads allegorically: the comic hit newsstands around Sweden at a time when a paradigm shift had occurred in the understanding of the causes of underdevelopment. Neoclassical economic theories of economic growth, usually called ‘trickle-down’ economics, which had dominated the post-war discussion of development, were repudiated by neo-Marxist inspired theories of ‘dependency’ (Odén, 2013). Crudely put, the recipe for development was no longer necessarily based on a simplifed view of all nations needing to emulate the growth patterns historically followed by the richest countries (Wallerstein, 1974). Instead dependency theorists emphasized a causal connection between colonialism and underdevelopment. In possibly the most infuential work of this school of thought, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, leading proponent Walter Rodney (1972) argues that underdevelopment is the direct consequence of Africa’s position as a cornerstone of the global capitalist system under colonialism, where the economic surplus that the continent produced was systematically exported to enrich the imperial centres. Hence, the development of Europe can be viewed as part of the same dialectical processes that underdeveloped Africa. Consequently, development and underdevelopment are two sides of the same coin – developed nations are actively underdeveloping countries in the Global South through the systems of interaction between them. In addition to gaining widespread recognition in academic circles, these ideas acquired such infuence that, in the case of Sweden, they were employed as an explanatory model for underdevelopment in Africa in school textbooks (Palmberg, 1987). Dependency theory frames the subplot of this Phantom adventure; the story ofers a pedagogical illustration of dependency as a continuation of colonialism. This is done by demonstrating the contemporary roles of many former colonies within the capitalist system. In this system, agrarian economies are reduced to specializing in exports in return for the importation of manufactured goods from the developed industrial world (Hobsbawm, 2011). In a scheme where the main characters of the story come to embody their respective positions in the capitalist system, the black labourers (representing the underdeveloped world) fnd

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themselves in a position where they have no other alternative than to consume overpriced tools and instruments supplied by the white merchants (representing the developed world). The store itself stands in for the world market, illustrating the hierarchical relationship between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, Europe and Africa, and industrialists and agrarians, in which the peasants have no other means to pay than with their harvest, or indebting themselves through credit. Furthermore, what the plot reveals is that political decolonization by itself hardly changed the economic relations between many postcolonial states and their former metropolitan countries. Although considered as nominally sovereign states, they continue to be part of an imperial economy subordinated to a foreign power, reduced to supplying raw materials. For these very reasons, proponents of dependency theory were stern critics of development aid – especially those measures focusing on export credit guarantees which most European nations, including Sweden, ofered targeted countries – suggesting that they veiled imperial ambitions in order to maintain former colonies in a state of dependency. In the case of Sweden, the impact of dependency theory, according to Bertil Odén (2013), went so far as to alter development aid policy: the focus on modernization through economic growth, investments, and trade that had dominated the frst proposition from 1962 (Swedish Government 1962:100) was replaced in 1968 (Swedish Government 1968:101) with a new goal of contributing to the economic independence of countries that had recently achieved political liberation. The Phantom’s formula for addressing the threat posed by the white merchant is a textbook example of the intended outcomes of the highly profled joint Nordic development aid projects launched in the late 1960s. The ambition of the projects was to promote the construction of co-operatives in targeted parts of Africa (Passkesen, 2010). In Sweden, the co-operative ideology was an essential part of the dominant national narrative that democracy and the welfare state had been created through a compromise between workers and peasants organizing themselves through co-operatives (Millbourn, 2008). After the Phantom has taught the peasants to band together to protect themselves and their economic interests, the storyline addresses the fact that co-operatives were perceived as a threat to capitalism, as they promote another economic system. Just as the private sector in Sweden sought to put consumer co-operatives out of business through boycotts and price reductions (Millbourn, 2008), the white merchants drop their prices to lure the peasants back to their store. An enraged Trader Joe rebukes the peasants, explaining ferociously that this is merely a dirty business trick to bankrupt their co-operative store before raising the prices again. The last panel of the story shows smiling villagers, having fnally listened to Trader Joe’s advice, inside their own co-operative store full of food and equipment. Although done with the best of intentions, the Phantom’s actions in the name of solidarity are not immune to the criticism that Gayatri Spivak (2008) directs towards development aid programmes in the Third World. Despite the change in politics from the American version, the Phantom rekindles a colonialist position

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as he remains a guardian and teacher of the locals whose interests and needs he dictates in order to direct their actions towards an appropriate end. As seen in the story above, the Phantom assumes that the locals do not have the expertise and ability to develop models that allow them to fght the monopoly of the white merchants without his help – help which, according to Spivak (2008, p. 15), often serves as a cover for the social Darwinism implicit in ‘development’, framed as ‘the burden of the fttest’: the responsibility to educate the natives rests on the Phantom’s broad shoulders. In line with colonialist representations, the Phantom is the superior helper of the passive and inadequate natives whose unreliability almost destroys the system that the masked hero puts in place to protect them: their lack of understanding of a co-operative in combination with their short-sighted and unpredictable consumption patterns nearly bankrupt the store they have been given to own collectively. Such colonial echoes are not limited to The Phantom but have been uncovered in several Swedish foreign aid activities and other initiatives in the promotion of global solidarity (e.g. Aman, 2015; Dahlstedt & Nordvall, 2011; Eriksson Baaz, 2002; Paaskesen, 2010). Ofering a parallel to The Phantom comics, these studies uncover a larger contradictory discourse in which there is, on the one hand, a strong anticolonial impulse inherent in the eforts of Swedish foreign aid to break with the colonial heritage; on the other hand, colonialist representations are prevalent in the construction of diferences and a hierarchical organization of invoked subjects as it is, to use the example in question, the Phantom who, albeit benevolently, sustain the privilege and power of possessing the knowledge that people in diferent parts of Africa require to challenge the structures of oppression and inequality under which they are living. Throughout this chapter, the argument that I have advanced is that The Phantom and Johan Vilde, two of Sweden’s best-selling comics at the time, mirror the ideological landscape in the country during the late 1960s and early 1970s with its emphasis on international solidarity, equality, and antiracism. On the one hand, these titles aim to teach the reader about both past and present injustices. This includes taking a stand against apartheid and fghting against postcolonial legacies on the African continent by, for example, saving farm workers from exploitation based on a particular Swedish recipe. But also by uncovering a dark chapter in Swedish history about the country’s involvement in the slave trade that at the same time ofers an alternative vision to European modernity and capitalism. On the other hand, the same titles continue to reproduce a hierarchy between the white protagonists and the non-white people they encounter in their respective parts of Africa. In the case of the Phantom, the hero has everything to teach and nothing to learn from the locals as he takes responsibility for their hitherto shorthanded, yet presumed desired, development. Rudyard Kipling formulates the same thought in a poem in which he pleads to the USA to take their colonial responsibility in the Philippines. He calls it ‘the white man’s burden’ – a burden that in the storylines discussed rests on the Phantom’s broad shoulders.

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In Johan Vilde, the series perpetuates a vision of Africa in which the use value of the continent is as a paradise lost, ofering the reader, during a time when the political debate in Sweden was heavily geared towards the Left (e.g. Ekman Jørgensen, 2008; Östberg, 2008), a non-capitalist alternative beyond the bounds of modern civilization. In contrast to the imperialist narrative in which the white man or woman travels to the periphery to report home about places and people he or she encounters, with an emphasis on lack and shortcomings, the periphery is in this case – emblematic of Swedish travel writings during the 1950s and 1960s – valorized as superior to the materialistic and oppressive centre. Although the politics and culture of the centre are denounced, the polarity between Sweden and Cabo Corso, between Johan Vilde and the Ayokos, is left intact since the series never disputes the assumption that world history is best rendered by a universal subject surveying the world from the centre – or as in this case, narrated by a white boy adopted by a West African clan. And as Stefan Jonsson (2013) reminds us, even when it is critical of European ascendancy, this discourse derives its authority from that very dominance. What this implies is that exotic spaces untouched by modernity and capitalism are not originally located in the midst of a certain ‘elsewhere’ and then refected in representation. Rather they are the product of these representations, in which the discourses of Western dominance function as a flter that introduces Otherness through categories that are comprehensible to a Western audience (Egerer, 2001). Consequently, the African societies characterized by solidarity, humanity, and equality in the Johan Vilde series are a product of the very system it sets out to critique – and it is created in order to serve the ideological purposes of the text grounded in international solidarity, antiracism, and anticapitalism.

Notes 1 All translations are mine if not otherwise indicated. 2 These numbers are from the Swedish Comics Archive.

References Aman, R. (2015) ‘In the Name of Interculturality: On Colonial Legacies in Intercultural Education’, British Educational Research Journal, 41(3), pp. 520–534. Aman, R. (2016) ‘Swedish Colonialism, Exotic Africans and Romantic Anti-Capitalism: Notes on the Comic Series Johan Vilde’, Third Text, 30(1–2), pp. 60–75. Aman, R. (2017) Decolonising Intercultural Education: Colonial Diference, the Geopolitics of Knowledge, and Inter-Epistemic Dialogue. London: Routledge. Aman, R. (2018a) ‘When The Phantom Became an Anticolonialist: Socialist Ideology, Swedish Exceptionalism, and the Embodiment of Foreign Policy’, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 9(4), pp. 391–408. Aman, R. (2018b) ‘The Phantom fghts Apartheid: New Left Ideology, Solidarity Movements and the Politics of Race’, Inks: Journal of the Comics Studies Society, 2(3), pp. 288–311.

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Aman, R. (2020) The Phantom Comics and the New Left: A Socialist Superhero. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Berg, L. (2012) ‘Stamhustru. Om eurocentriska myter, kön och ‘personlig utveckling’ i teveserien Ett annat sätt att leva’, in Hübinette, T. Hörnfeldt, H., Farahani, F. and León Rosales, R. (eds.) Om ras och vithet i det samtida Sverige. Tumba: Mångkulturellt centrum, pp. 115–138. Berntson, L. and Nordin, S. (2017) Efter revolutionen: Vänstern i svensk kulturdebatt sedan 1968. Stockholm: Natur & kultur. Chireau, Y. (2020) ‘White or Indian? Whiteness and Becoming the White Indian Comics Superhero’, in Guynes, S. and Lund, M. (eds.) Unstable Mask: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics. Columbus: the Ohio State University Press, pp. 193–211. Costello, M. (2009) Secret Identity Crisis. New York: Continuum. Dahlstedt, M. and Nordvall, H. (2011) ‘Paradoxes of Solidarity: Democracy and Colonial Legacies in Swedish Popular Education’, Adult Education Quarterly, 61(3), pp. 244–261. Duncan, J. (1993) ‘Sites of representation. Place, time and the discourse of the Other’, in Duncan, J. and Ley, D. (eds.) Place/culture/representation. London: Routledge, pp. 39–56. Edman, A. (2017) Between Utopia and Home: Swedish radical travel writing 1947–1966. PhD thesis. Lunds universitet. Egerer, C. (2001) ’Ambivalent geographies’, Third Text, 15(55), pp. 15–28. Ekman Jørgensen, T. (2008) ‘The Scandinavian 1968 in a European perspective’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 33(4), pp. 326–338. Elbaum, M. (2018) Revolution in the air: Sixties radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. London: Verso. Eriksson Baaz, M. (2002) The white wo/man’s burden in the age of partnership: A postcolonial reading of identity in development aid. Göteborg: Göteborg University Press. Fraser, N. (2014) ‘Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode’, New Left Review, 86, pp. 69–70. Gilcher-Holtey, I. (2000) ‘Der Transfer zwischen den Studentenbewegungen von 1968 und die Entstehung einer transnationalen Gegenöfentlichkeit’, Berliner Journal der Soziologie, 10(4), pp. 485–500. Gleijeses, P. (2005) ‘Scandinavia and the Liberation of Southern Africa’, The International History Review, 27(2), 324–331. Granberg, U. (2003) ‘Fantomens 70-tal’, Fantomen Krönika, 56(4), p. 2. Granberg, U. (ed.) (2019) Svensk seriehistoria Tredje boken från Svenskt seriearkiv Huvudtema: 70-talet – en ny guldålder. Malmö: Seriefrämjandet. Gudmundsson, D. (2015) ‘The Ghost Who Walks Goes North: Early Modern Sweden in the Phantom, 1987–2008’, Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art, 2(1), pp. 7–24. Hedin, C. and Lahdenperä, P. (2000) Värdegrund och samhällsutveckling. Stockholm: HLS förlag. Hobsbawm, E. (2011) How to change the world: Marx and Marxism, 1840–2011. London: Little, Brown. Hodgkin, T. (1957) Nationalism in Colonial Africa. New York, New York University Press. Hübinette, T. and Arvanitakis, J. (2012) ‘Transracial Adoption, White Cosmopolitanism and the Fantasy of the Global Family’, Third Text, 26(6), pp. 691–703. Hübinette, T. and Lundström, C. (2011) ‘Sweden after the Recent Election’, NORA, 19(1), pp. 42–52. Hübinette, T. and Lundström, C. (2014) ‘Three Phases of Hegemonic Whiteness: Understanding Racial Temporalities in Sweden’, Social Identities, 20(6), pp. 423–437. Jonsson, S. (2005) Världen i vitögat: Tre essäer om västerländsk kultur. Stockholm: Norstedt.

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Jonsson, S. (2010) ‘En kvinnas plats i världsordningen: Ett grundläggande drag hos Pia Arke och Marguerite Duras’, Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap, 40(2), pp. 3–20. Jonsson, S. (2013) ’Disclosing the World Order’, Third Text, 27(2), pp. 242–259. Jämte, J. (2013) Antirasismens många ansikten. PhD thesis. Umeå universitet. Klimke, M. and Scharloth, J. (2008) 1968 in Europe: A history of protest and activism, 1956– 1977. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Knutsson, M. (2003) ‘Fantomens 70-tal’, Fantomen Krönika, 56(4), pp. 96–97. Knutsson, M. and Vallvé, J. (1972a) ‘Den döda foden’ [The Dead River]’ in Hartler, L. (Ed.) Fantomen 1. Stockholm: Semic Press, pp. 3–28. Knutsson, M. and Vallvé, J. (1972b) ‘Slavarbetarna’ [The Slaves]’ in Jonsson, P-A. (ed.) Fantomen 14. Stockholm: Semic Press, pp. 3–24. Lindquist, B. (1991) Förädlade svenskar. Falun: Alfabeta Bokförlag. Lundin, B. (1971) Salongsbödlarna och andra betraktelser på temat värderingar i populärlitteraturen. Stafanstorp: Cavefors. Lundström, J. (1972) ‘Fantomen-klubben’ in Granberg, U. (ed.) Fantomen 14. Stockholm: Semic Press, p. 26. Lundström, J. and Vallvé, J. (1977a) Johan Vilde – Flyktingen. Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren. Lundström, J. and Vallvé, J. (1977b) Johan Vilde i slavfortet. Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren. Lundström, J. and Vallvé, J. (1980) Johan Vilde och sändebudet. Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren. Lundström, J. and Wilhelmsson, B. (1973) ‘Handelskriget [The Trade War]’ in Granberg, U. (ed.) Fantomen 3. Stockholm: Semic Press, pp. 3–26. Mignolo, W. (1999) Local histories/global designs. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Millbourn, I. (2008) ‘Kooperatismen - ett alternativ till kapitalism och socialdemokratai 1900–1920’, Scandia: Tidskrift för historisk forskning, 2, pp. 89–112. Nilsson, A.-S. (1991) Den moraliska stormakten: En studie av socialdemokratins internationella aktivism. Stockholm: Timbro. Nyman, J. (2001) ’Re-reading Rudyard Kipling’s ‘English’ heroism’, Orbis Litterarum, 56, pp. 205–220. Odén, B. (2013) ‘Biståndspolitiken’, in M. Lenne and D. Tarschys (eds.), Vad staten vill, mål och ambitioner i svensk politik. Örlinge: Gidlunds Förlag, pp. 21–66. Ottosson, S. (2003) Svensk självbild under Kalla Kriget. Stockholm: Utrikespolitiska Institutet. Paaskesen, K. R. (2010) ‘A Bleak Chapter in Nordic Development Aid History?: The Nordic Co-operative Assistance Project in Tanzania’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 35(4), pp. 451–470. Palm, G. (2004) En orättvis betraktelse. Viborg: Manifest kulturproduktion. Palmberg, M. (1987) Afrika i skolböckerna. Stockholm: Sida. Palme, O. (2006) Solidaritet utan gränser: Tal och texter i urval. Stockholm: Atlas. Pieterse, J. (1992) White on black: Images of Africa and blacks in western popular culture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Quijano, A. (2000) ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’, Neplanta: Views from South, 1(3), pp. 533–580. Rodney, W. (1972) How Europe underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L'Ouverture. Said, E. (1979) Orientalism. London: Penguin books. Schutte, G. (2003) ‘Tourists and Tribes in the ‘New’ South Africa’, Ethnohistory, 50(3), pp. 473–487. Sellström, T. (1999) Sweden and national liberation in Southern Africa Vol. 1 Formation of a popular opinion (1950–1970). Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.

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Sellström, T. (2002) Sweden and national liberation in Southern Africa. Vol. 2, Solidarity and assistance 1970–1994. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. Sheyahshe, M. A. (2008) Native Americans in comic books: A critical study. Jeferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. Spivak, G. C. (1988) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271–313. Spivak, G. C. (2008) Other Asias. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Strömberg, F. (2003) Swedish comics history. Stockholm: Seriefrämjandet. Swedish Government. (1962) Bill Proposition 1962:100. Stockholm: Government Ofces. Swedish Government. (1968) Bill Proposition 1968:101. Stockholm: Government Ofces. Thomasson, F. (2014) ‘Contre la Loi mais en considérant les Circonstances dangereuses du moment: Le tribunal suédois de l’île de Saint-Barthélemy pendant la période révolutionnaire’, in F. Régent et al. (eds.) Les colonies, la révolution française, la loi. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 231–249. Torgovnick, M. (1991) Gone primitive: Savage intellects, modern lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wallerstein, I. (1974) ‘The rise and future demise of the world-capitalist system: Concepts for comparative analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16, pp. 387–415. Young, R. J. (1995) Colonial desire: Hybridity in theory, culture, and race. London: Routledge. Östberg, K. (2008) ‘Sweden and the long ‘1968’: Break or continuity?’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 33(4), pp. 339–352.

7 ABANDONING IDEALS AND PRODUCING GRAPHIC DISILLUSIONMENT IN SUOMEN SUURIN KOMMUNISTI Oskari Rantala

In the short national history of Finland, the radical left has been a signifcant political force, but its relationship to the national project remains problematic. In the Finnish Civil War of 1918, a socialist uprising against the government was suppressed with widespread terror, and in World War II, Finland fought the Soviet Union. Even though communists and socialists were the antagonists of the state in these formative conficts, the radical left enjoyed considerable support in Finland throughout the twentieth century and played a major role in post-war politics and culture. Following the centenary of national independence in 2017, creators of popular culture have taken a revived interest in the earliest and most violent stages of national history, calling attention to the Finnish left-wing movement, its traumatic past, and its ambiguous legacy. One notable work in this regard is the graphic novel Suomen suurin kommunisti (The Greatest Communist of Finland)1 by Jesse Matilainen. Published in 2017, it is a fctionalized historical account detailing the lives of the leaders of the socialist uprising in 1918 who later became key fgures in the Finnish diaspora communist movement functioning under the auspices of Russian Bolsheviks. Ironically, much of it was ultimately decimated not by Finnish authorities or nationalists but by Soviet secret police in Stalin’s Great Purge in 1936–1938. In this chapter, I discuss Suomen suurin kommunisti (SSK) through the lens of abandoning ideals and disillusionment, which takes an intriguing graphic and intertextual form in the narrative. The frst half of the graphic novel deals with revolutionary optimism in the years following the formation of Soviet Russia under Lenin. In contrast, the second part of SSK focuses on the 1930s, a decade marked by increasing control, political suppression, and ultimately mass exterminations and world war. Rather than historical truthfulness – arguably a problematic notion – I focus on the interpretation of history ofered by the graphic novel and the narrative strategies it employs. One exceptional feature of SSK DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-9

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is its use of Soviet political art. The graphic novel incorporates tens of appropriations of recognizable artworks from the frst decades of communist rule in Russia, commenting on the story and creating narrative irony. First, I discuss the historical background of the narrative and the legacy of radical leftist politics in Finnish popular culture. Subsequently, I focus on the graphic novel, its use of history, and its ambivalent position on who should be regarded as the titular ‘Greatest communist of Finland’. The novel interrogates particularly harshly the character of Otto Wille Kuusinen, by far the best known and most infuential Finnish communist of the era. Finally, I present examples of redrawn appropriations of political artworks by El Lissitzky, Vladimir Stenberg, Georgii Stenberg, Gustav Klutsis, and Yakov Guminer, all of them leading luminaries of the Russian avant-garde movements such as Suprematism and Constructivism during the early Soviet years. In these appropriations, themes of political disillusionment are brought to the fore and narrative irony is introduced.

Civil War, Radical Left, and Their Legacy in Finnish Culture In 1917, imperial Russia was imploding due to the disastrous World War and civil unrest throughout the empire. Revolutions taking place in February and October (of the Julian calendar) frst toppled the Tsarist regime in favour of a multiparty provisional government, in turn, replaced by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks, setting the stage for the Grand Duchy of Finland becoming an independent nation. The next year, following a period of political turmoil, rising tensions, and sporadic violence, civil war broke out between the socialist and nationalist factions, which became known as the Reds and the Whites (not to be confused with the similarly named sides of the Russian Civil War).2 The brutal confict lasted from January until early May when the White Army secured a decisive victory with the aid of the German military and the socialist uprising was suppressed. It is estimated that 36,000 people – more than 1% of the Finnish population – lost their lives in the war and the subsequent political terror, executions, and prison camps (Westerlund, 2004, p. 53), which makes the brief confict one of the bloodiest civil wars in European history. During the fnal stages of the war, the remaining leaders and functionaries of the revolutionary government fed to Soviet Russia. In Finland, they had constituted the left wing of the Social Democratic Party and supported a democratic state with a strong parliament and new constitution (Uitto, 2013, pp. 37–39). Once in exile, however, they became communists and supporters of the USSR under Lenin and later Stalin, establishing the Communist Party of Finland in order to bring about a revolution on the other side of the border (Hodgson, 1967, p. 80; Saarela, 2015, p. 89). In the 1920s and 1930s, tens of thousands of Finns escaping political persecution, as well as the hardship following the Great Depression, either voluntarily joined them in exile or were forcibly deported by nationalist paramilitary groups (Kamppinen, 2019, pp. 13–14, 34). Thousands of Finnish immigrants also arrived from North America, making Finns one of the

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largest immigrant populations in the early Soviet Union (Golubev and Takala, 2014, p. xii). The Finnish presence was especially strong in the autonomous republic of Karelia by the border. Tragically, the émigré community was decimated in the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s, and it is estimated that in the order of 20,000 Finns lost their lives (Rentola, 1994, 72). In Finland, a nationalist-conservative perception of the Civil War as ‘a war of liberation’ against Russian interference dominated the public discourse for much of the following decades and is still a bone of contention among historians (Roselius, 2014, p. 299). However, artistic interpretations of the Civil War, its aftermath, and the following political repression have challenged the nationalistic historiography by focusing on the losing side of the confict. Frans Eemil Sillanpää, the sole Finnish Nobel laureate in Literature, discussed the uprising from socialists’ point of view in his 1919 novel Meek Heritage (Hurskas kurjuus). Especially infuential in this respect was Under the North Star (Täällä Pohjantähden alla, 1959–1962), a novel trilogy by Väinö Linna who has since gained the status of a respected national author, even though his sympathetic representation of people taking part in the uprising was initially met with resistance (Tepora, 2014, pp. 391–392). Over half a century later, Linna's interpretation of the war and its causes are still debated (e.g. Lehtinen and Volanen, 2018, p. 7–8), but his work cemented the legacy of the Civil War as a national tragedy. Indeed, the main mode of fction discussing the Civil War and the following events has since been political tragedy, not heroic military action. Civil war narratives are characterized by social inequality, unjust killings, and painful memories which are passed on from one generation to the next. The centenary of the Civil War in 2018 saw the publication of diverse works of popular culture discussing the violent events. Whereas the Civil War had previously been primarily a subject for serious historical novels and flms, some of the contemporary works employed other media and modes of expression, often also shifting the focus to the experiences of otherwise disregarded groups, such as women. Notable examples include the musical Tytöt 1918 (Girls 1918) by TTTTheatre and the comic anthology Sisaret 1918 (Sisters 1918), edited by Reetta Laitinen, both portraying the experiences of women during the war, some of whom took up arms and fought on the Red side. New perspectives on the confict were introduced by the dark comedy flm Suomen hauskin mies (The Funniest Man in Finland) by Heikki Kujanpää, the interactive novel Sinä vuonna 1918 (You in 1918) by Mike Pohjola, and the documentary television series Laulu sisällissodasta (A Song about the Civil War) about the rap artist Paleface and his process of writing a song discussing the Civil War. Many of these works were well received. Sisaret 1918 won the Sarjakuva-Finlandia prize for year’s best comic work, whereas Paleface performed live as part of the ofcial Independence Day celebrations in November. It is worth pointing out that works which discuss the civil war solely from the point of view of the victorious White Army are almost completely absent. In short, the Red experience has become part of the national history.

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Despite the interest in the tragedies of the Red side, the fate of the Soviet Union's Finnish diaspora community has been mostly ignored. It has been discussed in only a handful of historical novels such as Ikitie (‘Forever Road’, 2011) by Antti Tuuri and Graniittimies (‘Granite Man’, 2014) by Sirpa Kähkönen, with the award-winning flm adaptation of Ikitie by AJ Annila (2017) leaving the most memorable mark in the cultural mainstream. In works discussing Civil War and its aftermath, it is customary to focus on the experiences of ordinary people amid the political upheavals and show how human lives are destroyed by the forces of history outside their control. In both novels, the protagonists end up experiencing the horrors of the purges in the late 1930s, losing their friends and families in mass graves or forced labour camps. Suomen suurin kommunisti is a noteworthy exception among Finnish Civil War narratives and stories dealing with the Finnish immigrants in the interwar USSR. The graphic novel focuses on leading fgures of the communist movement, describing their power struggles, relationships, and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to survive persecution on both sides of the Finnish–USSR border. In contrast to the more typical protagonists of Ikitie or Graniittimies, the men and women in Suomen suurin kommunisti wield political power and are high in the Soviet hierarchy, although this it does not protect them from the purges.

Forging the Red History Suomen suurin kommunisti examines the lives of several prominent Finnish communists and has no one single protagonist. Perhaps the three most signifcant personalities in the narrative are Otto Wille Kuusinen, Arvo Tuominen, and Hanna Malm. A leading social democratic parliamentarian prior to the Civil War and later a member of the revolutionary government of Red Finland, Kuusinen became a high ofcial in Comintern, the Soviet organization coordinating, fnancing, and controlling the work of communist parties around the world. SSK discusses in depth the internal power struggles of the Communist Party of Finland (SKP) in which Kuusinen and his supporters managed to sideline other key fgures in the 1930s. Most important of his opponents was Kullervo Manner who had led the party for more than a decade and served as the highest-ranking Red leader in the Civil War. Arvo Tuominen and Hanna Malm, on the other hand, both took part in the Civil War as journalists and propagandists, meeting each other in the frst scenes of the graphic novel before the fall of the city of Tampere. During the following decades, they became political adversaries, Tuominen aligning himself with Kuusinen and Malm with Manner, whom she married. After the removal of Manner and Malm, Tuominen assumed control of the party and led it through the frst years of Stalinist terror with Kuusinen's support. During the 1930s, a power struggle in a communist party was not only a political question but a matter of life and death. Kullervo Manner and Hanna Malm were ultimately arrested and sentenced to labour camps in which they died without seeing each other

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again. They were soon followed by most other notable Finnish communists in the USSR – ironically, many of those who survived did so because their underground work had landed them in prison in Finland. Unlike their colleagues, Arvo Tuominen and Otto Wille Kuusinen were among the few who survived the purges. However, increasingly alarmed by Stalin's terror, Tuominen left the country for Sweden in 1937 and broke with the communist movement when the invasion of Finland began, dedicating his later political career to championing social democracy and challenging Stalinism and Finnish communists. Kuusinen was left behind to witness the purges of his trusted allies and family members after the destruction of his enemies. He remained a loyal communist who served under Khrushchev after Stalin's death and was fnally buried in the Kremlin Wall in 1964, even though his later life is not discussed in SSK which ends when the invasion against Finland begins in 1939. The general outline of the events as shown in the comic is historically accurate, even if Matilainen has decided to foreground some characters and left other prominent fgures in the background or omitted them completely. Even though Kuusinen, Tuominen, and Malm take the centre stage in the story, the narrative revolves around several other people as well and often resists taking the viewpoint of any single character. Kuusinen's wife Aino, for example, is another key character, even though she plays a somewhat minor role in the narrative. Aino Kuusinen lived an extraordinary life: she worked for Comintern and Soviet intelligence around the world until she was arrested, spending nearly two decades in prisons and Siberian camps before being released after the death of Stalin and leaving the USSR in 1960s. She is best remembered for her posthumously published memoir Jumala syöksee enkelinsä (God Topples his Angel, 1972) which criticized both the Soviet Union under Stalin and also Otto Wille Kuusinen, as her husband apparently did nothing to save her from the purges. Despite the overall arc of the story being based on historical characters and events, the graphic novel's relationship to historical fact is not clear-cut. The narrative does not present itself as nonfction. Rather, Matilainen acknowledges in his foreword that ‘this story is not real but could be’ and admits to ‘taking liberties’ (p. 5). That is, of course, inevitable, as exact details of many events are not known. Because, communist political action was illegal in Finland after the Civil War, communists operated in secret. Furthermore, even discussing some issues was potentially dangerous during the Stalinist years. There is little reliable evidence of the personal thoughts and motivations of many of the people featured in the graphic novel, even if some Soviet archives have been opened after the fall of the USSR. Some of those who survived and defected to the West have written infuential autobiographical works, but they have their own limitations. In addition to Aino Kuusinen's posthumous memoir, Arvo Tuominen wrote a series of autobiographical books later in life, discussing his time in the communist movement and the Soviet Union (see Tuominen, 1956a, b; 1958, 1970). However, historians have called into question whether he described the events accurately or sought to minimize his own role in the mass exterminations (e.g. Rajala and

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Rautkallio, 1994). Both works ofer insight into the communist movement of the 1920s and 1930s, but they were published decades later, and the objectivity of these accounts is debatable at least to some extent. Therefore, a lot of unknown history remains for Matilainen to speculate about. It is evident that Matilainen has simplifed the course of events, leaving out certain important characters altogether and inserting others in scenes they were not present. SSK at times relies heavily on authentic documents, often quoting speeches verbatim and foregrounding its documentary aspects. Condensing the events, simplifying the storyline, and highlighting characters' qualities that ft the narrative needs of the work are customary, if not necessary, in fact-based fction. However, SSK is not a documentary comic in the strict sense defned by Nina Mickwitz (2016), who excludes ‘comics biographies and historical narratives that exclusively draw on secondary source materials’ (p. 9). Its use of secondary sources, as well as speculations by the author, should therefore label it more of a fctionalized account of historical events. The frst chapter of the graphic novel ofers a salient example. In several scenes, Matilainen describes the activities of young Arvo Tuominen, who is the editor of a socialist newspaper in Tampere, a Red stronghold sieged and captured by the White Army in April 1918. Unlike his colleagues and Red leaders, Tuominen did not try to escape the city and desert its defenders before it fell and was arrested. This meant almost certain execution, as historians Panu Rajala and Hannu Rautkallio (1994, p. 24) have pointed out. However, Tuominen was saved by two of his childhood friends and neighbours who had served in the White Army and had come specifcally to rescue him (Tuominen, 1956a, pp. 89–90; Rajala and Rautkallio, 1994, pp. 24–29). In SSK, however, Tuominen seems to run into an old acquaintance by accident. He talks his way out of the difcult situation by lying about his role in the uprising, and the narrative shows him quickly abandoning his arrested friends (Matilainen, 2017, pp. 30–32). Furthermore, he was actually about to desert the city in the graphic novel before Hanna Malm persuades him to stay. It is not the only instance in which SSK presents him as a cunning, smooth-talking, and somewhat cowardly person, especially in comparison to the idealistic and strong-willed Malm. Perhaps not surprisingly, Tuominen's own recollections in his memoirs are noticeably diferent (1956a, pp. 82–86), but Matilainen has chosen to portray him as a signifcantly less heroic character.

Looking for the Greatest Communist of Finland Despite its title, Suomen suurin kommunisti does not explicitly name the eponymous ‘greatest communist of Finland’. The graphic novel especially scrutinizes Otto Wille Kuusinen, who is the best known of all the characters but also ‘one of the most hated and controversial icons of Finnish politics’ as his biographer Antero Uitto (2013, p. 7) writes. As an ally of Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev, as well as a Comintern leader and fnally a member of the Central Committee of

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the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in his own right, Kuusinen is likely the most politically powerful Finn who has ever lived. However, his legacy is extremely controversial, and serving in the Soviet-backed puppet government that supported the unsuccessful invasion of Finland in 1939 damaged his reputation beyond repair (Vihavainen, 2003, p. 7; Rentola, 2003, p. 61). Furthermore, many have suggested that he did little to save his colleagues, his lifelong friends, or his family from the purges in the 1930s. In hindsight, it is uncertain whether he in fact could have interfered and to what extent he was fghting for his own survival. People's Commissariat for Internal Afairs (NKVD), the Soviet agency conducting the purges, was reportedly very close to arresting him, but there is no denying that he was politically opportunistic and ready to denounce the ideological mistakes of his close friends when that served the purpose of demonstrating his loyalty to the current leadership (Rentola, 1994, p. 59). While Arvo Tuominen (1970, p. 216) and others have suggested that Kuusinen hated Stalin and was eager to take part in the de-Stalinization eforts under Khrushchev, this is not part of SSK, which presents Kuusinen as Stalin's cynical and power-hungry pawn. In many scenes of the graphic narrative, Kuusinen pompously defends Stalin with phrases such as ‘Stalin is steel and with his help Finland will once again be mine!’ (Matilainen, 2017, p. 126). The last time Kuusinen meets his wife Aino, he accuses her of ‘blasphemy’ after she voices her concerns about Stalin destroying the Soviet Union and ‘everything we once dreamed of ’ (Matilainen, 2017, p. 194). Some of the dialogue in the scene is lifted straight from Aino Kuusinen's memoir (1972, pp. 159–164), but her remarks about Stalin are invented by Matilainen for the graphic novel in which she often acts as a voice of reason and a contrast to her husband. SSK often highlights the mismatch between communists' ideals and the Soviet reality. In his interactions with Stalin, however, Kuusinen is often shown to be disturbed by the dictator's murderous plans. His face is sweating, he stammers, and his expression looks regretful when he meets Stalin to discuss the number of executions in Karelia or the plans to invade Finland (Matilainen, 2017, pp. 242, 250). The graphic novel ends with Kuusinen assuring Stalin that all the difcult choices and sacrifces he has made have been worth it, but the narrative seems to leave open whether he really speaks his mind. Even though the portrayal is rather negative, the Kuusinen of SSK remains a conficted character. Arvo Tuominen is also portrayed rather unfatteringly. He is an acolyte of Kuusinen and ready to ruthlessly do his bidding. However, whereas Kuusinen is obsessed with invading Finland – something that the real-life Kuusinen in fact opposed (Rentola, 1994, p. 178) – and seems to hold a grudge against Manner for a decade, Tuominen is a more relatable and reasonable character. He is visibly taken aback by the darker aspects of the Soviet Union, like the starving masses he sees in train stations (Matilainen, 2017, pp. 166–167) or the brutal conditions of a forced labour camp (pp. 171–172). Tuominen also decides to make his move and gets him and his wife out of the Soviet Union alive. For him, the last straw is the purges targeted at the most loyal Finnish communists close to him.

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The portrayal of Hanna Malm is sympathetic, in stark contrast to those of Tuominen and Kuusinen who are signifcantly better known. She is an idealistic and energetic character and the most infuential Finnish female communist of the era, serving as a member of the SKP central committee for nearly a decade (Katainen, 2001). During the Civil War, the graphic novel portrays her as more courageous than the men around her. After the war, she is equally competent as a communist operative working underground, evading the police and spreading propaganda. In the communist movement, Malm and Manner supported a more intransigent revolutionary approach than Kuusinen who often emphasized legal political action via front parties, labour unions, and co-operation with the social democrats (Hodgson, 1975, p. 89; Rentola, 1994, p. 26). Manner's inefcient hard line was a factor in the losses that the communists sufered in the late 1920s, when they were unable to gain wider support or organize against the threat of police and nationalist militias (Lackman, 2017, pp. 166–175). Hints of these tendencies are present in Malm's character in the graphic novel in which she is an ardent communist not willing to compromise. SSK describes in detail how she declines to backtrack her opinions in articles she had published even when it becomes obvious that she and Manner have lost the fght for the party. Manner attempted to get Malm to publicly disown her views in order to save herself, but she rebelled and provided more ammunition for their opponents with more critical writings (Lackman, 2017, pp. 193–194; Paastela and Rautkallio, 1994, p. 37). In the era of Stalinism, breaking the party discipline this way was an inexcusable ofence. In SSK, Malm is a tragic fgure whose honesty and strong commitment to her values lead to death. The graphic novel does not explicitly state that she should be considered greatest of the Finnish communists. However, the cover image in which she is standing on top of a monumental number one is a clear indication of what Matilainen considers her place is in the communist hall of fame. The cover image is an appropriation of a Soviet propaganda poster by Yakov Guminer dated 1923. In the original, a drawn fgure is kneeling on top of a similarly monumental ‘1’, with their red banner wrapped around the monument in the same angles. In Guminer's poster, titled May First (1923), the huge number stands for the date of International Workers' Day.3 In addition to the cover, similar images are present throughout the narrative, and they often highlight important thematic aspects of SSK. In the following sections, I discuss them in more detail.

Shedding Revolutionary Optimism Suomen suurin kommunisti illustrates the transformation of political idealism into murderous self-preservation, and one of the most striking narrative strategies it employs is the use of appropriations of Soviet political art. At the beginning of the novel, Matilainen intersperses the comic narrative with redrawn versions of Suprematist avant-garde artworks, turning later to Constructivism. In Russia, notable artists belonging to diferent avant-garde movements were initially

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strongly in favour of the revolutions against the old order and championed socialist politics in their art. Abstract and radical works challenged the classical and conservative sensibilities connected to the Tsarist regime (Moszynska, 1990, p. 42). Following the Bolshevik takeover, revolutionary avant garde became something of an ofcial art when futurist writer Anatoly Lunacharsky became the director of the People's Comissariat of Enlightenment (Saari, 1989, p. 34). Between chapters 2 and 3 of SSK, there is a full-page rendering of an abstract artwork by El Lissitzky (Figure 7.1). Drawing on Suprematism developed by Kazimir Malevich, who painted the seminal Black Square (1915), Lissitzky's composition consists of circles, squares, and triangles. Many of Lissitzky's works specifcally attempt to represent the revolutionary forces and ideas with geometric forms. In his infuential propaganda poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919), for example, a red triangle intruding into white space symbolizes the Bolsheviks and their counterrevolutionary opponents, but here the reference is not as explicit. The design was originally used by Lissitzky in his series of painting under the title Proun4 – an acronym for ‘Project for the afrmation of the new’ in Russian (Drutt ©2020) – as well as an earlier sketch for a monument to the executed Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg5 (Figure 7.1 A and B). In SSK, Matilainen has faithfully traced the forms of Lissitzky's geometric painting and inscribed the Finnish lyrics of the international socialist anthem ‘The Internationale’, translated in 1905 by Otto Wille Kuusinen and Yrjö Sirola.

FIGURE 7.1

Suomen suurin kommunisti, Matilainen, 2017, p. 69.And ‘Proun’, El Lissitzky, c. 1922.

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Revolutionary optimism of such lines as ‘Alas lyökää koko vanha maailma/ja valta teidän silloin on!’ (literal translation: ‘Strike down all of the old world/and the power shall be yours!’6) refects the situation in the narrative: even though the Reds have lost the Civil War in Finland, Kuusinen is successful in his underground organizing eforts, and the Red Army of the newly established Soviet Russia is victorious in the Russian Civil War. There is hope for communist revolutions in new countries and a worldwide movement for bringing about political change. In the words of the English translation of ‘The Internationale’ by Charles Hope Kerr: ‘A better world’s in birth!’ Lissitzky's gouache and pencil painting features a large red circle at its centre with radial forms and triangles pointing at it, giving the circle an almost magnetic quality. The design is powerful and dynamic, and like the lyrics of the song, the pure geometric shapes seem to promise a more exciting future and give a visible form to the willingness to break free from old traditions – whether it is the classical ideals of art or conservative politics. ‘The Internationale’ is an empowering call to arms for the oppressed working class that has nothing to lose but their chains. Initially an anthem of the Second International of socialist and labour parties, the song was also adopted as the national anthem of the Soviet Union when the federal Soviet state was ofcially established in 1922. On the following page of the graphic novel, the lyrics continue and the chorus, which encourages everyone to join the united front and become brothers, is inscribed on a Suprematist artwork consisting of a red circle and linear forms by Nikolai Suetin, another pupil of Malevich (Guerman, 1988, p. 8). On another level, these choices foreshadow the forthcoming cultural trajectories in the Soviet Union. During World War II, ‘The Internationale’ was replaced by a more nationalistic state anthem – perhaps understandably as the original lyrics called for peace and encouraged soldiers to go on strike and attack their commanders. Furthermore, despite initially embracing the new experimental and energetic artistic movements, leaders of the Soviet Union ultimately turned to support a more traditional style in arts. In 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party disbanded all artistic groups (Guerman, 1988, p. 13). Socialist Realism was established as an ofcial artistic style and turned artists to monumental paintings depicting industrial production, scenes of war, and images of Stalin (Saari, 1989, p. 41). In the 1930s, some artists left the Soviet Union, while others, like Malevich who had laid the foundations for the artistic vocabulary used by Lissitzky and Suetin, faced confscation of artworks, a ban on exhibitions, and imprisonment. Another ‘ism’ dominating the early Soviet avant garde to an even greater extent was Constructivism, which emphasized materiality instead of representation and contained a distinct anti-art element (Milner, 1979, p. 22). Constructivist manifestos encouraged artists to fnd the ‘quickest way to the factory’, denounced aesthetes as ‘great corrupters of human race’ (Vladimir Stenberg, Georgii Stenberg and Constantin Medunetsky, cited in Mount, 1997, p. 12), and proclaimed that ‘representation is fnished: it's time to construct’ (Aleksander Rodchenko, cited

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in Moszynska, 1990, p. 76). An artist-engineer (Mount, 1997, p. 11) or artisttechnician (Moszynska, 1990, 78) became the ideal practitioner of culture. Cinema and graphic design were considered some of the crucial agitational tools, as many Russians were illiterate (Mount, 1997, 11). Therefore, flm posters were a prominent part of Soviet visual culture of the era. In chapter 6 of SSK, one of the pages mimics a poster by Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg advertising the documentary flm Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom, 1929) directed by Dziga Vertov (Figure 7.2).7 The avant-garde flm documents life in a modern Soviet city while experimenting with collage, photomontage, splitscreen, and a gamut of other unusual flm editing techniques (Milner, 1979, p. 28; Stollery, 2013, 602). Man with a Movie Camera presents a utopian communist vision, with citizens enjoying themselves, carrying out productive work, and connecting with others and with modern technology (Stollery, 2013, 603). The original poster for the flm features a woman with her back arched backwards and hands thrown up, as if she is fying. The woman looks joyous in the middle of multicolored skyscrapers that are reaching out to the sky all around her. Like Vertov's flm, the design embodies optimism and the new Soviet way of life and refects the ideals of Constructivism which the Stenberg brothers and Vertov were all committed to (Figure 7.2 A and B). In SSK, however, utopia is giving way to dystopia. Arvo Tuominen arrives in the Soviet Union and helps Kuusinen take power in SKP, removing Manner and Malm in 1934. At the same time, the forced collectivization and mass repression of peasants is under way, and the people labelled class enemies by the communist regime are sentenced to forced labour camps, one of which Tuominen visits. In 1935, Stalinist repression escalated after the murder of the Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov was used as a pretext for a thorough purge in the party ranks (Shearer, 2009, p. 292). All communist parties were ordered to monitor their members for dangerous infuences and expel members of opposition factions, which led to SKP leaders gathering evidence against Manner, Malm, and their supporters and reporting it to NKVD (Rentola, 1994, 28). As a result, the secret police arrested Malm on the night before 14 April 1935, which marks a turning point in the narrative. At this point, the graphic novel includes a page that appropriates the Man with a Movie Camera poster by the Stenberg brothers. Instead of the joyous woman, the central fgure on the page is the distressed Hanna Malm in a similar position with her body bent along the spiralling text. In the original, the circular lines announce the credits of the flm, whereas in SSK, there is narrative text explaining the turn of events: ‘Hanna Malm's arrest sets in motion a wave of arrests. First Malm and Manner's friends and acquaintances. Finally, Kullervo Manner is arrested as well. / in ones arrested are sentenced to NKVD camps to forced labor’. In the space where the flm poster includes the title of the flm on another curved line, Matilainen has placed Malm's speech bubble. She exclaims: ‘Kullervo! What is happening? Our dreams – only ashes!’ The shapes of the other panels on the page imitate the dramatic shapes of skyscrapers of the flm poster.

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FIGURE 7.2

Suomen suurin kommunisti, Matilainen, 2017, p. 189. And poster for Man with a Movie Camera,Vladimir and Georgii, 1929.

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Continued.

In The Stenbergs’ design, they surround the woman and rise towards the sky. In the graphic novel, the panels look more like broken pieces of glass, each event representing a new blow to Malm’s socialist ideals. The top-left panel features the agitated Kullervo Manner shouting ‘My love!’ as NKVD ofcials are dragging Malm away. Other panels reveal assorted scenes from the narrative: there

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is Malm with a prisoner's uniform in an NKVD camp, Kuusinen on holiday where he meets his third wife, Manner being arrested, school director Yrjö Sirola wondering why so many of his students have disappeared, and a troika of NKVD ofcials delivering the guilty sentence. In 1935, Finns frst became a target in NKVD campaigns of repression. In addition to Manner, Malm, and their allies, Finns were also attacked in the Finnish-led Karelian ASSR, a hub of Soviet Finns where Finnish was one of the ofcial languages. In a campaign against ‘Finnish nationalism’, Finns were displaced from leadership positions, and many Red Army ofcers and students were arrested, even though at this point the sentences were not severe and many were later set free (Rentola, 1994, pp. 31–32). The Soviet authorities had begun to systematically suspect ethnic minority populations, and especially Finns, Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, and other minorities connected to foreign countries were deemed hostile to the Soviet Union (Shearer, 2009, pp. 316–317).

Facing the Great Terror In the appropriations of artworks, irony becomes more pronounced as the purges commence in SSK. Chapter 7 chronicles the events from late 1935 to New Year's Day 1938 when NKVD agents arrest Aino Kuusinen in the early morning – carrying out arrests at night was a common intimidation tactic by Soviet authorities. Before the chapter is over, the majority of the graphic novel's cast have lost their lives or disappeared into the Gulag archipelago. Some, like Yrjö Sirola, die of natural causes, even though an arrest order was waiting for them. Others are taken into custody and sent to labour camps or executed. NKVD collected and manufactured evidence in interrogations, and those arrested often confessed to imaginary crimes and named others under torture or in hopes of getting released (see Rentola, 1994, pp. 54–60). As the events become more gruesome, the art appropriations turn more subversive and ironic. In the beginning of chapter 7, there is a page employing the design of the propaganda poster Under the Banner of Lenin for Socialist Construction (1930)8 by Gustav Klutsis,9 a Latvian constructivist artist who produced political art for the Soviet state (Figure 7.2). On the poster, giant heads of Lenin and Stalin are partially overlapping, with smaller photographs of factories and tractors on the sides illustrating the industrial expansion under the communist regime. In SSK, the exact same layout is used, but Lenin has been replaced with Kuusinen. Hovering ominously behind him is Stalin, as in the original. Instead of scenes of industrial progress, however, the faces of the two men are surrounded with prisoners toiling in labour camps on the lower side of the page and an execution site on the right. Armed NKVD ofcials are standing on the edge of a mass grave flled with bloodied bodies. The blood stands out dramatically due to the graphic novel's limited colour palette of just black, grey, and red, the same as Klutsis’ poster (Figure 7.3 A and B).

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Suomen suurin kommunisti, Matilainen, 2017, p. 196. And poster for ‘Under the Banner of Lenin for Socialist Construction’, Gustav Klutsis, 1930.

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FIGURE 7.3

Continued.

In the places where Klutsis' original design includes slogans about socialist construction under Lenin's banner, Matilainen quotes a speech Kuusinen gave as a Comintern leader to the NKVD. In the sinister passage, Kuusinen denounces as self-delusional ‘pacifst wusses’ the people who do not believe that ‘the redemption of humankind requires a sword’ (Matilainen, 2017, p. 196). He also states

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that people who end up in the hands of the brutal Soviet political police will later be thankful because the experience helps them return to a life of dignity. Historian Kimmo Rentola (1994, pp. 48–49) has described it as ‘the most hideous speech of [Kuusinen's] long career’ but notes that rather than stating his actual views, Kuusinen is speaking out of political expediency and fghting for his own life at the time. In SSK, these considerations are absent, and his comments merely refect the troubling views of Kuusinen, the comics character, a person increasingly devoid of morals. The narrative irony is not limited to the subversion of the propaganda poster to reveal the grim reality of state repression. Furthermore, it resonates with the fate of Gustav Klutsis who was a devoted communist but unfortunately of Latvian origin. Eight years after completing the poster, he was arrested and executed in the ‘The Latvian Operation’ by NKVD (Derkusova, 2012, p. 54). In these nationality operations, more than 200,000 people belonging to targeted minority populations – German, Polish, Latvian, and Finnish among others – were arrested and executed or deported (Shearer, 2009, 349). Exact numbers are not available, but it is estimated that at least every fourth and perhaps even every third Finn living in Karelia was arrested and convicted, with 85% of the sentences leading to execution (Kangaspuro, 2000, p. 352). According to Markku Kangaspuro, the events of 1937–1938 can be considered an ethnic cleansing (2000, p. 353). As the purges escalate in chapter 7, the graphic novel employs a whole-page composition with circular frames (Figure 7.4). Circular, overlapping frames present images from pivotal scenes in the purges against Finnish communists. On top, Otto Ville Kuusinen and Arvo Tuominen are discussing new orders by Stalin requiring ‘a couple thousand more arrests’ (Matilainen, 2017, p. 213). In other frames, these orders are implemented by NKVD ofcials. The three circles on the bottom show the surprised faces of Finnish communist leaders Tyyne Tokoi, Edvard Gylling, and Kustaa Rovio when the political police come for them. The text on the side describes the details of the crackdown in the Finnishled Karelian ASSR: the use of Finnish is completely prohibited; Finnish newspapers and printing houses are disbanded and the inhabitants of the Finnish–USSR border zone arrested (Figure 7.4 A and B). The dialogue about quotas of arrests does refect the reality of the years of the Great Terror, even though Kuusinen and Tuominen would not receive such orders. Rather, the purges were carried out by NKVD, and SKP had to provide it with information about its members that the secret police considered possible suspects. Regional NKVD ofces were given quotas for how many people should be executed and how many sentenced to forced labour throughout the country, and often the preliminary quotas were exceeded by a massive margin (Shearer, 2009, 345–349). The page design is again borrowed from a poster related to cinema, even though not a flm poster per se. The design mimics a Soviet propaganda poster by Yakov Guminer commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 1917 revolution.10

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FIGURE 7.4

Suomen suurin kommunisti, Matilainen, 2017, p. 213. And poster ‘1917’, Yakov Guminer, 1927.

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Continued.

Guminer's poster has a similar series of circles which show flm footage from Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov's silent movie October: Ten Days that Shook the World (1928). The centre shows Lenin, played by Vasili Nikandrov, encouraging the people to revolt against the Provisional Government and scenes in which Bolshevik troops storm the Winter Palace and take control of Petrograd.

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Both the original poster and Matilainen's comics page have the year in which the events are taking place – 1917 and 1937, respectively – placed at the bottom. The inscription of the years underlines the political shift that took place in the Soviet Union in the 20 years following the October Revolution from revolutionary optimism to Stalinist terror and paranoia. In addition to suspect social groups and minority populations, high levels of the Bolshevik Party and Red Army were ‘cleansed’, and numerous leading communists were put to death after show trials. Edvard Gylling and Kustaa Rovio, who are pictured on the page, belonged to the old guard of Finnish communists who knew Lenin personally. Rovio had helped him hide in Helsinki when he was escaping the persecution of the Russian government in 1917 prior to the October Revolution (Salomaa, 2001), and Lenin had himself invited Gylling to emigrate to Soviet Russia in 1920 to run the Karelian autonomous republic (Uola, 2001). After their displacement from leadership positions in Karelia, Gylling and Rovio lived in Moscow, where SKP tried to protect them (Rentola, 1994, p. 44), until they were arrested in July 1937 and found guilty of leading a counterrevolutionary terrorist organization and executed in 1938 (Salomaa, 2001). In the 1950s, the two men were posthumously rehabilitated as part of de-Stalinization eforts under Krushchev, as was Gustav Klutsis – it was acknowledged that they had been prosecuted without due cause and they were adjudged innocent. The revolution of 1917 under Lenin was an event of mythic proportions for the Soviet Union. As there was little footage of the events taking place around Petrograd, the scenes of Eisenstein and Aleksandrov's flm became iconic representations of the revolution (von Bagh, 1998, p. 130). Therefore, the visuals used in Guminer's poster are almost sacred, especially the fgure of Lenin who became extremely revered following his death. The subversive nature of the appropriations is more pronounced and the irony more poignant in this image. Lenin has been seen as the Russian leader who pushed other Bolsheviks to accept the right of Finland and other parts of the Russian Empire to secede. In SSK, the page describes a reversal of this internationalist policy as Finns are accused of nationalist plotting against the Soviet Union.

In Conclusion Suomen suurin kommunisti is a graphic novel that on the one hand treads a fne line between fction and nonfction and on the other employs intriguing narrative strategies such as art appropriations in order to illustrate the disillusionment of Soviet Finns. To some extent, the narrative acknowledges that its historical accuracy is under negotiation. In his opening and closing remarks, Matilainen states that the story ‘is not true but could be’ (Matilainen, 2017, p. 5) and that ‘factual errors can probably be found’ (p. 254). Furthermore, SSK goes through the Finnish communists' ferce debates on the correct interpretations of their movement's history in depth, since they were one of the ultimate reasons for the downfall of Kullervo Manner and Hanna Malm who are sympathetically

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portrayed in the graphic novel. During the Stalinist years, historical research was considered an ideological weapon. For communists, it was more important that history was useful for their political project, and issues of factuality came a distant second. This was the party line that Stalin himself laid down in his letter to the historical journal Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya in 1931, demanding that established party history is not open for questioning. The potential unreliability of graphic representations of historical events is thematized in an interesting way when SSK appropriates elements and designs of Soviet propaganda art. The works, ideas behind them, and techniques of Soviet avant-garde artists were groundbreaking and visionary in many respects, but as propaganda, their relationship to truthful information is ambiguous and the visual forms are loaded with political meanings. One of the most fascinating contradictions of the early Soviet years is how revolutionary, thought-provoking, and experimental art turned into a tool of the authoritarian leadership in its attempt to manufacture personality cults around Lenin and Stalin. On the pages of the graphic novel, appropriating political art and propaganda in scenes which reveal brutal political violence against innocent people creates peculiar narrative irony and highlights the fact that political ideals are quickly being abandoned. The purges, executions, and massacres of the Great Terror took place more than 80 years ago. However, the history is anything but settled, and Finnish victims have become part of what Mark Edele (2017) has called ‘Russia's history wars’. Even though the Soviet Union has not been in existence for three decades, the Russian ruling regime has grown increasingly concerned about how Soviet history is perceived and interpreted. In 2020, a historian who had worked to uncover Great Terror grave sites in Karelia received a prison sentence that is widely considered political (Human Rights Watch, 2020), and in 2019, a Kremlin-sponsored historical association conducted controversial excavations, aiming to play down the number of purge victims buried in Sandarmokh, a major mass burial site (Carroll, 2019). Expressing certain opinions about the Soviet past, especially in relation to World War II, was criminalized in 2014 (Edele, 2017, pp. 94–95). In Finland, there have been calls for a more thorough historical inquiry into the fates of Finns who emigrated to Soviet Russia and USSR during the interwar period. Time will tell whether such an efort will be undertaken and whether even an approximate count of victims of the Great Terror – or ‘Great Hate’ (‘Isoviha’) as the surviving Soviet Finns later dubbed the events – will ever be achieved. In this historic conversation, SSK is an exceptional work of fction or creative nonfction. Instead of only describing the horrors and suffering that took place in Finnish and other minority communities in interwar USSR, the graphic novel aspires to explain the political forces and tensions which caused them. At the same time, it demonstrates the expressive potential of comics, as it is difcult to imagine a similar narrative being realized in any other medium.

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Notes 1 I provide a rough translation in quotation marks for non-English titles and all quotations. 2 Both White factions did fght the revolutionary socialists, but the Finnish White Army fought for national sovereignty whereas the Russian Whites sought to restore the Russian Empire and, as a consequence, were hostile towards national separatism in Finland and the Baltic states. 3 The poster is in public domain and can be viewed online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yakov_Guminer_-_The_1st_of_May_poster.jpg 4 Currently, the painting dated 1922–1923 belongs to the collection of Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands. It is in the public domain in Russia and can be viewed online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:El_Lissitzky_I84363.jpg 5 Lissitzky's sketch dated 1919–1920 belongs to the collection of the Greek State Museum, and it can be viewed online at restart.greekmuseum.com 6 This is the end of the frst verse. In the English translation of ‘The Internationale’ by Charles Hope Kerr: ‘The earth shall rise on new foundations: / We have been nought, we shall be all!’ 7 A copy belongs to the collection of MoMA and can be viewed online at https://www .moma.org/collection/works/217943 8 One of the copies belongs to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and it can be viewed at https://www.moma.org/collection/works/6503 9 Or Gustavs Klucis in Latvian. 10 The poster is in public domain in Russia and can be viewed online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yakov_Guminer._1917_poster_(1927).jpg

References Carroll, O. (2019) ‘Digging up the past: how a Stalin-era mass grave became a battleground in Russia’s memory war’, 30 August, The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-stalin-terror-mass -grave-ussr-a9084336.html (Accessed: 15 November 2020). Derkusova, I. (2012) ‘The most recognized Latvian [?] artist in the world. The case of Gustavs Klucis (1895–1938)’, Studies on Art and Architecture 21(3–4), pp. 30–55. Drutt, M. (©2020) ‘El Lissitzky: Proun (Study for Proun S.K.)’, Guggenheim. Available at: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/2512 (Accessed: 15 November 2020). Edele, M. (2017) ‘Fighting Russia’s history wars. Vladimir Putin and the codifcation of World War II’, History & Memory, 29(2), pp. 90–124. doi: https://doi.org/10.2979/ histmemo.29.2.05. Golubev, A. & Takala, I. (2014) The search for a socialist el Dorado: Finnish immigration to Soviet Karelia from the United States and Canada in the 1930s. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Guerman, M. (1988) ‘Introduction’. Translated from the Russian by McKee, S. In Leniashin, V. (ed.) Soviet art 1920s–1930s: Russian Museum, Leningrad. Moscow: Sovietsky Khudozhnik & New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., pp. 7–14. Hodgson, J. (1967) Communism in Finland. A history and interpretation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hodgson, J. (1975) Otto Wille Kuusinen. Poliittinen elämäkerta. Translated from the English by Haapakoski, P. Helsinki: Tammi. Human Rights Watch (2020), ‘Russia: Rights researcher’s trial raises serious concerns’, Human Rights Watch, 21 July. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07 /21/russia-rights-researchers-trial-raises-serious-concerns (Accessed: 15 November 2020).

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Kamppinen, O. (2019) Palkkana pelko ja kuolema. Neuvosto-Karjalan suomalaiset rakentajat. Jyväskylä: Docendo. Kangaspuro, M. (2000) Neuvosto-Karjalan taistelu itsehallinnosta. Nationalismi ja suomalaiset punaiset Neuvostoliiton vallankäytössä 1920–1939. Helsinki: The Finnish Literature Society SKS. Katainen, E. (2001) ‘Malm, Hanna’ in National biography of Finland. Helsinki: The Finnish Literature Society SKS. Available at: http://urn.f/urn:nbn:f:sks-kbg-005249 (Accessed 15 November 2020). Kuusinen, A. (1972) Jumala syöksee enkelinsä. Muistelmat vuosilta 1919–1965. Translated from the German by Vuoristo, A.A. Helsinki: Otava. Lackman, M. (2017) Kullervo Manner. Kumouksellisen muotokuva. Somero: Amanita. Lehtinen, L. & Volanen R. (2018) 1918. Kuinka vallankumous levisi Suomeen. Helsinki: Otava. Matilainen, J. (2017) Suomen suurin kommunisti. Tampere: Suuri Kurpitsa. Mickwitz, N. (2016) Documentary comics. Graphic truth-telling in a skeptical age. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Milner, J. (1979) Russian revolutionary art. London: Oresko Books. Moszynska, A. (1990) Abstract art. London: Thames and Hudson. Mount, C. (1997) ‘Stenberg brothers. Constructing a revolution in Soviet design’ in Mount, C. (ed.) Stenberg brothers. Constructing a revolution in Soviet design. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, pp. 10–19. Rajala, P. and Rautkallio, H. (1994) Petturin testamentti. Arvo Poika Tuomisen todellinen elämä. Helsinki: WSOY. Rentola, K. (1994) Kenen joukoissa seisot? Suomalainen kommunismi ja sota 1937–1945. Helsinki: WSOY. Rentola, K. (2003) ‘Sitkeä välimies O.W. Kuusinen’ in Vihavainen, T. (ed.) O.W. Kuusinen ja Neuvostoliiton ideologinen kriisi vuosina 1957–64. Helsinki: The Finnish Literature Society SKS, pp. 57–73. Roselius, A. (2014) ‘The war of liberation, the civil guards and the Veterans' Union: Public memory in the interwar periodä’ in Tepora, T. & Roselius, A. (eds.) The Finnish Civil War 1918. History, Memory, Legacy. Leiden: Brill, pp. 297–330. Saarela, T. (2015) Finnish communism visited. Helsinki: The Finnish Society for Labour History. Saari, L. (1989) ‘Russian and Soviet avant-garde. In Avantgarde 1910–1930’ in Venäläistä ja neuvostoliittolaista taidetta. Rysk-sovjetisk konst. Russian-Soviet art. Turku: Turku Art Museum, pp. 30–41. Salomaa, M. (2001) ‘Rovio, Kustaa’ in National biography of Finland. Helsinki: The Finnish Literature Society SKS. Available at: http://urn.f/urn:nbn:f:sks-kbg-007444 (Accessed 15 November 2020). Shearer, D. (2009) Policing Stalin's socialism. Repression and social order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953. New Haven: Yale University Press. Stollery, M. (2013) ‘Man with the movie camera’ in Aitken, I. (ed.) The concise Routledge encyclopedia of the documentary flm. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 602–605. Tepora, T. (2014) ‘Changing perceptions of 1918: World War II and post-war rise of the left’ in Tepora, T. & Roselius, A. (eds.) The Finnish Civil War 1918. History, memory, legacy. Leiden: Brill, pp. 364–400. Tuominen, A. (1956a) Sirpin ja vasaran tie. Muistelmia. Helsinki: Tammi. Tuominen, A. (1956b) Kremlin kellot. Muistelmia vuosilta 1933–1939. Helsinki: Tammi. Tuominen, A. (1958) Maan alla ja päällä. Muistelmia vuosilta 1921–1933. Helsinki: Tammi. Tuominen, A. (1970) Myrskyn aikaa. Helsinki: Tammi.

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Uitto, A. (2013) Suomesyöjä Otto Wille Kuusinen. Helsinki: Paasilinna. Uola, M. (2001) ‘Gylling, Edvard’ in National biography of Finland. Helsinki: The Finnish Literature Society SKS. Available at: http://urn.f/urn:nbn:f:sks-kbg-005241 (Accessed 15 November 2020). Vihavainen, T. (2003) ‘Toimittajan alkusanat’ in Vihavainen, T. (ed.) O.W. Kuusinen ja Neuvostoliiton ideologinen kriisi vuosina 1957–64. Helsinki: The Finnish Literature Society SKS, pp. 7–9. von Bagh, P. (1998) Elokuvan historia. Helsinki: Otava. Westerlund, L. (2004) ‘Vuoden 1918 kokonaisluvut’ in Westerlund, L. (ed.) Sotaoloissa vuosina 1914–1922 surmansa saaneet. Tilastoraportti. Helsinki: The Finnish Government, pp. 53–72. Available at: http://urn.f/URN:ISBN:952-5354-52-0 (Accessed: 15 November 2020).

8 CAPITALISM, FREEDOM, FUTURE Picture of Polish Transformation in the Graphic Novel Osiedle Swoboda Wojciech Lewandowski

After 1989, political, social, and economic transformation reoriented Polish society towards a new reality founded on the ideas of neoliberalism. Further profound changes that have since occurred have transformed the Polish economy as well as infuenced other spheres of social and political life in the country. Although perceived by its proponents as a successful metamorphosis of a centrally planned economy into a free market one, as well as of an authoritarian political system into a democratic one, the transformation still calls for an in-depth evaluation, especially for an analysis of its social costs. The structural ‘shock therapy’ and subsequent restructuring of the economic system have resulted in social inequalities and more importantly spawned resentments among unprivileged groups as they have become victims of the transformation processes. Images of Poland’s post-communist transformation have become the subject of many popular culture texts, among them the graphic novel Osiedle Swoboda1 by writer and artist Michał Śledziński, originally serialized in Produkt magazine (1999–2004). It was followed by a sequel, Osiedle Swoboda 2, published between 2004 and 2006 as well as some spin-ofs and extra stories. All of them were later republished as collected editions. Osiedle Swoboda is a story about a group of friends living in a post-socialist neighbourhood and trying to reorient themselves in the new capitalist environment. Their story can thus be read as an expression of the social anxieties of a younger generation, concerned about their future in precarious times of social transformation. This chapter aims to present a picture of Poland’s transformation from the point of view of the younger generation of Poles born in the late 1970s. An indepth analysis and interpretation of the graphic novel’s text can provide us with an insight into generational hopes and survival strategies as well as how they view their possibilities for pursuing a career or self-development. Observation of the major characters’ social and economic environment can also enable us to see DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-10

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a (limited) picture of general changes in Polish society that have resulted from the ongoing transformation. Osiedle Swoboda can be read and interpreted from two complementary perspectives. The frst is the so-called new historicism, according to which a text of popular culture should be read in its social and cultural as well as political context. Proponents of this approach to studying cultural artefacts do not accept autonomous contents of a text, rather relating contents to other parallelly produced cultural forms (memoirs, diaries, anecdotes, fashion etc.), to the context of other codes of an era, its institutions and customs, so that questions can be asked on ideological problems of literature, e.g. its class identity, race and gender determination etc. according to the belief that ‘thought has its own history’. (Gazda, 2009, p. 436) The cultural and social conditions in which a particular text was published enable its interpretation. No text or work of art should be considered without connection to its cultural or historical context (see Montrose, 2004). Osiedle Swoboda can be seen as a pop culture document of changing times, as the author’s biography is to some extent parallel to the life of the characters he created. On the other hand, Osiedle Swoboda can be viewed as a popular culture text subversive of the hegemonic social and political ideology. Proponents of such analyses perceive popular culture as a battleground between dominant groups in a society and underprivileged ones. Evoking meanings in opposition to the hegemonic ones is an opportunity to challenge the ruling class dominance (see Fiske, 1995; Staniuk, 2006). When approached from the perspective of the British School of Cultural Studies, Michał Śledziński’s graphic novel presents alternative lifestyles to the ones advocated by the adherents of the neoliberal order. The comic’s image of the eponymous neighbourhood seems to evoke all the stereotypes associated with unsuccessful transformation in Poland. The analyzed graphic novel’s sympathetic portrayal of the struggle with a new reality and its underground aesthetics might justify reading it in the context of ideological struggles at the turn of the century. Osiedle Swoboda will be analyzed and interpreted using the aforementioned theoretical approaches in three steps. Firstly, I will focus on the shape of neoliberal transformation in Poland. Secondly, I will provide basic information about Osiedle Swoboda. Finally, I will look at the Polish neoliberal transformation through the lenses of the graphic novel. I will try to look at the confronting visions of (1) the idealized neoliberal order that was supposed to change Polish society for the better and (2) the perception of the generation that considers such a romanticized viewpoint as a fawed one. The experience of the negative efects of rapid economic changes led to the adoption of diferent approaches to cope with the accelerated evolution of the social, cultural, and political environment. What seems to be most interesting here is the portrait of a generation that was

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somehow able to fnd their own way of life against the pressure to adopt external infuences.

Neoliberal Transformation Neoliberalism, understood as a set of ideas shaping the economy and politics, attracts the attention of researchers from various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. Due to diferences in analytical perspectives, there is no commonly agreed-upon defnition of neoliberalism and no general agreement about the practical consequences of its application on social and political entities. However, more than 40 years of neoliberal hegemony in the Western world has resulted in many attempts at understanding the phenomenon from multiple angles (see for example Steger & Roy, 2010; Springer et al., 2016; Cahil et al., 2018) as well as critical perspectives on its nature and politics (Saad-Filho & Johnston, 2005; Micocci & Mario, 2018). According to David Harvey, neoliberalism is in the frst instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. (2005, p. 2) Steger and Roy perceive neoliberalism as a result of ‘three intertwined manifestations: (1) an ideology; (2) a mode of governance; (3) a policy package’ (2010, p. 11). Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy see neoliberalism as a set of new rules of functioning of capitalism, which afect the centre, the periphery, and the relationship between the two. Its main characteristics include: a new discipline of labour and management to the beneft of lenders and shareholders; the diminished intervention of the state concerning development and welfare; the dramatic growth of fnancial institutions; the implementation of new relationships between the fnancial and non-fnancial sectors, to the beneft of the former; a new legal stand in favour of mergers and acquisitions; the strengthening of central banks and the targeting of their activity toward price stability, and the new determination to drain the resources of the periphery toward the centre. (2005, p. 10) These characteristics are supplemented by globalization and the way it infuences the shaping of the contemporary division of labour and the evolution of the international free market.

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The origins of neoliberalism can be traced back to classical liberalism; however, as a form of political and economic ideology, it appeared as an answer to the economic gloom of the 1970s. It marked the end of the Keynesian economy that enabled the US American economy to recover from the Great Depression as well as the European economies after the havoc of the Second World War. Reaganomics and the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s seem to best illustrate neoliberal ideas in practice. Neoliberalism is a set of ideas and practices that favour the free market over state regulation. The state’s intervention, or even worse central planning, is perceived as a danger to the health of the economy, while the free market is seen as able to self-heal as well as self-coordinate. The hegemony of neoliberalism in the Western world, primarily in the United States, has resulted in a set of policies that favoured privatization, limitation of social services and welfare programs, preferences for transnational corporations, a fexible labour market, and reductions in labour costs. The latter was aimed at ‘protecting’ workplaces against the relocation of production to cheaper locations such as China or India. The neoliberal model has also proliferated in Western Europe, but the pre-existing welfare systems reduced its impact, at least at the beginning. The situation was quite diferent in the Eastern European countries that in the 1990s had to completely transform their centrally planned economies into the free market ones (Lewandowski, 2015, pp. 63–64). Although, in the period of transformation in the 1990s, neoliberal economy was a relatively new phenomenon for Eastern European countries, they had to adopt it as a prerequisite for joining Western political structures. Moreover, they had no competing vision of capitalism readily available. As Dale and Fabry have argued, in post-socialist countries there were already some elements of organizational culture, like performance metrics, that are inherent to the neoliberal model developed before the beginning of the transformation (from the 1960s with the culmination in the 1980s). They have also noted that ‘powerful players, including company directors, functionaries and economists, had already reoriented towards liberal capitalism’ (2018, p. 236). The 1990 ‘Sachs-Balcerowicz plan’ for Poland’s transition from state ownership and a planned economy to a capitalist market economy was, and remains, the symbol of Polish transformation pursued in the form of an economic ‘shock therapy’. The neoliberal transformation was advertised as a political and cultural, but also aesthetic, change. It was advocated as the modernization of a post-communist society into a democratic one with a set of political and social institutions responsible for a successful transition. The transformation was also presented as a prerequisite to Poland’s so-called return to Europe. Such arguments were augmented by the negotiations with the European Union (EU) and the resulting Polish membership therein. Economic liberalization was one of the conditions for EU membership, supported by Brussels with rich development programmes (Dale & Fabry, 2018, pp. 238–239; for examples of pro-transformation advocacy strategies, see Charkiewicz, 2007, pp. 26–44).

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Polish political elites and media widely supported the program. They manufactured consent about the necessity of radical metamorphosis of the country. There seemed to be no real alternative to the severe therapy ordered by international institutions, organizations, and corporations in order to achieve such political goals as for example EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership. The new order was accepted as an axiom, its opponents were presented as socialists or even communists, and their views were ridiculed and deprecated (Charkiewicz, 2007, pp. 60–63; Kurowicki, 2013, pp. 102–107). In the beginning, as Stanisław Filipowicz has argued, everything seemed so very simple; self-regulation entered Polish politics. It was concerned with the economy and politics: the free market and a selfgoverning republic. These catchwords sounded promising and convincing. Market self-regulation and the breath of freedom which would release the energy of civil activity were to become the vehicles of historic change. (2014, p. 10) However, successful as the transformation processes generally were, they also resulted in a plethora of social problems (Kuźniar, 2019, pp. 341–346). The results of ‘shock therapy’ afected many sectors of an economy that was not prepared properly for the competitive capitalist market. Restructuring and privatization brought about shutdowns of previously prosperous companies (Klementewicz, 2019, pp. 164–171) with an attendant rise of unemployment as a result. Beata Ujda lists the following as being among the main social consequences (or as she brands them, ‘costs’) of transformation in Poland: mass unemployment, visible income gaps, pauperization of a part of the society, problems with the organization of social services as well as the accrual of social pathologies, especially delinquency and corruption (1999, p. 30). The new neoliberal order’s emphasis on privatization and preference for individuals or companies able to prosper on the free market resulted in rising social tensions that created a background for the development of populist tendencies in Poland as well as elsewhere in Eastern Europe (Dale & Fabry, 2018, pp. 242–243). The difcult situation in the labour market afected young people at the entry level. Pressure on labour market fexibility resulted in a lack of stable jobs for (mostly, but not exclusively) the younger generation. This led to the birth of the new social class of the ‘precariat’, a term popularized by Guy Standing. According to him the precariat consists of people who lack the seven forms of labour-related security, (…) that social democrats, labour parties and trades unions pursued as their ‘industrial citizenship’ agenda after the Second World War, for the working class or industrial proletariat. Not all those in the precariat would value all seven forms of security, but they fare badly in all respects. (2011, pp. 10–11)2

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The new class cuts through classical social stratifcation as almost anyone can become a member due to the instability of their life and employment conditions. Uncertainty resulting from the operations of mechanisms outside of individuals’ control that characterizes the precariat forces people to undertake odd, precarious, and mostly unsatisfactory jobs. That might infuence the values, lifestyles, and life choices of the members of the precariat. For example, working conditions and low wages result in frequent and often unnoticed fuctuations in employment, with employees feeling no loyalty to their places of work. That might become dangerous for the stability of the capitalist system in the long run.

Osiedle Swoboda Osiedle Swoboda is a clear example of popular culture’s potential to engage in current social and political discourses. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it encapsulated the fear of various social groups, especially the younger generation, of the changes that took place in the 1990s and at the beginning of the twentyfrst century. Before looking at the picture of the Polish transformation it presents, an introduction to the stories and its author is necessary. The graphic novel Osiedle Swoboda was created by the writer and artist Michał Śledziński. He was born in 1978 in Bydgoszcz and lived in the city’s Szwederowo neighbourhood, which became an inspiration for the neighbourhood portrayed in the graphic novel. He lacks formal artistic education other than graduating from a Secondary School of Fine Arts in Bydgoszcz. He twice attempted to formally study art but decided to drop his studies as he felt he did not need them to pursue his artistic goals (Śledziński & Frąckiewicz, 2012, pp. 142–145; Węcławek, 2012, p. 21). He is the author of several acclaimed comics and graphic novels like Na szybko spisane (three volumes, 2007–2017), Wartości rodzinne (four volumes, 2008–2010), and Czerwony Pingwin musi umrzeć! (two volumes, 2013– 2020) among many, which positions him as a ‘living legend’ or ‘celebrity’ of Polish comics (Śledziński & Siromski, 2012, p. 6). Śledziński’s importance for the development of contemporary Polish comics was symbolically emphasized by a whole issue of the Polish magazine Zeszyty komiksowe being devoted to the analysis of his works. Osiedle Swoboda is probably the best known of all his works, and it has earned a cult status among comic book fans. It can be read through the prism of the author’s biography.3 It can also be treated as a visual, although spiced-up, record of a changing social and political environment as perceived through the eyes of a relatively young person. Or it can be considered a socially engaged text of popular culture, critical of the burden of the transformation on the unprivileged. During a 2018 roundtable discussion about comics as an art form, Śledziński was asked if Osiedle Swoboda was a socially engaged comic resulting from his being bent out of shape about reality. He replied that ‘it resulted from being

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naturally engaged in reality – it can be interpreted as engaged comics in this sense’ (Kołomycka et al., 2018, p. 210). Apart from creating comics somehow critical to the social and political environment, Śledziński rather kept himself away from politics. He is a member of the Polish left-wing Razem Party but, as he mentioned in an interview, had not collected his party membership card (Śledziński & Czyż, 2017). Osiedle Swoboda was originally serialized in the comic magazine Produkt published between 1999 and 2004. Michał Śledziński was its founder and editor-inchief. Over Produkt’s fve years of existence, 23 issues were published featuring, next to Osiedle Swoboda, other comics such as Wilq by Bartosz Minkiewicz and Tomasz Minkiewicz, Jeż Jerzy by Rafał Skarżycki and Tomasz Leśniak, and Likwidator by Ryszard Dąbrowski. The magazine also published information about other forms of popular culture. Produkt was also open for debuting writers and artists (Tkaczyk, 2012, pp. 38–40). After the publication of Produkt was discontinued, Osiedle Swoboda returned as a series of six standalone issues published between 2004 and 2006. Both series were later republished as collected editions: Osiedle Swoboda (2010) and Osiedle Swoboda 2 (2017). Due to the popularity of Osiedle Swoboda, Michał Śledziński has occasionally returned to it with extra and spin-of stories that have been collected in two volumes: Osiedle Swoboda. Niedźwiedź (2019) illustrated by Krzysztof Kochański and Osiedle Swoboda. Centrum (2019). The afterword of the latter announces Osiedle Swoboda 3, suggesting that more is to come. Rumours have also circulated about some initial work being done on a movie based on the ideas and characters from the comic book (Śledziński & Przybyszewski, 2013; Śledziński & Czyż, 2017). Before looking at the way Osiedle Swoboda portraits the Polish transformation and its consequences, it is worth looking at the story itself. As Michał Śledziński put it on his webpage, it ‘is all about beer, weed and friendship’ (Śledziński, n.d.). This short summary encapsulates the contents of the comic book well. Osiedle Swoboda is a rather loose set of stories, shorter and longer, about a group of friends (Smutny, Wiraż, Niedźwiedź, Szopa, and Kundzio) living in the eponymous neighbourhood. They spend most of their time hanging out, talking about their lives, aspirations, and problems. Occasionally they must save Swoboda from a variety of dangers. However, most of the stories depict the day-to-day struggles of major characters trying to make a living or just spend some time doing nothing. Osiedle Swoboda might be seen as a graphic expression of personal nostalgia for the carefree time of youth, when life was (ostensibly) simpler. It might also be perceived as a longing for the times when technology did not prevent individuals from experiencing life. Adulthood, with all the responsibilities associated with it, changes individuals and triggers idealization of the past. Asked by Sebastian Frąckiewicz, if Osiedle Swoboda is rooted in some kind of nostalgia, Michał Śledziński replied that it is informed by a longing

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for being carefree, for the times no one would shoo you away from the bench, there were no gated communities. My characters are a mix of personalities of my classmates from art school and my mates from Szwederowo. This is a cocktail. (Śledziński & Frąckiewicz, 2012, pp. 155–156)4 Planned as a satirical story, it turned out to be something more, especially in the context of social meaning. Over three years – as Mariusz Czubaj put it – Osiedle Swoboda by Michał Śledziński, called ‘Śledź’ (meaning ‘herring’) among comic people, grew to count more than ten parts and about 200 pages. Surprisingly, also for the author himself, who admitted he had been aiming at nothing more than drawing funny, unpretentious tales, Osiedle Swoboda turned out to be a serious, sometimes gloomy story of Poland after transformation (2007, p. 98). This is what occasionally happens within the realm of popular culture, when a text of an originally satirical nature captures general realities in a very accurate way and speaks to the hearts of people. Osiedle Swoboda actually brings out what has not been allowed into the mainstream, dominant (political, media, even artistic) discourses for years: how hopeless and awkward some people felt over the critical transformation period and beyond. What is even more impactful is that we fnally know, from recent sociological analyses (Gdula, 2017), how this miserable condition within an allegedly happy modernized society slowly but directly led Polish people to elect a populist and authoritarian party, as soon as it has openly recognized their sufering and advocated for their dignity.

From Capitalism to Freedom? Neoliberal capitalism infuenced political and social life not only on the state level. It also deeply infuenced local communities that had to reorganize as a reaction to the demands of new realities. Osiedle Swoboda depicts Polish transformation on the microscale of a local community embodied by the eponymous neighbourhood. Piotr Klonowski notices that in doing so, Michał Śledziński Undoubtedly (…) references elements of reality characteristic of Poland back then, such as: chavs training in gym, elderly devotees, groups of mates sitting on benches outside of blocks of fats. We can believe in mutual antagonisms between these groups. The issues of unemployment, soft drugs trading, laicisation of youth are still visible today. (2014, p. 66) Looking at Osiedle Swoboda from that angle we can identify a set of social changes that afected people during the transformation and to what extent their mentality was able to adapt to the new realities.

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Post-socialist neighbourhoods in the big cities flled with high-rise blocks of fats were perceived through a set of stereotypes in the 1990s and 2000s. The stereotypes stemmed from the conviction that the neighbourhoods were bound to degrade under the capitalist economy as similar neighbourhoods in Western Europe had. They were supposed to become ghettos inhabited by people from the lower rungs of the social structure (Szafrańska 2015, pp. 47–48). However, these presumptions turned out to be false, and such neighbourhoods did not become dangerous places after all, with a high crime rate, populated by potential delinquents, as some popular culture text would suggest. As Ewa Szafrańska shows, at the beginning of the transformation, such neighbourhoods were inhabited by residents of similar social status. In pre-1989 Poland there was a limited free real estate market, and a decision about assigning a fat to a family was dependent on a set of administrative procedures. Blocks were inhabited according to the socialist state’s belief in the necessity of mixing residents from diferent social classes (Szafrańska, 2015, pp. 46, 49–55). Apart from that, some neighbourhoods were built specifcally to house workers of nearby heavy industry, as in the case of Nowa Huta in Cracow (see Stenning et al., 2010, pp. 13–19). These specifcs of the housing policies from before 1989 had an impact on how the transformation of the post-socialist neighbourhoods later took shape. Depictions of changes in these neighbourhoods as presented in Osiedle Swoboda are often in line with what has been noticed by researchers. The advanced age of a good part of the residents in the 1990s, to start with, was a result of policies that had preferred families with children, while assigning the fat a couple of decades before. For this reason, inhabitants of such neighbourhoods were ageing more or less at the same time (Szafrańska, 2015, pp. 60–61). Szopa, one of the graphic novel’s major characters, inherits a fat in a tenement house from his grandmother. Flats there are predominantly inhabited by older residents with their own set of well-established rules, traditions, and duties. One of them is an unspoken expectation that residents water a plant located in the common space. Unfortunately, the plant breaks while Szopa is watering it (Śledziński, 2010, pp. 186–187), which does not go unnoticed and unavenged. One day, upon returning to his fat Szopa sees a huge inscription on his door stating ‘We know. You murderer’ (Śledziński, 2010, pp. 194–195). However, age distribution changes over time in post-socialist neighbourhoods. This is a result of the succession of generations and inheriting of fats, as in the case of Szopa. The other factor is that fats in such neighbourhoods are relatively cheap on the real estate market, causing the younger generation to prefer them as their frst home, by either renting them or a purchase (Szafrańska, 2015, pp. 60–61). The characters Smutny and Kundzio in Osiedle Swoboda 2, for example, are renting their frst fat but are forced to leave it due to reasons discussed later in this chapter. One of the characteristics of Polish society is its strong adherence to religion, particularly the Catholic church. However, modes of religiosity and their strength vary over time. The changes are more visible among the younger

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generation, with a sharp decline among younger Poles identifying themselves as believers (the number of youth declaring themselves as non-believers doubled between 2005 and 2015; Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej, 2015, p. 2). Over time people also tend to have more individual approaches to religious practices and teachings (Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej, 2009, p. 18; Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej, 2015, pp. 7–9; see also Guzik & Marzęcki, 2018). The relation between the ‘religious practices’ of the younger generation and of the older one fnds its refection on the pages of Osiedle Swoboda. The topic was covered in the very frst story of Osiedle Swoboda, entitled ‘Matka Boska Extra Mocna’ [Holy Mother Extra Strong] (Śledziński, 2010, pp. 23–28).5 After a night of partying and hard-drinking, Smutny is forced to participate in the morning mass; he gives in to family pressure and decides to attend the service. During the mass he feels sick and decides to leave the church to vomit outside. The fnal panel of the story shows devotees praying to the image of the Holy Mother allegedly visible in Smutny’s vomit, a clear allusion to and ridicule of a superstitious facet of Polish religiosity, with many accounts of the Holy Mother’s or Jesus’ revelations in ordinary objects like window panes or walls (about that phenomenon see Dominik, 2002). Śledziński here satirizes what he views as Polish superfcial religiosity that focuses on the surface rather than on deep religious experience. Osiedle Swoboda also encapsulates the aforementioned changes in the modes of religiosity that is more declarative than associated with following a strict moral code. It also indicates the possibility of secularization as all major characters seem to be at odds with organized religion (for more about the nature of Polish religiosity see Mazurek, 2019). Intolerance is another facet of Polish religiosity or maybe even of the whole culture. In Osiedle Swoboda 2 Smutny and Kundzio, heterosexual fatmates, are forced to leave the rented apartment because they are accused of being homosexual. During a quarrel Niedźwiedź, who is their guest so often that he also practically lives there, calls them ‘faggots’. This is overheard by older tenants of the block, and a picket is organized to force the ‘immoral’ men to leave. They succumb to the pressures and move to a diferent fat (Śledziński, 2017, n.p.). This is a harsh commentary on the lack of tolerance for minorities even if the ‘threat’ is only illusory. Social diversity was, and to some extent still is, perceived as something imposed by external foreign forces and a threat to local identity and the axiological system. Approaches towards diverse groups in Poland change over time, but there is still much to do in order to create a comfortable environment for diferent minorities (see OECD, 2020). The neoliberal transformation is often perceived as a ‘rat race’. This term was coined to describe a pursuit of success at any cost and restless work. At the beginning of the story ‘Włoska Kapusta’ [Italian Cabbage], Michał Śledziński describes the nature of capitalist competition through the metaphor of getting on a crowded city bus (2010, pp. 31–34). A group of people anxiously wait at a bus stop, everyone hoping to get a seat, an extra reward for those best equipped. A

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ruthless race for the best place starts as soon as the bus arrives, without any rules or moral limitations. As a result, a small girl separated from her mother is left behind at the bus stop. Neoliberal capitalism is thus portrayed as an inhumane system where only the strong will survive. People unable to cope with the level of competition required by the system are going to lose, and according to neoliberal views, they are fully responsible for their own failure. The analogy of a ‘rat race’ is intensifed by Wiraż’s ‘live commentary’ on the situation. Wiraż, being the most verbally talented of the major characters, ofers a dynamic real-time account of the events. His style of reporting combines elements of documentary narrative with the emotionally charged style of sports commentators. ‘Here it is! Inevitably arriving like – Wiraż reports – A poo in a nappy! A ferce battle for seats begins! 3 … 2 … 1 … Looks like the babe with the kid doesn’t know the rules of the game’ (Śledziński, 2010, pp. 32–33). The next three panels are devoted to the picture of a mother fercely fghting to grab her daughter, so they could both travel safely on the bus. However, in a neoliberal society, as mentioned above, individuals incapable of taking care of their own businesses are left to themselves. Śledziński also touches on the topic of foreign infuence in ‘Włoska Kapusta’, perceived by many, especially social and cultural elites as well as the middle class, as the source of modernization of a backward post-socialist country. Smutny is asked by his mother to buy a small head of Savoy cabbage, called ‘Italian cabbage’ in Polish. She needs it in order to prepare typical Polish cabbage rolls. At the grocery store Smutny is confronted by other clients for this, to them, unacceptable choice. One of them, an elderly man shouts angrily at Smutny after learning the reason for buying the ‘foreign’ vegetable: ‘Haven’t I misheard? You need Italian cabbage for cabbage rolls, undoubtedly a traditional Polish dish? Would eyeties use Podlachian cheese or Krakowska sausage for their pizza?’ (Śledziński, 2010, pp. 42–43). This simple story works as a description of more general distrust to external infuences that might threaten local culture and traditions. Neoliberal transformation with its internationalization and patronizing overtones seems to be rejected at least by the older generation or the ones who have sufered from its efects. Still, many foreign infuences are sometimes desired and widely accepted by younger generations. All volumes of Osiedle Swoboda are flled with intertextual references to foreign 1990s and early 2000s popular culture. Indeed, as Piotr Klonowski notes, foreign popular culture permeates the aesthetical choices of the graphic novel’s protagonists. However, the presence of Western pop culture artefacts also visualizes the discrepancy between the centre and periphery (2014, pp. 66–69). Centre here is understood as a mythical West setting the trends with which Poland needs to catch up. The source of discrepancy, as Klonowski puts it, is the fact that the major characters of Osiedle Swoboda discuss this idealized popular culture among the ugliness of their post-socialist neighbourhood (2014, p. 68). Younger generation of Swoboda’s residents seems to be more willing to accept foreign infuences, although fltered at least to some extent through their

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cultural habitat, rather than the older generation more oriented towards protecting local culture, as illustrated by the cartoony ‘cabbage’ story. Mariusz Czubaj claims that the main characters of Osiedle Swoboda are a new kind of heroes in Polish culture: ‘Here they are, not so much opponents, not so much against anything, rather indiferent, living next to reality, not overly interested with the world outside the neighbourhood’ (2007, p. 103). They live from day to day; they lack the generational experience that could form them. They spend time together, hanging around, smoking weed, and having fun, although they seem to be aware that the future holds nothing compelling for them. Czubaj associates abnegation culture (kultura abnegacji) with this approach, and it might be one of the strategies to deal with the fast-changing world. Their values, however, as expressed in their dialogues through the whole narrative, seem to be similar to those cherished by Polish youth: family and children, love and friendship, and interesting work. It is also worth noting that values connected with professional careers and high social positions were gradually becoming less important throughout the 1990s (see Fatyga, 2009, pp. 28–30). Czubaj’s claim opens up another possible reading of Osiedle Swoboda. The fact that the life perspectives of the graphic novel’s protagonists seem to be limited to their neighbourhood, and the mythical centre of the city seems to be out of reach, is of utter importance. This might be read as a metaphor for the peripheral status of Poland in the global arena. The centre of the city equals Western Europe, with its imagined wealth to which Poland is fruitlessly aspiring. This seems to be expressed in Osiedle Swoboda 2, when Szopa is ordered to visit the city’s centre in order to protect himself from the revenge of a drug dealer. The person telling him this adds a bit of commentary: ‘Fucking city center … You take half a day on the bus and then you walk around screwing up your eyes, cause the sun refections in the houses of glass dazzle you. I dooon’t like it’ (Śledziński, 2017, n.p.). The centre is associated here with skyscrapers and houses of glass, symbolizing the dream of a better future, a symbol of wealth at which Poland was metaphorically aiming. It was confronted with the image of a folksy, but somehow comfortable, periphery, in that case Swoboda neighbourhood. Osiedle Swoboda can also be read in the light of cultural studies as a text critical of dominant social and political practices. The subversive potential of the series is clear, when it alludes to the nature of political power and to connections between members of local elites, a recurring topic in Osiedle Swoboda 2. Besides, Śledziński’s comic can also be read as critical of the labour market tendencies of neoliberal capitalism, with its preference for employees’ fexibility and willingness to accept low-paying jobs and uncertainty of employment. In Osiedle Swoboda 2, Śledziński pictures the alliance between local political elites, clergy ofcials, and organized crime. These actors plan to take over the distribution of drugs in the neighbourhood by the elimination of current weed dealers (Śledziński, 2017, n.p.). This plot is continued throughout the whole volume as an allusion to popular perceptions about suspiciously fast careers made by people able to take advantage of the opportunities due to the chaotic nature of

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the economic changes and their personal political connections. Privatization was also associated with the sell-out of national property, theft, corruption, or the risk of unemployment (Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej, 2009, pp. 8–10). Taking over of the neighbourhood by the modern and more efcient gang might also be read as an allusion to the state property takeovers during the privatization era in the 1990s, perceived as a suspicious result of transformation processes and resulting in the decrease of positive opinions about the privatization itself (Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej, 2000, pp. 1–3). The Osiedle Swoboda series also touches on commonly felt disapproval of capitalist practices in the new Polish free market economy, fuelled by the neoliberal expectation of unlimited fexibility in employees. The series’ protagonists have difculties fnding satisfying and stable jobs. They ft very well into Guy Standing’s defnition of the precariat. Throughout the graphic novel they undertake various jobs, usually with terrible results. Smutny and Niedźwiedź have a good job at a mortuary, but they lose it when Smutny accidentally burns a corpse they were supposed to take care of (Śledziński, 2010, pp. 45–47). Niedźwiedź later works dressed as a giant penguin mascot. He tries to avoid his friends seeing him in the outft. While hiding, he meets another person also working as mascot, who invites him to a meeting of a society of people in the mascotting profession, who plan to take over the world (Śledziński, 2010, pp. 150–165). On another occasion Niedźwiedź and Smutny fnd a job that seems to be quite easy but turns out to be voiceover dubbing a gay sadomasochistic pornographic flm (Śledziński, 2010, pp. 189–192). They also try a career as Santa Claus in the story ‘Santa Needs You’ (Śledziński 2010, pp. 233–244). Kundzio on the other hand happens to be quite successful as his work as a writer of romantic stories for women’s magazines afords him an acceptable standard of living (Śledziński, 2017, n.p.). Niedźwiedź also fnally fnds a satisfying job in the demolition business that suits his strength and temperament (Śledziński & Kochański, 2019, pp. 5–16). Nevertheless, this search for satisfying jobs well illustrates the status of a young person entering the labour market with dreams of fulflling employment who ends up with odd and badly paid jobs time after time. However, the protagonists of the story are able to lead relatively happy and valuable lives despite, or maybe because of, their lack of professional success as measured by the neoliberal ‘rat race’, as the concept of abnegation culture mentioned above suggests. The fnal instalment of Osiedle Swoboda, from 2019, features a story indicative of the changes taking place in a more contemporary time frame than that of the original graphic novel. ‘Tydzień SKS’ [A Week of SKS] focuses on minor characters from the series. Two chavs, Kufaj and Sztama, both football hooligans and admirers of the local sports club Swoboda Klub Sportowy are asked to train a youth team of the revived club. The local community dominated by the new middle-class residents of the Swoboda neighbourhood plans to clean a local park (Park Trzech Stawów) and to train young footballers. An area that has previously been forgotten by the decent residents of Swoboda and reluctantly given up to chavs and hooligans is going to be returned to its proper owners. Fulflment of

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that ambitious plan also requires putting an end to the ‘sacred’ tradition of brutal fghts with the fans of competing local team BKS. The fnal confrontation between the teams’ supporters, facilitated by new residents, leads to an end of the ‘eternal’ confict between SKS and BKS hooligans. Now, the rivalry between the clubs takes place on the football pitch, where young generations of new residents compete. They are trained by the resocialized chavs, which results in a certain level of brutality on the football pitch, which seems to echo conficts from the past (Śledziński, 2019, pp. 7–38). The story shows how changes in the demographics of the post-socialist neighbourhood and their modernization can be infuenced by an infux of middle-class residents and the values they bring with them. They are also able to transform stereotypical chavs (on the life of such characters in Polish popular culture see: Zadurska, 2013) into good local citizens using their attachment to certain local traditions. The author of Osiedle Swoboda also seems to perceive social and demographic changes that occurred in post-socialist neighbourhoods in many Polish cities. In one interview, Śledziński mentions that ‘part of this generation left. I can sense it when I visit my parents’ neighbourhood. All these chavs – you know who I’m talking about – are gone. Everything around is gated too’ (Śledziński & Przybyszewski, 2013). The stories collected in Osiedle Swoboda. Centrum take place a few years after the events depicted in Osiedle Swoboda 2, giving readers a glimpse at the more mature side of the well-known characters. Kundzio is a part of the team working on a potentially fnancially rewarding media project (Śledziński, 2019, pp. 42–64). Niedźwiedź is now a family man running his own business and living in Dzielnica Południe, a place represented as a middleclass residential area (Śledziński, 2019, pp. 79, 83). They have found their place in the new reality, but they still look with nostalgia to the time spent at the old Swoboda.

Conclusion Rapid political, social, and economic transformation was a challenge for postsocialist Poland. The process of reshaping the Polish political system proved to be relatively quick and trouble-free. But the successful transition from a centrally planned economy to a capitalist free market organized by an ideological apparatus of neoliberalism has resulted in serious social consequences. The costs of this transformation were unequally distributed, casting a shadow over the whole process of change. The graphic novel Osiedle Swoboda presents a critical and to some extent documentary account of the aforementioned transformation. It is focused on portraying the life of the eponymous fctional post-socialist neighbourhood inspired by the author’s own childhood and youth spent at Szwederowo in Bydgoszcz. Śledziński has encapsulated the transformation of Poland by using images deeply rooted in the culture of the times as well as in the social and historical context he worked in. This deep-rootedness of Osiedle Swoboda and its sequels makes it

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difcult to understand it without knowing the detailed realities that inspired it. Locality is its strength but at the same time might make this text inaccessible for non-Polish readers, lacking that particular local experience (Bazylewicz & Jankowski, 2012, p. 56). Regardless of the difculty this may pose for non-Polish readers, Osiedle Swoboda encapsulates major fears and hopes felt in Polish society at the time of its transformation. Focused on the experience of youths, it delivers a wider picture of that historical moment. It also challenges the ideological demands of the new economic and social system by showing what it means to live on its outskirts and raises the questions of Poland’s peripheral geopolitical status and its aspiration to align with the centres of the Western world. However, Osiedle Swoboda as a depiction of society subversively points out the importance of community values over the individualism central to the neoliberal worldview. The fnal instalment of the series suggests a reconciliation with neoliberal realities by at least some of the protagonists, but even they still seem to cherish values inherited from Swoboda.

Notes 1 The title Osiedle Swoboda can be translated as The Swoboda Neighbourhood, while Michał Śledziński’s webpage provides a diferent translation: The Liberty Estate (Śledziński, n.d.). I will use the original Polish title throughout the whole text of this chapter. Swoboda is an ‘ofcial name’ that means ‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’, and therefore I think that it should remain without translation. The word neighbourhood, in my opinion, better describes the nature and characteristics of a typical post-socialist wielka płyta residential area – a functionally mapped out group of square-shaped multi-apartment buildings, usually quite high and often ugly, built of huge, prefabricated units. I follow here the usage of the term by the authors of Domesticating Neo-Liberalism: Spaces of Economic Practice and Social Reproduction in PostSocialist Cities (Stenning et al., 2010). I also consider Osiedle Swoboda as a graphic novel, although it was originally published in a serialized form, because when published as a collected edition, it presents a comprehensive story and a vision of the diegetic world. 2 Forms of labour-related security mentioned by Guy Standing include labour market security, employment security, job security, work security, skill reproduction security, income security, and representation security (2011, p. 10, table). 3 Tomasz Pstrągowski points out the importance of Śledziński’s writings for the development of Polish biographical comics (2015, pp. 37–39). 4 Spending time on benches located in the neighbourhood was a typical pattern of hanging-out by the youth in the 1990s, often associated with a sense of ownership of a specifc social space – everyone around would know who was informally entitled to a particular bench. Gated communities were perceived as a symbol of higher social status as the prices of fats therein were signifcantly higher, keeping residents from lower classes out of there. They were taking away a considerable share of public space restricting mobility. Supposedly they were ofering more security due to restricted access. At the same time, they were criticized for the ghettoization of privileged classes (see Łątkowska, 2018, pp. 256–258; Milert, 2021). 5 The title seems to be a reference to the popular brand of cigarettes ‘Extra mocne’ that were supposed to be very strong.

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Śledziński, M. (2019) Osiedle Swoboda. Centrum. Warszawa: Kultura Gniewu. Śledziński, M. and Kochański, K. (2019) Osiedle Swoboda. Niedźwiedź. Warszawa: Kultura Gniewu. Śledziński, M. and Czyż, R. (2017) ‘Michał ‘Śledziu’ Śledziński: 18 lat po debiucie komiksu ‘Osiedle Swoboda’ frustruje mnie już tylko polityka [ROZMOWA]’, Wyborcza.pl. Available at: https://wyborcza.pl/7,75517,21836651,michal-sledziu -sledzinski-18-lat-po-debiucie-komiksu-osiedle.html (Accessed 10 Mar 2020). Śledziński, M. and Frąckiewicz, S. (2012) ‘Brakuje mi luzu lat 90. Rozmowa z Michałem Śledzińskim’, in Frąckiewicz, S. Wyjście z getta. Rozmowy o kulturze komiksowej w Polsce. Warszawa: 4000 Malarzy, pp. 138–168. Śledziński, M. and Przybyszewski, B. (2013) ‘Mam w sobie dziada z wąsem (wywiad z Michałem ‘Śledziem’ Śledzińskim)’, Popmoderna. Available at: http://popmoderna .pl/mam-w-sobie-dziada-z-wasem-wywiad-z-michalem-sledziem-sledzinskim/ (Accessed 20 Mar 2020). Śledziński, M. and Siromski, M. (2012) ‘Plansza to moje powietrze’, Zeszyty Komiksowe, 14, pp. 6–15. Tkaczyk, W. (2012) ‘Człowiek produktywny’, Zeszyty Komiksowe, 14, pp. 38–40. Węcławek, D. (2012) ‘Śledziu. Ogólna charakterystyka postaci’, Zeszyty Komiksowe, 14, pp. 18–21. Ujda, B. (1999) ‘Społeczne koszty transformacji systemowej w Polsce’, Acta Scientifca Academiae Ostroviensis, 3, pp. 29–44. Zadurska, O. (2013) ‘(Pop)kulturowa kariera bohatera w dresie. Rekonesans’, Literatura i Kultura Popularna, XIX, pp. 113–125.

9 DISSENT AND RESISTANCE IN CONTEMPORARY PORTUGUESE COMICS The Case of Buraco #4 and Porto’s Es.Col.A. Movement Pedro Moura As published texts, comics are intrinsic to the public sphere, participating in the social discourse about current events and taking positions in relation to policies, happenings, or discussions taking place within the societal circles to which a given text belongs, upon which it acts and, ultimately, it helps to construct. In some countries, like Portugal, comics do not have the same autonomous, auratic quality that literature, for instance, has. But even if they are not viewed as a powerful, legitimate form of culture, or even an equally poised medium for such public sphere discussions, they do nonetheless participate. Comics have responded to topics of urgent social importance since their inception, especially if we take into account their long-standing intimate relationship with the illustrated press. If we follow David Kunzle’s account and historical perspective, one possible origin for comics is Francis Barlow’s 1682 A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot, which would bring a plethora of commanding issues to the fore, not the least the argument that comics were used, efectively, to disseminate what we today call ‘fake news’. The present chapter will discuss an independent, small-press publication called Buraco or, to be more precise, its fourth issue. Having started as a comics magazine, this particular issue mixed many materials, and it exclusively addressed an Occupy-like movement that took place in 2012 in the city of Porto, Portugal. The aim of this chapter is to understand how comics are able to rethink and contribute towards political discourse by opening up new spaces of visibility and agency for those who had none. Moreover, by engaging in semi-fctive storylines, metaphorical and humorous deconstructions of the addressed events, they do not necessarily engage with the expected or pre-appointed rules of those discourses. These texts act towards that which Jacques Rancière calls a new distribution of the sensible (2010, p. 36). For the French philosopher, there is a clear distinction DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-11

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between politics as performed by the class of people who are involved in parties, who are elected, hold ofce, and exercise power institutionally, and politics as manifested in everyday life. For the frst he uses the term la politique politicienne, or ‘politician’s politics’, and even sardonically, la police. This has to do with the acquisition, maintenance, and exercise of power. The second he sees as la politique proper, which is related to the conquest of the right of expression, more often than not precisely by those who do not possess it. To do so, I have to frst briefy introduce the role of comics in this country as well as within the larger, global, comics world, and then introduce the occupying movement before moving on to the texts themselves.

Portuguese Comics on the Global Stage: A Semi-peripheral Role Sometimes, in response to an attempt to introduce someone to the Portuguese comics scene, I am asked the question: what is the ‘Portuguese Maus’? Who is the ‘Portuguese Marjane Satrapi’? The problem with these questions is not that I am unable to answer or that the answer is that ‘there isn’t any’. The problem is that the question creates an idea of a singular model of appreciation and understanding which is imposed on whatever tradition of comics-making comes to the fore, irrespective of its own particular history, social development, political scope, and economic capabilities, in short, a cultural imperialism insensitive to local specifcities. Portugal is a relatively small country within the European context, and despite its historical role in the emergence of the contemporary socio-political environment, via the opening of global markets in the sixteenth century, imperialist-colonialist rule and the homogenization of Western culture throughout the planet, it reverted quickly to a secondary role. Even within its integration into the European Union, the distribution of economic-political clout is not equitable, as one can illustrate through a long quote from Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos: There is no doubt that [Portugal’s] integration in the European Union has dramatically changed Portuguese society and, in most cases, it has been a positive change, a change for the better. However, I think that up until now those changes have been conceived less as a part of a thorough project that has been adopted than as the auspicious results of new routines that have been imposed from without. It is as if Portugal is in the European project, but it is not an active part of the European project yet. (…) [Portugal takes the role] of the guest, not that of the host. (2011, pp. 52–53, my translation) By stripping the very conditions of the possibility of agency (a ‘host’, in Santos’ metaphor), and solely ofering the possibility of following pre-existing conditions

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and roles (as a ‘guest’), it may be difcult to pay attention to the specifcities of any given comics-making place. Allow us a very quick historical description of the history of Portuguese comics. How do Portuguese comics fare within the so-called global scene? Like most other European comics-making traditions, they emerged from the illustrated pages of the nineteenth-century press. But Portugal’s comics history is largely made up by individual authors rather than being composed of larger stylistic schools. By being a smaller, poorer country, beset by debilitating political crises – the Monarchy ended in 1910, followed by a feeble Republic, and in 1926 a military coup preceded what would be a right-wing dictatorship that would last until 1974 – it is understandable that the press and, concomitantly, comics would not be as healthy, varied, and economically viable an industry as it has been in more potent economic-cultural centres such as the so-called Franco-Belgian axis (two comics-producing countries that have a complicated centre/periphery relationship with one another), the United States, and Japan. These three poles remain, to this day, the major de facto centres when discussing comics, no matter how international they may be. Everything else is measured relative to them, in varied degrees of ascribed importance. Moreover, it is in translation through these centres that the negotiation of lesser-known traditions is made: for instance, if Korean comics, manhwa, are considered today as a separate tradition from Japanese manga, it’s principally thanks to French and English translations, even though other countries may also translate materials from that or other countries, even before the centres do. But English and French language books will be sold beyond their original national borders at levels undreamed by other languages. Without confating language and countries (Brazil produces many comics, but their circulation is quite diferent and wholly independent from that of Portugal’s or Mozambique’s comics scenes, even though one might study the intersections between them), some languages allow for a broader circulation than others. Unsurprisingly, with the lack of broader translations into other languages (there are a few, isolated examples of books translated into French, Italian, Polish, Spanish, and a handful of Portuguese authors being published abroad), Portuguese comics remain at the periphery. World comics reception in Portugal is, nonetheless, or because of its peripheral position, incredibly varied and broad: books are imported from multiple sources, countries, and in diferent languages, and readers are quite knowledgeable about them. It is no doubt possible to identify diferent sources of inspiration depending on the generation of authors under discussion, but generally speaking it’s safe to say that most Portuguese comics authors are familiar with multiple traditions. Whether through translated materials (into Portuguese or otherwise) or original editions, Portuguese readers have had access to and are knowledgeable about Franco-Belgian, British, American, Spanish, Italian, Argentinian, and, of course, Brazilian comics, as well as other traditions. This means that it is somewhat difcult to reduce ‘Portuguese comics’ into a handful of characteristics.

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According to Jean-Marie Klinkenberg and Benoît Denis’ sociological approach to literature, known as the ‘gravitational theory’, we can understand comics as a ‘weak institution’ in the sense that, as opposed to the system of literature, it is less strongly coded and has fewer implicit rules (2005, pp. 29–30; my translation, as throughout). When Klinkenberg and Denis write that ‘“small literatures” do not have the means to exist without a reference to the grander literary ensembles that are closest to them and to whose infuence they have always been subjected’ (p. 24), it is not difcult to understand how such a marginal production as ‘Portuguese comics’ relates to more well-known centres of production, such as the United States or France. Franco Moretti’s criticisms of Immanuel Wallerstein’s World systems theory is on point when he highlights the problems of creating an analytical category based on a given literature (usually ‘central’), which then acts as the focus for a search in a diferent production context. Maus is not seen as a major example of ‘Jewish New Yorker comics’, and Persepolis is not pushed as a great example of the ‘Persian Diaspora in France’ (although they might be studied as such and dialogue with those specifc corpora), but are more often presented as ‘universal’ graphic novels that create a formula to search for ‘quality’ elsewhere. This purported formula is, of course, a reifed and ahistorical perspective of these titles, a perspective that quite often erases their material and publication history. After all, both Maus and Persepolis were serialized originally in short chapters within small-press collective magazines. These two works ended up as the epitome of an editorial and commercial practice – one-shot single-volume graphic novels of new, unpublished material – to which they themselves did not belong in the frst place. Not precisely, at least. Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo dedicated a whole chapter to this same issue in relation to Persepolis (2016, pp. 109 f.). When Moretti refers to the method of reading texts in order to search within them a ‘unit of analysis’, which he actually explains as ‘reading through the text’, a sort of dictum comes up: ‘The task is constrained from the start; it’s a reading without freedom’ (2000, p. 61, my emphasis). We are not reading texts for themselves but searching for comparative/contrasting Maus and Persepolis qualities. Thus, a search for a ‘Portuguese Maus’ is bound to fail. Moreover, the types of comics I wish to discuss in the present chapter do not belong to categories that could be deemed as ‘commercial’. They are not published by well-established houses, and they do not engage with more or less expected narrative and generic formulas, as they attempt freer forms, leading to small print runs and limited media reception. Klinkenberg and Denis’ gravitational theory characterizes the system as possessing both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics that are established in literature between the centre and the peripheries, which in turn leads to ‘thinking of the literary groupings in terms of tendency towards dependency [i.e., the ‘small literatures’] and independence [i.e., “great ensembles”]’ (2005, p. 35). Centripetal forces attract peripheral literature towards the centre, entailing their assimilation.

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Centrifugal forces, however, can lead those same groupings towards diferentiation and independence, usually to that which may be called ‘emergent literature’ (p. 36). This literature reaches some degree of autonomy, which ‘manifests itself through its capacity to self-organize independently of other social powers’ (p. 27). Comics production in Portugal, especially in independent labels and artist collectives such as the ones addressed in this chapter, shows precisely this independence, both editorial, fnancial, and political. Before addressing the comics themselves, let’s take a look at the more or less concentrated set of events that would trigger the comics responses.

Buraco’s Reaction to the Es.Col.A Event Although they do so in diferent ways, the texts I want to bring to the table all address a specifc set of events that took place in the city of Porto, in 2012. In the Alto da Fontinha bairro (neighbourhood), a socially depressed part of the second largest city in Portugal, inhabited by poorer working classes, a group of citizens and activists decided in early April 2011 to occupy a local primary school that had languished in disuse since 2006. Despite being closed, the school remained the property of the City Council. The purpose of the occupation was to return it to the community, serving not only the children of that area but also young people and older people. This group of ‘occupiers’ cleaned up the place, refurbished it, brought new materials (from school supplies to plumbing) and shared equipment, and created a series of courses for the local community, ofering subjects from drawing and reading workshops to music, bike repair, yoga, and capoeira classes, as well as introductory and practical courses on documentary cinema, for instance. This group came to be known as Es.Col.A, an acronym for ‘Espaço Colectivo Autogestionado do Alto da Fontinha’ (‘Self-Managed Collective Space of the Alto da Fontinha’) and a play on the Portuguese word for ‘school’ (‘escola’). Needless to say and despite the fact that some of the articles of the Portuguese Constitution defend ‘popular actions’ for the preservation and usage of municipal property, these were, strictly speaking, illegal actions. And despite the attempt of Es.Col.A to become organized institutionally as an association, which would grant them legal entity status and could open the possibility of a dialogue with the City Council and even allow them to apply for funding, things went awry fast. The frst eviction attempt took place in May 2011, during which seven members of the movement were arrested, even though part of the team remained there, along with the equipment. There was an attempt to solve this situation legally, through meetings with town ofcials that would make the occupation both ofcial and legal, but bureaucracy just became an insurmountable hurdle. On 19 April 2012, a second and more efective eviction process took place. This time around, with a peculiarly strong police presence on the premises. Furthermore, a strange relationship with certain media (Porto newspapers and television chains were called in advance of the operation, which suggests some

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degree of coordination between the police force, City Council, and the media) allowed for the whole operation to be highly publicized throughout. The main line in public discourse painted the occupiers as criminals and drug addicts who had ransacked the place, a venue now ‘rescued’ by the forces of authority. The images were dramatic, the media presentation of the facts was biased, and the opinions were passionate. Both the local population and the citizens dedicated to associativism (a non-proft legal collective of persons for the betterment and development towards a certain end, in this case, education of local children and youth), however, were sympathetic to the cause and acted to correct the disseminated image. Not only through interviews in the media, at the time, as well as in the counter-manifestations and, as we will discuss, on the part of artists. The story is, of course, extremely complex, politically, socially, and economically. There were many intriguing, if not risible, micro-episodes, but we cannot go into that here. Sufce to say two things: on 25 April 2012, the anniversary of Portugal’s 1974 Democratic Revolution, people re-occupied the school in a festive ambience (hundreds of people, many locals and activists among them, were present), but Es.Col.A was not able to resume their activities. Despite the apparent intervention of municipal employees at the site afterwards, that made it seem as if the school building would be reinstated as a functioning local school, there was no consequential transformation whatsoever. After a few inactive years, where no work was done, the Alto da Fontinha primary school building was refurbished by the City Council and turned into administrative ofces. Comics-makers responded to this situation in a swift fashion. One response came from the independent, if not underground, Porto-based comics anthology Buraco (lit. ‘Hole’). Buraco had been published since late 2011, as a large newspaper-like publication with comics and illustrations. Each subsequent issue grew in length, from 16 pages (issue 1) to 24 (issue 3), with mostly black-andwhite interior pages but a two-colour cover and central spread. The magazine had a fxed roster of artists, all living and working in Porto, including Marco Mendes, Miguel Carneiro, Bruno Borges, Carlos Pinheiro, and Nuno Sousa, staples of the local comics scene. Each issue had guest artists, including Joana ‘Jucifer’ Figueiredo and José Feitor. A pretty straightforward project, Buraco had an auteurist approach, with highly idiosyncratic styles and degrees of visual and narrative experimentation. Moreover, many of the pieces included in the frst three issues already discussed certain social realities, more or less tied to particular circumstances either in the city of Porto or in the country in general. Issue 4 changed drastically, exploding both in format, in the number and type of participants, and in the nature of the pieces. Ever since, Buraco has been a freeform graphic beast, mixing poetry and essay, mainly dedicated to city politics. With more than 100 pages, printed on cheaper newspaper stock, Buraco #4, issued in August 2012, was presented as a ‘satirical and pro-lyrical newspaper’ and sported two covers. On one side, there is a representation of Zé Povinho, a stock character that has stood for the Portuguese man (usually poorer, undereducated, and abused but candid) ever since his invention by the so-called father

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of Portuguese comics, Raphael Bordallo Pinheiro, in the late nineteenth century. Superimposed on his face is a Jolly Roger, the skull-and-bones pirates’ fag. On the other cover is a portrait of the then-President of City Hall, Rui Rio, but with his face totally covered by a black circle. These covers were based on silkscreen posters that were issued by Ofcina Arara, an artist association dedicated exclusively to silk-screening (to which Miguel Carneiro belongs) and distributed all over the city of Porto during the 25 April demonstrations in defence of Es.Col.A. The issue was completely dedicated to Es.Col.A, as many of the artists participating in the publication either had acquaintances in the occupation project or shared the same principles, as a number of them were members of other nonproft cultural associations of the city. The issue declares itself to be part of the ‘União Fontinha’, a sort of informal united solidarity front supporting Es.Col.A’s actions and struggle. Collecting newspaper clips, documents from the Es.Col.A movement and City Hall, statements from participants, photos from the project and the demonstrations, articles, ironic texts, short comics, illustrations and caricatures, essays, collages, and games, Buraco #4 acts in three ways. First of all, it works as an archive, as it collects information that would fall into the cracks with more streamlined, mainstream accounts of what happened. The materials it gathers are very diverse. It re-publishes mainstream accounts of the events along with notes ‘correcting’ them. It provides documents from ofcial communication between the representatives of the movement and the City Council, including manifestos and photographs of the people involved. It collects poems and opinion articles, interviews with the people from the Fontinha bairro and essays with historical, political, and philosophical assessments of people’s resistance and the right to protest. And, of course, it presents cartoons, art pieces, and comics, such as a reportage by José Smith Vargas and smaller pieces by several artists that we will address shortly. In short, Buraco #4 preserves experiences and perceptions of the city’s cultural and political life that otherwise would not be kept, especially by the administrative powers (the ‘winners’ who proverbially write history). Buraco #4 is then an archive of resistance. It is also a deterritorialized archive, as it commingles materials of various sorts, sources, and scopes, which do not necessarily cohere into a smooth, specifc story, but actually plays upon its own ‘bumpy’ texture. Finally, it is also, of course, an active response to the whole situation. It is both an opportunity for the people who participated in the Es.Col.A movement to explain and share their experience and a chance to respond to the prepotency of what Jacques Rancière calls the ‘politique politicienne’, which will be discussed further later in this chapter. There are texts about ‘communities under construction’ and short reportage pieces about other international ‘Occupy’ movements. Most of the comics artists and illustrators included in Buraco #4 either use humour, a defant stance against the hegemonic political power, or celebrate the events of the Es.Col.A occupation throughout the issue, such as Teresa Câmara Pestana, André Lemos, Bruno Borges, Carlos Pinheiro, among others (none of

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the pages are signed, and there is no index either, but a reader familiar with their work can recognize the styles). Via testimonies, quoted slogans, illustrations with proverbs, caricatures, by repurposing symbols or sentences spoken by ofcials, portraying the situation in metaphorical terms, and so on; therefore, this collective efort upholds the principles addressed by the movement. By showing solidarity through the publication of a themed newspaper, Buraco is directly engaged in a local movement taking place at the time of publication, which brings about a new dimension to the movement itself, which, despite having put up a blog (inactive since 20141), made a concerted efort not to address the media. José Smith Vargas, a young artist who has created many short comics journalism pieces for a small print-run anarchist newspaper called Mapa, contributed a ten-page piece covering the police-conducted eviction of 11 April, the demonstration of the 25th, as well as quotes from other media by both sympathizers and (politician) critics of the movement. Vargas re-appropriates sentences from politicians – mainly the declaration of Paulo Rios, then the President of the local section of the party in power in the City Hall. Then the artist visualizes the bureaucratic nightmare the association had to go through and the police violence of the eviction in order to make clear the ridiculously disproportionate distribution of power in the situation. At the same time, however, this allows for him to emphasize the individuality of each participant, including the local inhabitants who welcomed the project in their lives. Other artists work somewhat more elliptically. Nuno Sousa, for instance, presents a one-page story. What seems to be a homeless man sleeping on a park bench wakes up and asks a passing young man what time it is. The young man gives him the time, 8:05, and the homeless man seems quite worried and leaves the bench hurriedly, as if late for an appointment. The title is translatable as ‘living above one’s means’, meaning someone who is living of credit, having more expenses than receiving payments, and usually for superfcial, material things. While the sentence is common, it had become an often repeated talking point of many politicians, including the then-President of the Republic, Cavaco Silva, in order to justify the draconian measures of the last Governments. Many of these measures had been implemented in accordance with the principles presented by the team of representatives from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission, informally known as the ‘Troika’. These principles and measures were enacted to curtail the 2008 fnancial crisis in Portugal and had consequences on labour laws, taxes, and areas of governance such as housing, health, transportation, banking, and so on. Sufce it to say that the most impactful policies afected the working class and pensioners. The awkwardness of Sousa’s humour resides, of course, in the fact that he is showing people from working and even poorer classes, who never in their lives had any opportunity to even dream of living ‘above their means’. Right after Sousa’s short piece, Joana Figueiredo, working under the pseudonym ‘Jucifer’, presents a two-page story, with only six panels, in which two characters have a more or less elliptic conversation about jobs, remuneration and

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salary cuts. While no details are provided in this situation – we don’t know the characters’ names, we don’t even understand what jobs they’re talking about – the exchange contains enough generic material to turn it into a one-size-fts-all situation, very familiar to whomever has been involved with unemployment, low-wage jobs, precariousness, and so on. Jucifer is not creating an articulated discussion about any specifc case but rather an open-ended, ambiguous empty vessel of a comic in which each reader may feel their own situation mirrored. Bruno Borges also reacted in an oblique manner. His contribution is a onepage story, with six regular panels. The only thing we see is a list of meat for sale (‘one kilo of pork chops’, ‘4 hamburgers’, and so on). It is an almost impenetrable, non-narrative experimental comic. But it is in fact a commentary about a commercial promotion gone awry. A Portuguese supermarket chain, Pingo Doce, engaging with so-called dumping practices, lowered the prices of all products below 50% on 1 May 2012, leading to a torrent of people visiting their stores, especially in urban centres, which lead to conficts, petty violence, and an awkward episode of people buying things in a frenzy (Silva, 2012; see also Wikipedia, 2019). This was shown on the news, commented on, and discussed. While Pingo Doce’s dumping practices (they would be fned for it), labour practices in general and consumer culture would be quite appropriate to take place on International Worker’s Day, what could have been a day of celebration of the worker was hijacked by spectacles of violence and poor displays of desperation by so many people in having access to arguably superfuous goods usually beyond their means. Borges’ short comic, with no commentary whatsoever, creates a sort of reifcation of the situation by showing simple piles of meat. Borges uses a minimalist, almost stick-fgure drawing style. One of the panels seems to show a human body lying on the ground with a cross at a distance. Other panels show more or less abstract or geometric shapes, with captions describing diferent types of meats. Perhaps the idea is to commingle the idea of animal meat ready for consumption and the decay of human fesh or the death that awaits us all and that makes meat consumption possible. Or maybe there’s a simpler correspondence between human body parts and the meats advertised – the last panel is the easiest to identify as such, as we look upon a man’s leg and read ‘2 legs of freerange chicken’. Once again, the author is not articulating any direct argument or commentary upon the Pingo Doce situation I just described, but nevertheless, within the historical and political context of the moment, he was clearly addressing the dehumanization of consumer culture and the reduction of all human traits to simple commodifed fodder. As a comics text, it is less telling us a story than presenting us with a sequential string of images that responds to a situation, eliciting our interpretative powers to understand it as a statement. Marco Mendes’s contribution is quite diferent. This author has been putting out self-contained strips of four-panel comics since 2005 called Diário Rasgado, which we can translate as ‘Torn Journal’. Even though we can read each strip individually, there is no doubt that one can also read it as an ongoing, continuous text. Mendes uses the same format in his strips, no matter where he publishes

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them frst so that they can always be read as belonging to the same series. Using mainly autobiographical short pieces, he has explored many genres, styles of humour, and degrees of poetic introspection, but there is always an overall melancholy tone in his work. The same is true for his short piece in Buraco #4. Mendes is seemingly joining the other artists in celebrating the freedoms of the 25th April, as well as the actions and philosophy of Es.Col.A. But, in his typical fashion, he turns it on its head to reveal perhaps the actual inefciency of these popular movements when moving against established powers. The strip has three panels showing throngs of people marching the streets of Porto in support of Es.Col.A (the banners read, for example, ‘No one stops the people's actions!’, ‘Let’s occupy a dream’, or ‘The school is for everyone’). But the last panel shows a close-up of the school gates bolted shut with a heavy lock. The view embraces the empty patio, flled with debris and wilted fowers (probably the carnations used the 25th April, the ‘fower of the Revolution’), while a single shadow of a policeman stands guard over the emptied-out space. Mendes’s strip is not interested in upholding utopian slogans and ideas, but rather in showing the reality of ultimate defeat before hegemonic powers. The party is beautiful while it lasts, but in the end, projects fail, everyone goes home, and the police stand as literal social and economic gatekeepers. As a collective project, Buraco #4 engages with a ‘sense of the political as a mode of thought embedded in a particular set of practices’ (Bennett, 2005, p. 150). If we can read each and every comic as political texts, as direct dialogues with, responses to, or interventions in the actual events that took place in the city of Porto, it is more interesting and revealing how, as a more or less organized project, it contributes decisively to that which Arjun Appadurai has called ‘landscapes of group identity’ (apud Bennet, idem) and, before him, Anderson called ‘imagined communities’. Here the sense of community construction is quite strong and active and conscious, even if it is a community – at least for my purposes – solely existent between the covers of the publication. Nevertheless, issue 4 seems to underscore Jill Bennett's argument: Giving testimony is thus the occasion for a face-to-face encounter in the sense evoked by Gayatri Spivak (and elaborated on by her commentator Sara Ahmed) when she argues that what is important in the politics of resistance or liberation is not simply the act of speaking but the possibility of being heard. (…) a politics of listening, predicated on the listener's willingness to enter into such an encounter with another. (2005, p. 105, my emphasis) If Buraco #4 starts as a homage to the Es.Col.A project, due to its materiality it becomes an alternative archive, as we’ve seen. But it will also remain as evidence of how legality is not a synonym of morality, how ‘written’ does not necessarily mean ‘right’. Here’s a case in point. After the violent eviction, three men associated with Es.Col.A were arrested and convicted. Their sentence was to complete

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a period of community service. A rather strange sentence for people who were dedicating themselves to community service in the frst place. Buraco may not have been the powerful call to arms that it wished it could be. It may not even have reached an audience beyond the already converted to the cause. Despite its bravado, iconoclastic humour, and militant discourses, it ended as a failed attempt at social change. Marco Mendes’s piece was quite prophetic. But the point of the publication itself, of the comics practices gathered within, was to show alternative modes of creating comics: as spaces of witnessing, spaces for new voices, for social solidarity, no matter what the outcome of the situation. Buraco brings forward truly resistant gestures to the expected hegemony of ‘successful’ texts, or whatever critical position of what comics ‘are supposed to be’.

Conclusion In 2006, João Paulo Cotrim and Miguel Rocha published an inventive and deconstructive biography of António Oliveira de Salazar, the President that remained in power for decades on end in Portugal, assuring the long life of a dictatorship from 1926 to 1974. In an otherwise remarkable article about this book Mário Gomes and Jan Peuckert make broad assertions about Portuguese comics in accordance with critical models from without, such as the Franco-Belgian or the American models, with wholly diferent social and economic contexts for comics. This position leads them to write that ‘there seems to be no such thing one could label a “Portuguese comic tradition”’ (2010, p. 117). One can argue that due to an unbalanced globalization process, Portuguese comics rarely, if at all, reach global audiences. True, the Portuguese comics market is fnancially weaker than in other European nations, leading to insurmountable difculties to sustain more independent projects. Moreover, there’s also a problem of a ‘weak memory’ in the national comics scene. Many contemporary fans, readers, and even artists are not able to name comics works from the previous decade, let alone its long history, struggling to understand continuities, slight shifts, or radical changes. That is all true. That does not, however, erase that history. It does not erase the existence of authors putting out contemporary work that tries to enter into dialogue with contemporary situations. It is also difcult to come up with an overall description of ‘Portuguese comics’ that would encompass all production, which delves into multiple genres, approaches, styles, and even economic models. We have focused here on one single project, albeit collective and, I believe, representative of activism-related comics-making. A project that casts light upon attempts at suppressing political agency in a particular instance and, through the medium of comics, which is to say, by engaging in the public sphere, bringing back that very same agency. The comics authors involved in Buraco #4 struggle against a narrow ‘distribution of the sensible’, they work against consensus. Through ‘the dismantling of the old distribution of what could be seen, thought and done’ [du visible, du pensable et du faisable] (Rancière, 2009, p. 47), by creating dissensus, they pursue an

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emancipatory drive, which gives voice to those usually unheard and unseen, that brings into question the sense of collective (established) values (Rancière, 2010; Miller, 2017), not to mention creating more room for democracy, more agents involved in democratic discourses. Political art does not necessarily have to be structured according to pedagogical or propagandist principles. There is no reason to believe that there is a divorce between experimentation and political expression, given the fact that ‘formal innovation has quite often been thought of as being on the side of political change but also, and above all, because political change has always been misserved by poor aesthetic choices’ (Baetens, 1998, p. 108, my translation). Creating new distributions of the sensible via graphic reportage, anti-narrative pieces, melancholy observations, ironic representations of social expectations, or lively enactments of resistance, these artists have created a corpus of comics that is able to interrogate power, authority, socioeconomic ‘inevitability’, and institutionalized, compliant discourses. These contemporary Portuguese case studies hopefully contribute to, fow from, and mirror larger, international practices of comics-making, and escape the sheer logic of imitating overwhelmingly important, nonetheless imperialistic, ‘models’ of what comics can be.

Note 1 http://escoladafontinha.blogspot.com/

References AAVV (2012) Buraco no. 4. Porto. Baetens, J. (1998) Formes et Politiques de la Bande Dessinée. Leuven: Peeters/Vrin. Beaty, B. and Woo, B. (2016) The Greatest Comic Book of All Time. Symbolic Capital and the Field of America Comic Books. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Bennett, J. (2005) Empathic Vision. Afect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gomes, M., and Peuckert, J. (2010) ‘Memento Mori: A Portuguese Style of Melancholy’, in Berninger, M., Ecke, J. and Haberkorn, G. (eds.) Comics as a Nexus of Cultures. Essays on the interplay of media, disciplines and international perspectives. Jeferson & London: McFarland, pp. 116–126. Klinkenberg, J.-M., and Denis, B. (2005) La littérature belge. Précis d'histoire sociale. Brussels: Espace Nord. Kunzle, D. (1973) History of the Comic Strip. Volume I: The Early Comic Strip. Narrative Strips and Pictures Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825. Berkeley & London: University of California Press. Miller, A. (2017) ‘Consensus and Dissensus in “Bande Dessinée”', Yale French Studies, 131/132 (Bande Dessinée. Thinking Outside the Boxes), pp. 109–137. Moretti, F. (2000) ‘Conjectures on World Literature.” New Left Review, 1, pp. 54–68. Rancière, J (2009) The Emancipated Spectator. Translated from the French and edited by G. Elliott. London & Brooklyn: Verso Books.

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Rancière, J. (2010) Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics. Translated from the French by S. Corcoran. London & New York: Continuum. Santos, B. de Sousa (2011) Portugal. Ensaio contra a auto fagelação. Coimbra: Almedina. Silva, A. R. (2012) ‘Promoção do 1º de Maio ajudou Pingo Doce a aumentar as vendas em 2,4%’, Público, 25 July. Available at: https://www.publico.pt/2012/07/25/economia/ noticia/promocao-do-1-de-maio-ajudou-pingo-doce-a-aumentar-as-vendas-em-24 -1556253 (Accessed: DATE?). Wikipedia (2019) ‘2012 rush to Pingo Doce’, Wikipedia, last modifed September 1, 2019. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_rush_to_Pingo_Doce (Accessed: DATE?).

PART 3

Genders

10 HOW TO DISCUSS SEXUAL IDENTITY, MINORITY RIGHTS, AND SOCIETY IN CHILE? The Case of Katherine Supnem’s ‘Underground’ Comics Mario Faust-Scalisi Sexual identity and (sexual) minority rights are not topics discussed widely in most places, even though they have a great impact on the conception of society. This holds true for many countries worldwide. Nevertheless, minorities are essential for concepts of nationhood and society, their historical development, as well as their actual discursive production. This can be exemplifed by looking at Chile: a major pillar of the ethos of modern Chile is that the country has never been conquered by the Spaniards; the major native group, the Mapuche, were given an autonomous territory (Mallon, 2014, p. 28f.). Avoiding the discussion of historical factuality here, it is taken here as an example of how minorities play a major role for developing nationhood and identity, while at the same time their minority rights are less than safe or granted – both hold true for the Mapuche. My focus is not on Mapuche but sexual minority and especially sexual identity rights, both being interconnected in discourses. This chapter considers these discourses as they are presented in comics, specifcally the ‘underground’ comics of Katherine Supnem. Her work, distributed via zines and comics, attempts to infuence Chilean society and open channels for debate. By discussing Katherine Supnem’s work, we see a diferent view of Chilean society, as well as the importance of small-scale and partly ‘underground’ comics to discuss those topics often ‘too hot’ to be handled in the comics of the common market. To begin, we need to set the scene – Chile – and briefy outline the topics of nationhood, identity, and traumata. I demonstrate the role of comics as a social infuence by looking at some examples. Here the special role of self-publication and ‘underground’ comics has to be stressed. I also outline theories of sexual identity and minority rights in relation to Chile. Finally, I present Supnem and her comics, their discussion of sexual identity, minority rights, and society. My thesis is that Supnem and her work are clear examples of how ‘underground’ DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-13

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comics can infuence society and its perception of nationhood and society by stressing specifc controversial topics as sexual identity and minority rights. Today Chile is one of the richest but also one of the most unequal places in Latin America, with many indigenous people living in poverty (Bandowski, 2011, p. 8f.). And contemporary Chile is still heavily infuenced by the events of the 1970s to early 1990s, the years of Allende and Pinochet. Looking at the concept of Chilean nationhood, it is impossible to understand its complexity without referring to the South of Chile and state-indigenous relations. Creating a national history – a nationhood and identity – also means and meant dealing with the indigenous legacy and its importance for the emerging state and nation (Mallon, 2014, 23f.). Questions of what, where, and who Chile is endured far into the twentieth century. They experienced new polarization with Salvador Allende coming into power in 1970. While ferce opposition against socialist reforms could be witnessed from the beginning, opposition became more violent from 1970 to 1973. In these years, the Allende government tried to transform society using the nationalized comic book industry and other forms of popular culture as murals and posters. The aim was to fght ‘imperialism’ and to gain social justice (Rojas Flores, 2016, p. 374). The use of comics in particular was a reaction to the perceived spread of imperialism by Disney and other US comic publishers; their infuence should be countered by a ‘national’ comic book industry (Kunzle, 2005, p. 143). But what was seen as state education to transform the ideas of Chilean nationhood and identity by one side was experienced as censorship by nationalization by the other (Grifn, 2016, p. 16f.). All this came to an end with the coup d’état in 1973 and Augusto Pinochet coming to power. Immediately, all cultural production of the Allende government vanished, from murals to comic books – radical whitewashing of the past was the aim. A new form of control and censorship was established, and repression became the new norm (for a contemporary report see Kunzle, 2005, p. 143f.). Pinochet established a military dictatorship and promised to overcome the social divide of the Allende Years. He declared all Chileans to be one, revoking community rights and indigenous land ownership, but instead of unity this only led to new divides (Ratke-Majewska, 2017, p. 08). As Ratke-Majewska writes, ‘The creation of Pinochet’s image was thus based on the indisputable concept that he was a liberator, who was fghting evil. That evil was Marxist ideology’ (2017, p. 17f.). In the 1980s, organized underground opposition became stronger. Civil society is organized around humanitarian action and the claim of peace. A new strategy to fght Pinochet with the constitution he himself had implemented in 1980 unfolded. A plebiscite in 1988 led to elections with more than one candidate in 1989 and a new president in 1990, Patricio Aylwin (Ratke-Majewska, 2017, p. 16). Nevertheless, Pinochet used the time between the plebiscite and the end of his term to stabilize the order he had established, to strengthen his ideas of nationhood and society. This led to lasting struggles with the concepts of

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nationhood and national identity (Ratke-Majewska, 2017, p. 23). After the end of Pinochet’s rule, some major steps for reconciliation were taken: for example, minority rights for Mapuche were granted in 1993, but not all of the rights outlined were put into practice. It took years to move from compromises as ‘reconciliation’ and for a new vision of nationhood to take hold, which remains fragile and is questioned openly. Still, trauma has played and is playing a major role in Chilean society of the twenty-frst century (Ratke-Majewska, 2017, p. 30). The nearly 20 years of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial rule led to the trauma of repression, but also to resistance and empowerment. One feld of repression and resistance was humour and cartooning (Lent, 2005, 16f.). However, repression and control were not consistent across time, protocols were less strict in the 1980s, and underground publications gained more infuence (Grifn, 2016, p. 34). And while clearly these years were marked by human rights violations that had infuence beyond 1990, the dictatorship also tried hard to present itself as a modernizer of Chilean society. One focus of special support was women, but only to incentivize their role as wives and mothers (Escalona González, 2017, p. 177). All this led to the need to ‘work through’ the past and the traumata caused from 1990 onward. Chile had two state-sponsored truth commissions, the 1990/1991 National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation and the 2003/2004 National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, with the frst following the right-wing narrative of the coup as a necessity because of the chaos under Allende and the other refuting this view (Bakiner, 2018, p. 669f.). It took until 1998 for Pinochet to step down as Commander of the Army; one year later he was arrested in London (Violi, 2018, p. 420). The aim of the frst democratic years was to fght trauma with truth and give dignity and compensation to victims without compromising the general amnesty granted to major actors of Pinochet’s early repression granted in 1978 (Escalona González, 2017, p. 180f.). The question of how to judge the Pinochet Years divided society throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. A major change was the presidency of Ricardo Lagos in 2000, the second socialist president of Chile after Allende, who undertook a new attempt at reconciliation by deep investigations into torture and political imprisonment under Pinochet. During Lagos’ presidency, constitutional changes tried to limit the infuence of the military. Michelle Bachelet, the third socialist president succeeded him. During this time, civil society was supported strongly (Violi, 2018, p. 418). Another change came with the election of Sebastián Piñera in 2011, in the midst of a major earthquake. What followed were the biggest protests since the return to democracy, with students and workers, but also minorities such as Mapuche, in a wave of solidarity. The split of society became clearly visible (Abujatum Berndt, 2013, p. 274f.). It has become even more visible in the following years with another Bachelet presidency from 2014 to 2018 and of Piñera since 2018. One reason for this is the ongoing legacy of the Pinochet Years, high rates of inequality and a neoliberal economy, and recurring state repression of

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protests; all of this leads to a divided society (Abujatum Berndt, 2013, p. 278f.). Still, recovery has not been reached and traumata prevail in parts of society. Diverse groups have a major interest in infuencing society by discussing it. Here, historiography and (auto)biographies play a major role in the opening discussion. The use of autographics (comics biographies and autobiographies) or comics about historical events to infuence historiography, and by this society, is nothing new to research. However, Chilean comics, especially ‘underground’ comics, have received little critical interest so far. Comics are often seen as being able to counter dominant narratives and narrative forms. This can be seen in relation to the postcolonial project of ‘writing back’, which can be done by disruption but also by presenting alternative views and perspectives, e.g. by presenting a counter-narrative of nationhood. But this comes with the danger of instrumentalization, of being praised as ‘colourful’ but not allowing for a serious impact. In Chile, this can mean countering the positivist narrative of independence or social progress, but most often in post-dictatorial Chile to question the Allende/Pinochet Years. Here the lines between education, entertainment, and narration cannot be drawn clearly. Autographics and other forms of comics life writing bring together questions of history, objectivity, and personal experience. They are both comment and analysis, a discursive contribution, and a discursive product. In the end such comics are more than mere comic documentaries, but observing, interactive, and performative at the same time (Lefèvre, 2013, 51f.). Comics can present and discuss what would otherwise remain invisible. Because of this, dystopian concepts can be represented, including past traumata and questions of recovery; this specifc representational aspect of comics demonstrates why they are chosen to handle such topics while trying to infuence society at the same time (Kupczynska, 2013, p. 221f.). For examples of how comics are used to construct and discuss society on a large scale, one should look at Chile in the Allende Years. Following a ferce debate on the infuence of Disney on Latin America in general and Chile specifically on ideas of society and nationhood, the Allende government nationalized the most important Chilean comic publisher. Afterwards, it published Chileanmade comics for children and adults alike. During the Allende Years, these comics changed their tone and topics, reacting to the broader political changes (Montealegre Iturra, 2008, p. 173). Publishing these Chilean-made comics was understood as a mode of political education (Rojas Flores, 2016, p. 289). And this was not only a claim made by the Allende administration; it was seen as such by the opposition against Allende and his policy, too. Consequently, one of the frst moves after Pinochet’s coup d’état was to stop this program and establish censorship and media control, no longer using comics for education, but controlling their educational potential by setting clear limits (Montealegre Iturra, 2008, p. 272f.). Nevertheless, comics again played a role in ending the rule of Pinochet by highlighting the crimes of the government and bringing forward alternative ideas of society (Rojas Flores 2016, p. 492f.). Today, comics have their place in political battles in Chile. They display a wide variety in

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styles, forms, and topics; not all aim to infuence society directly, but many do so in indirect ways (Rojas Flores, 2016, p. 36f.). They are proof of the claim that ‘Every comic book is political, but some are more political than others’ (Goodrum, 2017, p. 421). Looking at Chile, we see comics specifcally and frankly aiming at constructing or modifying national identity, often in an educational setting, such as De la historia de Chile by Isidro Arteaga from 1965 (Rojas Flores, 2016, p. 208). Other comics-like media were less overt in their discussion of society; romantic fotonovelas presented a specifc idea of living together, while others had a political dimension, such as polarizing, and often humorous comic strips often used for denunciation (Rojas Flores 2016, p. 211f.). But the focus of this chapter is not comics made for overt educational purposes, but those discussing society in a less educational way. These are, for example, comics giving a voice to those otherwise silenced or questioning nationally endorsed truth claims (Fraser 2015, p. 182f.). ‘Underground’ publications play a special role here, working across social lines, not only enriching other publications but also questioning or deconstructing them by ofering diferent voices, perspectives, or topics. As longstanding lines of knowledge production and nonformal education have been cut in Chile in the last decades, alongside rural or family structures, and mass media has gained major infuence, counter-movements have grown, establishing new and diferent lines of discourse. And here, comics have played a major role as media for discussing and constructing society. Strengthened by experiences of dictatorship and suppression, self-publishing gained major importance in Chile from the 1980s onwards. One focus was humour to counter state terror (Rojas Flores, 2016, p. 484f.). While at the same time large publishing companies played their role in Chile – not least because of neoliberalism and its focus on proft over culture – independent small-scale and self-publishers remained and remain important (Grifn, 2016, p. 19). Part of the self-publishing culture included comics, especially ‘underground’ comics and web-comics, all reaching for ‘new’ or specifc audiences and many promising to lower barriers for participation (Mazur & Danner, 2014, p. 306f.). The socialist governments of Lagos and Bachelet in the 2000s lead to a new focus on traumata and the past, on heritage, nationhood, state, and society (Violi, 2018, p. 418). This was covered on a large scale by big publishing houses, but only in marketable and general terms; small-scale and independent publishing was needed to add local and controversial perspectives and discourses (Grifn, 2016, p. 20f.). Only independent publishing was and is seen as capable of discussing political concerns and cultural identities, a wide array of Chilean experiences and discourses (Grifn, 2016, p. 23). Writing this way is presented as openness, a ‘democratic potential’, that at times works openly against restrictions or controls. Independent and small-scale publishing allows for individual expression against institutional power, infuence on discourses, pictures, and formations – by presenting alternative perspectives, questions or answers. Publishing at low cost widens access and is seen as a democratizing moment (Grifn, 2016, p. 6f.).

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All this can be witnessed in Chilean ‘underground’ comics, understood as comics by independent and small-scale publishers, aimed at specifc communities and minority groups, using atypical distribution channels, and nevertheless aiming to infuence society. They may be more pamphlet or comic – this is a question of perspective – but here a broad defnition is followed: Chilean ‘underground’ comics are a product and part of civil society; the people control and access them, rather than the state. The underground’s growing infuence was only made possible by building on the experience of two phases of state control – under Allende and under Pinochet (Grifn, 2016, p. 28). Before I move onto specifc examples of this culture, specifc comics, I lay out another dimension of Chilean society – sexual identity and sexual minority rights. The question of sexual identity is linked to ideas of nationhood or citizenship: ‘The discourses around gender, science, and nationhood intersect in diferent ways to create pedagogic models of citizenship’ (Fraser, 2015, p. 191). These are generally hierarchical and powerful discourses, infuenced by global pictures and narratives as well as powerful national and regional ones that can nevertheless be countered from less-powerful positions by using civil society media, such as ‘underground’ comics. I look here at the discussion of sexual identity and (sexual) minority rights in Chile, followed by a detailed discussion of a specifc Chilean comic author – Katherine Supnem. Sexual identity is closely linked to concepts of the body, its ‘property’ and ‘control’, its presentation in public and state attempts to structure them. This is linked to questions of a self-controlled sexuality and reproduction – seen in terms like sexual identity and individuality – versus claims of foreign, state, or social control and infuence (Pollack Petchesky, 1995, p. 394f.). The concept of sexual identity and agency are strongly juxtaposed to prescribed roles, such as women’s goal being motherhood; in many parts of Latin America, including Chile, the fulflment of womanhood is still seen by many to be motherhood. The prescription of these roles limits and infuences sexual and reproductive rights, including sexual agency, and concretizes ideas of a gender binary and biological determination. There are long and nuanced histories of challenges to both, but they remain infuential in both society and the subjective formation of sexual identity (Valdivieso, 2014, p. 28f.). From the early 1990s, interlinked concepts of rights developed, developing from an understanding of reproductive rights as human rights and the ongoing struggle for women’s rights. These discourses slowly grew to include gender diversity and the multiplicity of sexuality; the concept of ‘sexual identity’ was discursively formed and brought forward. Some used it to question heteronormativity and gender binary, others stressed a more limited and restrictive concept of sexual identity (Thiemann, 2010, p. 139). To make the larger concept of sexual identity more infuential, concepts such as ‘doing gender’ were not only discussed but also practised. However, there was no unifed defnition of the term ‘sexual identity’, and some claimed it to be intangible and open to interpretation (Thiemann, 2010, p. 136f.). On the international stage, the term was

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further strengthened in 2006 by the Yogyakarta Principles about the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity (Thiemann, 2010, p. 150f.). In 2011, a UN declaration stressed the human right to a protected sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (Ofce of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2012). Minority rights question the universality of (human) rights. One key question in this sphere is the need for cultural change in the light of subjective rights versus collective rights being more important than individual ones. On the one hand minority rights, also as collective rights, were strengthened from the 1990s onward internationally. But on the other hand, the right to not be part of a minority as well (Gannushkina, 2010, p. 92f.). However, even though discourses about diferent types of minority rights have overlapped at times, they are typically separated. Sexual minority rights are more often discussed within the context of sexual identity and sexual rights; they are linked to minority rights, especially in the confict zone of these rights within minority communities and their rights. In both felds, civil society actors and debates played a major role to make international concepts of rights domestic law and to raise awareness to challenges and problems. Within this frame, minorities can fnd and lift their voice; visibility and expression have played a major role here (Fuller, 2013, p. 31f.). Chilean discourses on sexual identity and sexual minority rights must be seen in their international context, in the frame of international developments from the 1990s onward. They were built on limited progressive changes in the time of dictatorship in the feld of women’s rights. After 1990, woman-centric changes to abortion and marriage law did not happen for a long time (Htun, 2003, p. 3). On the other hand, networking of civil society actors was facilitated from 1990 to infuence discourses via independent media, with nevertheless limited efects in the frst decade of post-dictatorship democracy ( Jaquette & Wolchik, 1998, p 08). A new wave of civil society activity, independent media discourse participation, and hope for change in the felds of sexual identity and sexual minority rights came with the socialist governments of Lagos and Bachelet. However, gender inequality remains a major challenge in Chile, visible in the state ban on abortion until 2017, but also in dominant male roles, domestic violence, and the inability to live one’s sexual identity freely. Discrimination of sexual minorities is prevalent in many parts of Chile still. It is a central topic discussed in the ‘underground’ comics of Katherine Supnem. Katherine Supnem may not be the most obvious choice of comics creator for those looking at Chile from outside, but she is key to understanding the role of ‘underground’ comics in Chile and the larger region of South America that discuss sexual identity, sexual minority rights, and the linked infuence of ‘underground’ comics on society. In this chapter, I discuss only a small percentage of her works, as much of it is hard to access outside of Chile. Many of her comics come with few or no words at all, while others have a more even balance of drawing and text. The focus of discussion here is mostly those comics with less text, specifcally those discussing sexual identity, (sexual) minority rights,

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and society. Where necessary, all translations are my own and are interpretative. However, that Supnem’s comics are open to diferent textual understandings plays along the lines of the comics being at the same time personal documents and subjectively infuencing. Katherine Supnem is a (self-describing) female Chilean artist and a ‘hardcore feminist’, as she is labelled in Chilean media (El Interruptor, 2016). Her last name is an acronym made from the Spanish translation of a lyric from the U2 song ‘One’ – ‘We’re one, but we’re not the same’, ‘Somos uno, pero no el mismo’ – SUPNEM. She explained that she liked the idea of these lines – we are all humans but each of us in a diferent way – but not U2 ‘so much’ anymore (El Interruptor, 2016). Her idea of a lived diference, translated into her pen name, could be stressed as one of her work’s most important themes. She wants to use comics, for her a male medium, dominated by male artists and male topics, to empower herself and to tackle several forms of discrimination. For this, she connects with other artists, mostly female and feminist – all of them using comics for activism. The name they share is Tetas Tristes – loosely translated to ‘sad breasts/ tits’, to refer to multiple modes of sexist and sexual discrimination of women in Chile and used to publish non-sexist feminist comics (El Interruptor, 2016; Supnem, 2020). Supnem’s approach is to start from her personal experiences – everyday sexism and the multiple types of discrimination she has experienced or encountered. However, her topic is not women’s rights in a binary thinking of gender, nor feminism in a limited understanding as women fghting for women’s rights. Instead Supnem is tackling intersectional discrimination, by coming from her personal experiences while understanding herself as an intersectionally positioned woman (El Interruptor, 2016; Supnem, 2020). All of these comics follow a narrative approach that is considered here under the term ‘underground’ comics, since even though they come in diferent forms, as web-comics or zines, they are difcult to classify, since, for example, many web-comics also are available as (fan)zines. All are independently published on a small scale and reach out to infuence society, while at the same time being private media of refection. I want to look at one comic in two editions of Supnem’s work that discusses sexual identity and rights in a particularly forthright tone. It must be stressed that most of Supnem’s comics discuss sexual identity in some way, not least since they are self-declared feminist comics with a feminist agenda, but rarely as bluntly as demonstrated here. Supnem aims to look at sexual identity in a broad sense stressing the multiplicity of sexual identities. This can be best seen in the comic ‘Lía y sus Líos. Una niña Buena con problemas de identidad de género’ – ‘Lía and her mess – a good girl with gender identity problems’. It was published frst in 2010 and again in an edited form in 2014. Here, I will primarily discuss the frst version. Both versions are monochrome, and most panels contain no words. The comic isn’t marked as autobiographic but is presented as the biographical journey of Lía fnding herself and her own identity along with the questions if she is someone formed by others, if she has to ft into given frames, and what kind of woman she is in the frst place. The 2014 edition begins this journey by

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discussing the infuence of role models and popularized ideal depictions of womanhood, visualized in moda (fashion) magazines, that leads frst to removing hair from legs (moda hoy 1990/fashion today 1990) and then attempts to get it growing again (moda hoy 2013/fashion today 2013). From there, the comic moves on to questions of sexual identity. In the 2010 version, the protagonist Lía is attracted to both male- and female-presenting people, leading to the drastic measure of sewing up her own vagina. This is depicted in fve panels, showing the role of the Church as an institution explaining what is banned, including same-sex contact and masturbation. The same page then sees three small panels as a transformation to empowerment: it begins with taking the cross and feeling aroused, leading to the climax of masturbation with the cross, a representation of the empowering transformation of religious symbols. The question of the infuence of religion on sexual identity is repeated in some pages later beginning with ‘Lía’ being taught about Virgin Mary and her conceiving ‘by’ a pigeon with a twig in its mouth. ‘Lía’ is torn between the ideal of virginity (virginidad) and the fear of getting pregnant when she encounters a pigeon with a twig. While these pages aim specifcally at social infuences on the encounter of sexual agency versus institutional dogma, other sections have a clearer focus on the personal voyage that all the while is still infuenced by social models and ideals. Here we see ‘Lía’s’ encounter with her vulva, a talking ‘being’ about one third her size. The encounter leads to ‘Lía’ trying to masturbate with a carrot, a painful and bloody experience, which makes her frst sad and then angry (and the carrot frightened, screaming ‘auxilio’ – ‘help’). Her vulva leads her further by explaining what can give pleasure: manual stimulation, oral sex, toys, carrots, penises but also other vulvas. And it should be stressed that the option of oral sex is female-coded (cunnilingus). The presented ‘solution’ for how to encounter pleasure is the rubbing of vulvas, the pleasurable two-female encounter, two vulvas loving each other and reaching out towards each other. However, this journey drawn towards homosexual pleasure is not the end of the comic. Next, ‘Lía’ meets a male-presenting person to whom her vulva has to explain the diference between clitoris (clítoris) and vagina (vagina), the only words on the page. Clearly here the clitoris is the speaking part of her vulva-being and fnally allows ‘Lía’ to encounter pleasure by the other person touching her clitoris. What follows is a page discussing the risk of pregnancy. There is one fnal page after the pregnancy discussion, which changed from 2010 to 2014. In 2010 ‘Lía’s’ heart is torn out of her body by the male person she encountered, leading to tears and a countermovement to tear out the male heart. His heart is small while hers is huge – she is left to sadness while the male person just shrugs. In the 2014 edition, she grasps for the penis of a faceless male and puts it in front of her panties, leaving him bleeding and herself with a penis. The end of the journey in 2010 is a sad one: while it is a longer and more complicated journey, the male encounter leads from pleasure to sadness, and ‘Lía’ is still unsure of her sexual identity. In 2014, the ending is much more empowering, leaving the male powerless (and this might explain why fewer pages are in the

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2014 edition, since the empowerment by fexible sexual identity is stressed more this time instead of a journey to concrete identities). However, sexual identity is still not fxed in 2014, and this is the aim. While my interpretation of this comic may be questioned since most would probably identify me as ‘male-white’, if binarity is maintained, the double character of Supnem’s comics is made clear here: they are both personal stories of sexual growth and socially infuencing discourses to raise questions about identity and agency. Especially as several sexual identities are presented here, it is not a coming-of-age story, leading either to being happily heterosexual or homosexual. Lía’s sexual identity remains open and mutable (Supnem, 2010; Supnem, 2014b). In this comic, Supnem clearly moves away from simple pictures and messages, showing that sexual identity is always transforming rather than fxed and static. This makes it hard to draw a line between sexual minority rights and sexual rights, since most people can be judged as sexual identity minority at times. Her approach is not to draw special attention to one sexual identity minority but to blur borders, to make sexual identity something personal and at the same time always open, unstable, and questionable. This is a positive message, aiming to empower the individual to establish and transform their own sexual identity over times, and this is what ‘Lía’ does on her journey. But not only sexual identity and sexual rights are important in Supnem’s ‘underground’ comics but minorities and sexual as well as other minority rights, too. These topics are of ongoing importance in Supnem’s comics, but not always in the same way or as the focus. Because of this, the focus in this chapter is on comics that put sexual and other minority rights at their centre. The clearest discussion of sexual and other minority rights can be seen in the ongoing series of fanzines (there are 12 to date) ‘La vida cotidiana’ – ‘The daily life’, in which Supnem discusses problems of daily survival: having no money, fnding a place to live, facing pressure from her family, especially from the women of her family, or being overweight. In the series, she discusses the links between problems she experiences in her daily life and problems of society. For example, she discusses not being able to fnd a place in which she can aford to live alongside discussing the lack of a working rental market for apartments in Santiago while often tying this back to sexism and the discrimination of sexual rights. This can best be seen in issue #4 ‘sin hogar’ – ‘without home’ (2014a). Here the protagonist, seemingly Supnem herself, as she is introduced by ‘Hola, soy una Mujer simple que hace historietas’ – ‘Hello, I am a simple woman who makes comics’, is followed on her way out of her parents’ home. First, she is living with some friends with bad manners, then in a place that is transformed into a hostel. She is on the search again, fnding six options. The frst landlord she encounters says, ‘Hello I am handsome, kind, single and … rent a piece’ (‘Hola, soy guapo, amable, soltero y … ah, arriendo pieza’). The third says ‘No woman, no daughter, no visits, no being in the house’ (‘No mujer, no hija, no visitas, no estar en casa’). The fourth, with ‘poverty’ (pobreza) written on the panel, ‘I rent apartment, one piece and I sleep in the armchair’ (‘Ariendo depa, 1 pieza. yo duermo en el sillón’). The ffth explains that he is a ‘Single man (50) [who] leases

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only to young female university student’ (‘Hombre soltero (50) arrienda sólo a joven universitaria’). And the last is ‘only for women’ (‘sólo mujeres’) – ‘You cannot enter with couples’ (‘No puede ingresar con parejas’). Finally, the protagonist decides on the lesser evil: the casa de mujeres – a women’s refugee. This comic, on the one hand, discusses daily Chilean problems, the difculty in renting apartments and rooms, but also specifc problems, in this case being a woman in this market, being open for a relationship – she has to wave goodbye to three walking penises when deciding on the women’s refugee – or being afraid of male violence. With a clear feminist stance, sexual minority rights are discussed here interwoven with the discussion of daily Chilean struggles, and by this the clear link between the personal and the social is seen (Supnem, 2014a). Another example of this is issue #3 ‘fear’ (‘miedos’) from 2013, where Supnem shows all she has been afraid of, in chronological order, from cutting nails to her own vagina, to penises, and then men. Next comes the fear of being alone – or staying with men she doesn’t want to be with. In the end – ‘now’ – she fnally is afraid of fnding other women pretty (‘Ahora lo tengo miedo a encontrar linda a otras mujeres’). While this is a personal voyage from childhood to maturity, without a clear ending or a stable identity and marked by fear in the end, it also discusses sexual minority rights in a society where queer women fear to live their orientation (Supnem, 2013). Diferent layers of narration are mixed across the whole series of ‘La vida cotidiana’: sometimes more personal experience is stressed, sometimes the social dimension, sometimes more individual struggles, and sometimes more general challenges of sexual minority rights. Ultimately, all serve to make the private political, aiming to infuence society and discourses by infuencing subjectively. In all her ‘underground’ comics, Supnem clearly discusses Chilean society, which is, at the same time, infuenced by the comics and linked discourses. The fanzine series ‘La vida cotidiana’ connects discussions of sexual identity, minority rights, and society. But the discussion of society by Supnem sometimes is more obvious, as linked to the topics of sexual identity and rights in the comic ‘Sofía, wherever you are’ (‘Sofía, donde quiera que estés’) from 2017. Here Supnem becomes a teacher of philosophy (profesora de flosofía) working with at-risk children. In one class she is teaching children about their rights, and the conversation is as follows: Teacher: ‘Today we will draw the rights of the child’. (‘Hoy dibujaremos los derechos del niñe’.) Pupil: ‘Teacher, you say boy and girl?’ (‘¿Profe, se dice niño y niña?’) Teacher: ‘And the trans kids? There are children with both sexes or non-binary not only boys and girls’. (‘¿Y les niñes trans? Hay niñes con ambos sexos o no binarios no sólo niños y niñas’.) After making her point regarding gender multiplicity, she explains specifc children’s rights and stresses that it is not normal for intimate parts of the child’s body

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to be touched by others. Following this, all children are asked to draw something about these topics. Here Sofía, who was very eager to draw before, but also faced serious discouragement to do so by her mother, can’t participate. The following day, Supnem is called to the school psychologist who shows her a picture of Sofía clearly leading to the suspicion that the child is facing sexual abuse at home. Now more experiences from before come to Supnem’s mind, ‘friends of the mother’ coming to pick up Sofía, Sofía telling her that she wants to stay all her life in school and not go home. Again, Supnem goes to the school psychologist, who tells her that she already reported the suspicion to the authorities, but they have not found anyone at Sofía’s home. Supnem looks everywhere for Sofía without fnding her. At the end, the school psychologist tells her, ‘Katherine you must calm down. This always happens, it is part of … the frustration of our profession’ (‘Katherine debes calmarte. Esto siempre pasa, es parte de … la furstración de nuestra professión’). But Supnem explains that this cannot be normal and keeps preoccupying herself with the interpretation of children’s pictures and thinking of Sofía. The last page is composed of six panels with only her face seen, zooming in on it and something black, between guilt and barbwire, moving around her neck. The frst four panels have writing above: ‘I wonder if it will be alright’ (‘me pregunto si estará bien’), ‘I don't think it’s okay’ (‘no creo que esté bien’), and ‘her mother is her enemy’ (‘su madre es su enemigo’) twice. After the ffth panel with her eyes wide open and tears coming a last follows with her weeping and saying ‘Sofía, I hope you are fne, wherever you are’ (‘Sofía, espere que estés bien, donde quiera que estés’) (Supnem, 2017). This comic is an extremely personal work on the trauma of being totally unable to help. But it is also directly addressing society, the inability to help, the failure to guarantee another’s rights, children’s rights, and indirectly the neglect of non-binarism, a free choice of sexual identity at the same time. All these themes are intermixed. In Latin America, organized civil society is one main catalyst in the attempt to change society. Part of these attempts involve comics, especially those that reach out for a broader audience, such as independently published ‘underground’ comics. In this chapter, I have discussed the work of one author and her ‘underground’ comics, with their nuanced amalgamation of personal refection and social infuence. Chilean ‘underground’ comics and the work of Supnem allow the reader to engage with discourses on sexual identity, sexual minority rights, and society. The emphases shift from comic to comic. Sometimes, it is a focus on sexual identity, as in ‘Lía y sus líos’; sometimes on daily minority rights, as in the series ‘La vida cotidiana’, or on social challenges such as the sexual abuse of children in ‘Sofía, donde quiera que estés’. These works refect on personal experiences and encounters, while also maintaining a more general aim and focus at the same time. These two foci combined lead to change and empowerment, of infuencing ideas of nationhood, and of society; they also raise questions of sexual identity or trauma. Supnem’s comic avatar of herself and her other characters have not

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one stable sexual identity; she does not want or need to claim clear-cut sexual minority rights. Her claim can be translated more as rights for all – following her pen name – somos uno, pero no el mismo – we are one, but we are not the same. Katherine Supnem is empowered by her comics, but the topics tackled in her comics get empowered by her work, too. The works of Supnem allow Chilean society to come into view from a diferent angle, giving voice to topics seemingly ‘too hot’ to be handled in the comics of the common market. ‘Underground’ comics in Chile allow for social and political activism, and Katherine Supnem is a clear example of the reach and diversity of this activism. She links sexual identity, its plurality, minority rights, and necessary social change to overcome trauma and leads to a new, freer, and ever-changing collective and individual identity, and in the end a new idea of nationhood.

References Abujatum Berndt, L. (2013) ‘Ein Land im Umbruch? Wie aus dem Unmut über soziale Ungleichheit eine neoliberalismus-kritische Bewegung wurde’, in Ehlers, T. (ed.) Soziale Proteste in Lateinamerika. Hamburg: Argument, pp. 274–302. Bakiner, O. (2018) ‘Truths of the Dictatorship: Chile’s Retting and Valech Commissions as State-Sponsored History’, in Bevernage, B. and Wouters, W. (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of State-Sponsored History After 1945. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 669–686. Bandowski, C. (2011) ‘Gelobtes Land der Gegensätze’, in EMD (ed.) Chile. Gelobtes Land der Gegensätze. Hamburg: EMD, pp. 7–14. El Interruptor (2016) Interview with Katherine Supnem by José Miguel Villouta. 19 October. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMG9uRnpJiI (Accessed: 29 April 2020). Escalona González, L. (2017) ‘Education as a Form of Reparation in Chile’, in RamírezBarat, C. and Duthie, R. (eds.) Transitional Justice and Education. New York: Social Science Research Council, pp. 177–204. Fraser, J. (2015) ‘Novel Translation of the Scientifc Subject: Clorinda Matto de Turner, Margarita Práxedes Muñoz, and the Gendered Shaping of Discourses of Desire in Nineteenth-Century Peru’, in Bauer, H. (ed.) Sexology and Translation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 179–196. Fuller, N. (2013) ‘Sexo, peligro y poder. Sexualidad y género entre los wampís awajún’, in Valcuende del Río, J. M., Marco Macarro, M. J. and Alarcón Rubio, D. (eds.) Diversidad Sexual en Iberoamérica. Sevilla: Aconcagua Libros, pp. 27–50. Gannushkina, S. (2010) ‘Zweifelhafte Traditionen. Nationale Minderheiten und Menschenrechte’, in Heilberger, I. and Lochbihler, B. (eds.) Frau Macht Veränderung. Brüssel & Berlin: Grüne/EFA, pp. 92–100. Goodrum, M. (2017) ‘Comics and Politics’, in Bramlett, F., Cook, R. T., and Meskin, A. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Comics. New York & London: Routledge, pp. 415–423. Grifn, J. D. (2016) The Labor of Literature. Democracy and Literary Culture in Modern Chile. Amherst & Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Htun, M. (2003) Sex and the State. Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jaquette, J. S. and Wolchik, S. L. (1998) ‘Women and Democratization in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Introductionä, ini Jaquette, J. S.

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and Wolchik, S. L. (eds.) Women and Democracy. Baltimore & London: John Hopkins University Press, pp. 1–28. Kunzle, D. (2005) ‘The Comic Books in a ‘Revolutionary Process’: Chile in 1973’, in Lent, J. A. (ed.) Cartooning in Latin America. Cresskill: Hampton Press, pp. 143–154. Kupczynska, K. (2013) ‘Unerzählbares erzählbar machen. Trauma-Narrative in der Graphic Novel’, in Grünewald, D. (ed.) Der dokumentarische Comic. Essen: Ch. A. Bachmann, pp. 221–240. Lefèvre, P. (2013) ‘The Modes of Documentary Comics’, in Grünewald, D. (ed.) Der dokumentarische Comic. Essen: Ch. A. Bachmann, pp. 50–62. Lent, J. A. (2005) ‘Latin American Comic Art: An Overview’, in Lent, J. A. (ed.) Cartooning in Latin America. Cresskill: Hampton Press, pp. 1–24. Mallon, F. E. (2014) ‘El federalism de los pubelos indígenas: Guerras civiles y proyectos nacionales en Chile y México, 1850–1870’, in Contreras Saiz, M., Hölck, L. and Rinke, S. (eds.) Gobernanza y Seguridad. Stuttgart: Heinz, pp. 23–42. Mazur, D. and Danner, A. (2014) Comics. A Global History, 1968 to the Present. London: Thames & Hudson. Montealegre Iturra, J. (2008) Historia del humor gráfco en Chile. Lleida: Editorial Milenio. Ofce of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (ed.) (2012) Born Free and Equal. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in International Human Rights Law. New York: United Nations 2012. Pollack Petchesky, R. (1995) ‘The Body as Property: A Feminist Revision’, in Ginsburg, F. D. and Rapp, R. (eds.) Conceiving the New World Order. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, pp. 387–406. Ratke-Majewska, A. (2017) ‘The politics of memory in post-authoritarian transitions: The case of Chile’, in Marzalek-Kawa, J., Piechowiak-Lamparska, J. Ratke-Majewska, A. and Wawrzynski, P. (eds.) The politics of memory in post-authoritarian transitions. Volume 1: Case studies. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 8–42. Rojas Flores, J. (2016) Las historietas en Chile 1962–1982. Industria, ideología y prácticas sociales. Santiago de Chile: LOM ediciones. Supnem, K. (2020) ‘Homepage’, Katherine Supnem. Available at: http://supnemilustraciones .blogspot.com (Accessed: 29 April 2020). Supnem, K. (2017) Sofía, done quiera que estés…. Santiago de Chile: Katherine Supnem. Supnem, K. (2014a) La vida cotidiana. 4. Sin hogar. Santiago de Chile: Katherine Supnem. Supnem, K. (2014b) Lía y sus líos. Una niña Buena, con problemas de identidad de género. Santiago de Chile: Autogestión. Supnem, K. (2013) La vida cotidiana. 2. Miedos. Santiago de Chile: Katherine Supnem. Supnem, K. (2010) Lía y sus líos. Una niña Buena, con problemas de identidad de género. Santiago de Chile: Autogestión. Thiemann, A. (2010) ‘Sexuelle Selbstbestimmung und sexuelle Orientierung – Entwicklungen im Menschenrechtsschutz’, in Busch, U. (ed.) Sexuelle und reproduktive Gesundheit und Rechte. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 136–159. Valdivieso, M. (2014) ‘Otros tiempos y otros feminismos en América Latina y el Caribe’, in Carosio, A. (ed.) Feminismos para un cambio civilizatorio, Caracas: Fundación Celarg, pp. 23–39. Violi, P. (2018) ‘State Agency and the Defnition of Historical Events: The Case of the Museo de La Memoria Y Los Derechos Humanos in Santiago, Chile’, in Bevernage, B. and Wouters, N. (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of State-Sponsored History After 1945. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 415–430.

11 QUESTIONING THE INESCAPABLE MALE GAZE IN ALTARRIBA AND KIM’S EL ARTE DE VOLAR AND EL ALA ROTA Mikel Bermello Isusi

Eileen Meehan argues that cultural products refect society’s dominant ideology, regardless of whether they are trying to go against it or not (2006, p. 313). In a patriarchal heterosexist society, the visual works produced are not exempt, and authors often tend to tell their stories from a masculine point of view, or for an imagined masculine audience, through which patriarchy can be observed. The inescapability, and the techniques developed by flm, of this ‘male gaze’ has been analyzed by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 study ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Graphic narratives share some of these techniques, as I discuss in due course, which makes them also portray many instances and events through the male gaze, even if their intention is to avoid it. This chapter considers two case studies of this male gaze: Antonio Altarriba Jr and Kim’s El arte de volar (The Art of Flying [2009]) and El ala rota (The Broken Wing [2016]). In both, writer Altarriba Jr discusses his parents’ lives and experiences during the Spanish Second Republic, the Civil War, the Dictatorship, and the Transition to Democracy in the late twentieth century. His mother Petra died in 1998, and his father, Antonio Altarriba Sr – Antonio from now on – died by suicide in 2001. In El arte de volar, by omitting key events in Petra’s life, and by making it appear to be Antonio’s autobiography, the authors misrepresent her through their narration, as they seem to represent her religiosity as without nuance or understanding of her perspective excessive. From their perspective, they seem to be blaming her for her husband’s depression and later suicide. Furthermore, specifc representational techniques that relate to autobiography are used in El arte de volar; the creators did not use these techniques again in El ala rota, so they fail to give Petra the agency that they had attempted to give Antonio earlier. El ala rota was a new biography published to share all this information and for them to try to repair this image previously portrayed, as stated in its epilogue (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2009, p. 257).1 The result is laudable, but, DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-14

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unfortunately, they cannot leave this male gaze behind, and Petra is still represented as ‘an object of sexual stimulation through sight’, as Mulvey argues (2006, p. 346). Moreover, while there is less agency in biography than in autobiography because the voice is someone else’s and there is a lack of mediation, for El ala rota, the authors had much less information from Petra herself than in Antonio’s case. It could be further argued, in line with Sidonie Smith, that men here are still the mirror. Plus, as glimpsed earlier, Antonio’s agency is only an attempt, because even though he had left written manuscripts, the fnal representation depends on Altarriba Jr and Kim, on what they include and what they omit. El arte de volar may seem an autobiography, but it is not. However, if these two graphic novels are still a valid ‘chronicle of a whole generation’, as stated in El arte de volar’s prologue by the Spanish Historian Antonio Martín (2009, p. iv), it is for their attempt to repair and do justice to these underrepresented experiences, since they address the ‘need to come to terms with a past purportedly neglected’, as critical theorist Ángel Loureiro argues (2008, p. 227). Their publication helps to continue to question how memory is treated in Spanish visual culture and to keep criticizing the patriarchal lens, common in so many narratives. In this chapter, I will consider the techniques through which the authors present El arte de volar as Altarriba Sr’s autobiography and the implications of this. Then, I analyze these techniques in both graphic novels through two moments: frst, the wedding night, in which Antonio and Petra have sex for the frst time; second, her ‘religious turn’ during their marriage. These two events are particularly important because Petra would refuse to have sex later in her life, since she was afraid to die in childbirth, and for health reasons she was dissuaded from having further children. I use Mulvey’s theoretical framework, together with cartoonist and theorist Scott McCloud and US scholar Kate Polak. First, McCloud explains how identifcation is sought by the artists in comics, because ‘through simplifcation’ of facial portraits and by avoiding hyperrealistic portraits, the audience can see themselves. He further develops this by adding that ‘we [humans] see ourselves in everything’ (1993, pp. 30–33). Second, in Ethics in the Gutter, Polak centres on the importance of the reader to break with this attempt by the authors, since how we emotionally situate with regard to the content and the form infuences their readings. Polak uses narratology to explain the importance of the ways both authors and readers position themselves, because ‘identifying with a perpetrator and identifying with a victim are two very diferent ethical relationships with a text’ (2017, p. 15). This chapter flls a gap in scholarly articles within comics studies and memory studies in Spain, because although these two graphic novels have been written about elsewhere (see Auroy, 2019; Ausente, 2013; Caicedo Tapia, 2019; Fernández de Arriba, 2015) and used for history classes in Secondary Education (Fernández de Arriba, 2019), they fail to acknowledge the authors’ attempts to ‘repair’ representational issues – by either society or themselves – despite their inability to completely break with the system (that is, patriarchy and the male gaze). Again, if the works can still be considered ‘a chronicle of a whole

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generation’, as Martín says about El arte de volar in its prologue (2009, p. iv), it is because this attempt to repair Altarriba Jr’s parents’ images in society, not because Kim and Altarriba Jr are completely fair towards each of them. When Jo Labanyi says that a country’s modernity is related to its ‘attitudes toward the relation of present to past’, she tries to go against the supposed modernity that technological advancement brings forth, as she explains (2007, p. 91). The importance of this analysis lies not only on this need, as Loureiro puts it, ‘to come to terms with a past purportedly neglected’ (2008, p. 227), but also on Labanyi’s understanding of modernity. This chapter analyzes two graphic novels that indeed look back but also critiques that male gaze and how this is portrayed, following Mulvey, because, as she argues, and this can be applied to Petra, ‘meaning … does not last into the world of law and language except as a memory which oscillates between memory of maternal plenitude and memory of lack’ (p. 342). As she continues to argue, ‘women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-atness’ (2006, p. 346). Understanding and moving away from this may help to continue to look back at and relate to the past in ways that can help society move on, become ‘modern’.

Reading a Biography as Autobiography In El arte de volar, EAdV from now on, the authors introduce Antonio’s suicide at the age of 90 in 2001, having lived through the Civil War, exile in France, his return to Spain during Francoism, and the Spanish Transition to Democracy. Altarriba Jr presents the event through a third-person narrator who says that he had manuscripts Antonio had written (2009, p. 14), but, by the end of the frst page of chapter 1, the voices of the narrator and Antonio are merged (p. 19), and Altarriba Jr adopts a frst-person narrator to tell his father’s story. Altarriba Jr recognized in an interview that he had attempted to write it in the third person but that it was too difcult (2019, p. 82). Unlike EAdV, El ala rota, EAR from now on, is only visually narrated – i.e., the frst-person narrator is now missing – and dialogues accompany, which means there is neither a third person nor a frst-person narrator in the captions. As inferred by EAR’s epilogue, Altarriba Jr is not as emotionally linked to Petra as he was to Antonio and therefore cannot give her the voice that he had given his father (albeit mediated through his own in EAdV ). This is because he had not gathered as much precise information in life from her as from his father, as he says in the aforementioned epilogue (p. 259). In this attempt at making EAdV seem an autobiography, Altarriba Jr is performing an ‘ethical’ act, and not only a discursive one, as Loureiro reminds us (2001, p. 135), in a way as a ‘responsibility’ towards ‘the other’ (p. 136), that is, his father. This is linked to what Loureiro argued about memory, as stated earlier, with ‘the need to come to terms with a past purportedly neglected’, and this can be viewed as ‘a moral and political restoration’ (2008, p. 227) – of his father, in this case. The fact that he does not do this with his mother is signifcant, as it

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points directly to their relationship. The case that Altarriba Jr is afected more deeply by his father’s death than by his mother’s, which led him to write his biography before hers, even if he died later, speaks about these decisions and these relationships. Through what the authors tell us throughout EAdV’s prologue, we can see Altarriba Jr has inherited his father’s trauma, in line with Marianne Hirsch’s concept of ‘post-memory’. She says, ‘these experiences were transmitted to [the children] so deeply and afectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Post-memory’s connection to the past is thus actually mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation’ (p. 5). Although Petra had died three years prior to Altarriba Sr’s suicide, it was this later event that marked him most. This graphic novel represents an attempt to understand it, and thus the use of a frst-person narrator. He is trying to be in his father’s position, and therefore the use of a frst-person narrator, which cannot be done with his mother. While EAdV can still not be read as an autobiography, as it is not, because Antonio did not write it himself, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson share some terms in their book, Reading Autobiography (2010), that are still relevant to EAdV and EAR. Smith and Watson use several diferent ‘I’ forms to refer to the diferent personas in terms of the narration, which are more easily diferentiated in these cases, since they are not autobiographies. In both works, Altarriba Jr and Kim are the ‘narrating I[s]’ (p. 72) since they are jointly telling this story. Antonio and Petra are two diferent Is: the ‘real person I’ and the ‘narrated I’ (pp. 72–73), the frst being the referent, of each graphic novel, the model, and the second being the result of the narration, the characters represented, who are obviously diferent to the ‘real person I’. Smith and Watson further defne ‘the ideological I’ as ‘the concept of personhood culturally available to the narrator when he tells his story’ (p. 76). In this case, it is from an early twenty-frst century (Spanish) perspective of ‘personhood’ that is valid for almost all twentiethcentury Spain, and there is a necessary contrast of what is understood by a ‘man’ (Antonio) and a ‘woman’ (Petra), a perception that changes from one graphic novel to the next, as her story is considered in depth in EAR. The authors’ perspective on men and women (‘personhood’) defnitely infuences how they portray both main characters and how the Dictatorship afected them diferently, as developed later in this text. Connected to all this is the concept of ‘relationality’, with which Smith and Watson encourage their reader to think of ‘the diferent kinds of textual others – historical, contingent, or signifcant – through which an “I” narrates the formation or modifcation of self-consciousness’ (p. 86). Consequently, considering these are not autobiographies, it is important to highlight that ‘relationality’ occurs here in mainly two diferent ways: frst, in the way the characters are portrayed relating to one another, and second, how the authors – more importantly Altarriba Jr – relate to the characters and the period. Here, Altarriba Jr is relating not only to the characters as his own ‘self-consciousness’ shifts but also to the idea of Antonio and Petra as individual persons, as they relate to others. The way

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Antonio is represented – or is seen making relations – is not only referring to his life and his actions but to the portraits of these relationships is a result of Altarriba Jr’s gain of consciousness: he is searching to be more aware of the period and of his father’s traumata. In EAdV, the reader frst sees the difcult life as a teenager in the countryside, as well as his need to go to Zaragoza and Barcelona in search of independence and happiness. Readers can see him face the political events that lead to the Civil War and become increasingly disappointed with the politics and the Civil War in itself; he loses a great many friends before, during, and after the war. Living in exile in France after the war does not make his life better, and in his return to Spain, which is already fully immersed in the Francoist Dictatorship, he comes to realize his hardships. His bad marriage continues to reinforce a life flled with losses, expectations, and wishes never met, and, fnally, the reader can more easily perceive his depression. EAR, however, points to diferent interpretations of EAdV. It reminds the reader of how the positioning of Antonio as the character and Altarriba Jr as the narrator relate to Petra, allowing some neglected aspects of Antonio’s and Petra’s lives come to light. This points to not only the ‘past purportedly neglected’ (Loureiro, 2008, p. 227) but those aspects that are left aside in our reconstruction of the past, to these exercises of memory, whether as an ‘artistic’ artefact or as a work that is more ‘scholarly’ produced, which reminds the reader that these are, after all, biographies, and not autobiographies. The decision to use a frstperson narrator in EAdV gives the authors a chance to temporarily give Antonio a voice, which Altarriba Jr knew well, because of everything that they had shared and the manuscripts his father had left him, as said in EAdV’s prologue (2009, p. 14). In addition to this, and as stated earlier, he has recently acknowledged in an interview that he had tried to tell his father’s story with a third-person narrator, and the result was never convincing (2019, p. 82). Altarriba Jr does not tell Petra’s story as an autobiography because he cannot. This third-person narrator is absent in EAR, because of the lack of reference material, as stated earlier, and, with it, the sense of autobiography leaves. The narration is a continuation of EAdV, but the attempt to make it seem like an autobiography is not. However, the diferent ‘I’ forms that Smith and Watson use to talk about autobiographies still provide a useful framework for analysis, because Altarriba Jr is still the son of the protagonist. The ‘real person I’ refers to a person with whom he had a strong bond. Furthermore, how he relates to Petra and makes her relate to other characters, is still relevant to consider because she is still not seen as a subject with agency, as I discuss later in this chapter. As stated earlier, Petra died before Antonio, and the fact that Altarriba Jr needed to understand his father’s life and decision to commit suicide is signifcant. This is crucial once we consider the way the author is portrayed as surprised and sad in EAR’s prologue, when he is told Petra could never use her arm and that neither he nor his father had ever known about it, which is signifcantly omitted in EAdV, since this happens before Antonio dies. Her disability seems to serve as an ‘excuse’ to do historical research for the Second Republic, the

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Civil War, and Francoism, for which the authors praised by scholars (Ausente, 2013; Fernández de Arriba, 2015; Sánchez Zapatero, 2017). With regard to EAdV, Daniel Ausente (2013), David Fernández de Arriba (2015), and Javier Sánchez Zapatero (2016) all speak highly of the level of historical research and representation. These three articles, which were published either before or in the year EAR was published (2016), do not question the nature of Petra’s character, her silence, or the way she is represented. Once this new graphic novel appears, Altarriba Jr acknowledges in its epilogue that he had misrepresented her (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, p. 258), and, consequently, the new articles refect this, as if, prior to EAR, it was an invisible issue. In these articles, these scholars seem to accept Altarriba Jr’s text as an apology, and neither of them delves into this misrepresentation nor questions whether it is now better or somehow fxed. Altarriba Jr stated earlier in the epilogue that it was a woman in the audience of the EAdV book presentation who frst asked him about her, which led him to question his own position towards his mother (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, 257). In EAdV, Petra is portrayed as an important factor in Antonio’s depression, due to her religious devotion and sexual restraint. Lynne Hufer poses a question that is appropriate to consider here, due to the change from one graphic novel to the second: ‘how can the other reappear at the site of her inscriptional efacement?’ (2001, p. 4). In this case, it directly questions the omissions regarding the pain and fear Petra feels, frst, because of her mother’s death in childbirth, for which her father almost killed her right after, because he was blaming her for it, or, second, the attempted rape she sufered as a teenager. This is completely unknown in EAdV and, if not for EAR, the reader would never know about these events. Moreover, in EAR’s epilogue, Altarriba Jr acknowledges Petra would frequently talk about the story of her childbirth (p. 258). Being the reason for her disability, this omission directly points towards Altarriba Jr’s consciousness – or lack thereof – of what he and Kim were doing when they portrayed Petra like they did in EAdV. The articles written after its publication had to consciously refect on this previously unknown information. Sánchez Zapatero wrote again about Altarriba Jr and Kim’s work, now including EAR (2017), and he called it a ‘rewriting’ (p. 352). Meanwhile, Danilo Caicedo Tapia defned EAR as ‘a complement’ of EAdV (2019, p. 44). Sánchez Zapatero acknowledges the need of this graphic novel and all the light that it shines on women during the Dictatorship. Vanessa Auroy and Pedro Piedras Monroy are probably the ones who do more justice to this topic. While Auroy analyzes the always secondary, half-hidden places women like Petra occupy in both works – although she also focuses on Ana Penyas’s Estamos todas bien (2017) – Piedras Monroy writes directly about Petra’s individual change from EAdV to EAR, from her ‘frigidity, lack of sensitivity and roughness’ (p. 66, my translation). She is now a full-fedged character, unlike in EAdV, where she is represented, in Altarriba Jr’s own words, ‘to extol [my father]’.

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I fnd two gaps in the existing literature about these two works. First, as stated earlier the fact that none of the articles analyzes how Petra is specifcally misrepresented in EAdV, neither regarding content nor through the analysis of their narratives. Second, no critic questions whether this attempted restoration, as Altarriba Jr sees it (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, p. 258), is efective or whether Altarriba Jr can break the emotional distance with Petra that is seen in EAdV. Therefore, I now briefy analyze two events that are present in both graphic novels: frst, the wedding night; second, when she begins to turn to religion as a safeguard against a second pregnancy, which is seen as simple religious devotion in EAdV. Through this realization, which goes against the portrayal of Petra in EAdV, Petra becomes, to a certain extent, more of a subject, instead of the object she was portrayed as in EAdV. However, her representation is still conveyed through the male gaze, following Mulvey, and it is through active readership involvement that one can and/or must identify with Petra, as discussed later (Polak, 2017, p. 15). This helps see how, despite all progress and amendments that the authors achieve through EAR, some questions or concerns are harder to avoid, as they have continued to be avoided.

Questioning the Gaze Whether we understand EAR as a ‘complement’ to EAdV or not, it is still infuenced by the earlier work in two ways (Caicedo Tapia, 2019, p. 44). First, as Altarriba Jr acknowledged, EAR came as a response to EAdV, in a way to repair the misrepresentation (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, p. 257), and this gave them the realist tone for the drawing. Second, regardless of the position from which the authors are trying to depart in order to publish EAR, the images that I here analyze have obvious echoes in EAdV, which tie them to the very viewing position they are trying to leave behind. While it was obvious that the authors were aware of the political system in which Antonio and Petra were living in EAdV, the roles portrayed and assigned to them are not actively represented as part of a patriarchal, heterosexist system. Petra is portrayed stereotypically through iconography and structure, following Richard Dyer (2006, pp. 357–358). Mostly in EAdV, she might ‘appear to choose [her] social type in some measure, [but] she is condemned to a stereotype’ (p. 355). The frst scene here analyzed, the wedding night: she is sexualized, as an object that is desired, about to be consumed, without any agency. In EAdV, the text and the image work together to emphasize how she helped Antonio feel better, despite the silence into which he was immersing (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2009, p. 147), and that this would happen frequently until the birth of their only child. She is obviously open to sex, without a doubt or pain that may make the reader question her willingness, as Figure 11.1 proves. In EAR, however, this is not so, and, as Figure 11.2 shows, she is willing to engage in intercourse, despite being shown as both scared and in pain. With Figure 11.3, the scene closes, and the reader needs to fll in some gaps.

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FIGURE 11.1

El arte de volar,Altarriba and Kim, 2009, p. 145. © Norma Editorial.

The reader necessarily must fll in the gaps here, and how they do so is crucial. Polak reminds us of the importance of the readers’ understanding of graphic novels and how they make meaning out of what they read, since there is much left unexplained. She says that the meaning we make out of comics automatically has an ethical dimension; who you are and who you are prompted to identify with, how you are prompted to make inferences about what is and isn’t depicted, how you make sense of your own imagination in relation to what is depicted, these are only a few areas in which comics create a diferent ethical universe for the reader. For example, identifying with a perpetrator and identifying with the victim are two very diferent ethical relationships with a text. (2017, p. 15) In EAR, the reader is probably more likely to become emotionally closer to Petra than in EAdV, in which she is portrayed as a less kind, less sympathetic fgure. Regardless, this scene in EAR still presents the action through Antonio, by putting the reader in his position, and as seen later, it is done so to empathize with him. As the story moves forward, the turn to religious devotion demonizes her in EAdV, while in EAR this turn is represented diferently. In this case, the sentence ‘you’re going to like it’ brings back bad memories (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, p. 142), and the reader remembers the attempted rape she sufered as a

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FIGURE 11.2

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El ala rota,Altarriba and Kim, 2016, p. 142. © Norma Editorial.

teenager (pp. 67–68), or, if not remembered, some awful experience with sex or sexual harassment is implied. However, by the end of the scene, she hugs him with a big smile on her face, which the reader needs again to link, this time to the prologue. In this instance, while she is already on her deathbed, the nurses tell Altarriba Jr that, according to what they can tell, Petra could never use her arm. Afterwards, he visits his father, who tells him that he knew nothing about this and, as a result, he wonders what kind of love and caresses they shared, and, fnally, ‘what hug was I born from?’ (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, p. 8). The sex scene, then, is frst portrayed in this way so it can fulfl Altarriba Jr’s wishful thinking, to suggest that they were happy together, at least momentarily, before Antonio started being unfaithful to her as she refused to have sex and before his depression drove them apart. Second, this sex scene is portrayed in such a way that the reader will, frst, position with Antonio and then identify and sympathize with him, so they may understand that Petra was, after all, satisfed with sex, after that initial fear. In

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FIGURE 11.3

El ala rota,Altarriba and Kim, 2016, p. 143. © Norma Editorial.

EAdV, her religious devotion did not help him with his depression, but Antonio’s decisions are completely understood and backed by Altarriba Jr, whereas hers are not, because nothing about her inner life is shown or explained in any way. Through what the authors omit, what and how they tell these stories, the reader easily sympathizes with Antonio and condemns Petra for her behaviour. The moment when Petra tells her husband that she is scared of dying during childbirth in EAR, just like her mother, becomes a crucial piece of information that the reader did not know in EAdV, for which they can understand her religious turn better and more fairly. The beginning of her religious turn early in the marriage, after the birth of their only child, is visually portrayed in similar terms in both graphic novels, although now Petra’s past and sufering are explained for the reader to understand her better. In EAdV, the reader sees her acting according to society’s mandates that she needs to be a devoted Catholic, because that is what is expected. When Antonio sees her praying in tandem with a radio broadcast (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2009, p. 149) while she cooks and takes care of their child, as Figure 11.4 shows, the reader sees her through Antonio’s disappointed eyes. In EAR, this image is represented almost identically but for two key shifts. First, Antonio is erased from the picture, in which she is now the complete focus of attention. Second, with regard to EAdV, she is holding her crucifx with her left hand while rocking the baby’s cradle with her right. In EAR, she holds her crucifx with her right hand, while her left arm, which is the one she cannot use except to hold some lightweight, leans on the countertop (see Figure 11.5). Whereas the image in EAdV emphasizes religion and family through Antonio’s disappointed and judgemental look, the panel in EAR can be seen as a way to protect herself

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FIGURE 11.4

El arte de volar,Altarriba and Kim, 2009, p. 147. © Norma Editorial.

FIGURE 11.5

El ala rota,Altarriba and Kim, 2016, p. 149. © Norma Editorial.

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from a fgure that cannot understand her. According to what the authors share in EAR, right after this last scene, Petra, at bedtime, told her husband about the way her mother died and her consequent fear of dying in the same way at bedtime how her mother died (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, pp. 150–151), which confrms that her refusal to have sex again is based on self-preservation rather than on pure religiosity. Since her religious devotion aligns with the dominant ideology of the Regime, she is merely using any means necessary to survive and avoid her fears. Again, one wonders whether Antonio’s representation of this dialogue can be read as wishful thinking, believing – or wanting to believe – that Petra actually told her husband something related to her traumatic childhood. If so, Antonio’s own traumata and depression, which come through his many losses through his childhood and his experience during the Spanish Civil War, incapacitate his ability to emotionally relate to her. In any case, Altarriba Jr is in some way sharing the guilt for not seeing it, but, to a certain extent he is also making his father for not telling him earlier or for forgetting. One may continue to wonder, then, because, as said in EAR’s epilogue, Altarriba Jr acknowledges that she had told him about her mother’s death (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, p. 258). There are two questions posed about other autobiographies that relate to these two graphic novels. The frst one is related to Lynda Barry’s early statement in her autobiographical comic One! Hundred! Demons! (2002). In a drawing of herself at her writing desk, she wonders, ‘Is it autobiography if parts of it are not true? Is it fction if parts of it are?’ (p. 7). Of Barry’s graphic novel, Jared Gardner writes, ‘The losses and glosses of memory and subjectivity are foregrounded in graphic memoir in a way they can never be in traditional autobiography’ (2008, p. 6). This is even more the case with these two examples here studied, since the authors exist between two positions which they must mediate. On the one hand, there is mediation between what they know from Altarriba Jr’s memories of his father with what he told him throughout his life; on the other, they mediate between the research necessary to know more about Petra’s life, as they gathered the little he knew from her, due to her silence, and the family and historical research required to fll this gap (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, p. 259). Without intending to establish how much there is of fction or facts, alluding to what Gardner states, this fction vs fact diference still leads to the afliative memory about which Sebastiaan Faber talks in the chapter ‘The Spanish Civil War Retold: The Novel as Afliative Act’ (2018). Such ‘act’ refers to the artistic decision to fnd ‘non-fliative types of human relations’ (166). This is the opposite of what Altarriba Jr is doing here, what Faber names ‘fliative’, which is defned by ‘loyalty’ (p. 167). Altarriba Jr is going back to the familial roots, as he remembers and reminds the readers that these are extremely personal stories, in opposition to this afliative trend that Faber describes in his chapter. It is then important to ask what it means that Altarriba Jr is frst paying attention to his father through EAdV, even though Petra had died earlier and, as he acknowledged in EAR, because he apparently knew of her disability right before she died, as the authors admit at the beginning of EAR (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016,

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p. 6). It is also important to remember that, according to Altarriba Jr, she would often talk to him about her mother’s death (p. 258), which did not prevent him from misrepresenting her in EAdV. Altarriba Jr’s blood relation to his parents is what led him to write these two works, and therefore the use of Faber’s ‘fliative memory’. However, in this attempt to tell his father’s story, this empathizing with his father and poorly representing his mother is well framed within the patriarchy, even if it is later re-visited. In Historical Memory, these decisions with regard to tone, style, and perspective are, as Germán Labrador argues, decisions of a political and ethical dimension (p. 124), and they are immersed in this patriarchal system that focuses on the experience of men, leaving women and their experiences in the margins. The second issue is situated here in the authors’ political and ethical decisions, and it points to the way they relate and how they show it narratively, regardless of Altarriba Jr’s recognized attempt to amend his mother’s misrepresentation (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, p. 257). Then, following Mulvey, the arguments she uses for flm can be applied to these two graphic narratives, while still considering Polak’s previous statement, together with McCloud, who also talks about readers’ identifcation in comics. Mulvey says that ‘flms [and also graphic narratives] refect … reveal … and even play … on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual diference which controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle’ (2006, p. 342). She later says, ‘There is no way in which we can produce an alternative out of the blue, but we can begin to make a break by examining patriarchy with the tools it provides’ (p. 343). I here focus on this patriarchal system in which both the works and their scholarship are immersed. More analysis of the images mentioned above helps see that, while the genre and the style have a political and ethical dimension in historical memory, as Labrador Méndez says (2011, p. 124), what is systemically omitted in the scholarly analysis of these works is also political and ethical. In order to consider Mulvey’s argument, it is important to be aware of an earlier quotation from the same text that was quoted earlier: [T]he function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is twofold, she frst symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and second thereby raises her child into the Symbolic. Once this has been achieved, her meaning in the process is at an end, it does not last into the world of law and language except as a memory which oscillates between memory of maternal plenitude and memory of lack. Both are posited on nature. (2006, p. 342) This is crucial, and it is important to remember that Altarriba Jr was consciously more involved with his father than his mother, regardless of what he would later say in an interview that he had distanced from her more in ideological terms than in emotional ones (Fernández de Arriba, 2019, p. 82). This is still doubtful,

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because it seems that the political distance between him and his mother has led him to side with his father more than with his mother. She is frstly harshly judged by her religious devotion, and, secondly, her position and/or perspective is never truly taken into consideration: rather than being the subject of her life, the graphic novel seems a report of facts that happened to her. Altarriba Jr’s tendencies to side with either of them – as well as his reasons – are not sufciently explored, and they would have expanded and helped either of the graphic novels or even both. The importance of this ethical and consequent visual positioning lies in what Mulvey argues later as diferent “pleasures” in flm. First, as she summarizes, she talks about pleasure as ‘an object of sexual stimulation through sight’. At the same time, ‘The second [form of pleasure], developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identifcation with the image seen’ (2006, p. 346). This is easily seen through the images shown earlier in this chapter. Petra, as portrayed in both versions of the wedding night, is the ‘object of sexual stimulation’, regardless of the aims of each project. Plus, she is always seen through Antonio’s eyes and/or his position, since the picture always comes through him, and the reader is situated right below his elbow or behind his back. The image of Petra in the kitchen as she prays further confrms this visual and political position, and considering McCloud’s stand on readers’ identifcation in comics, it is even more so. McCloud states that, regardless of the realism of the picture, the reader will identify with the character they see (1993, p. 36), because the reader identifes with the idea that is represented, not the actual picture (p. 41). Both scenes – sexual intercourse and her prayer – are meant to be seen through Antonio’s eyes. Kim’s artwork is linked to what McCloud says when he states artists can portray realistically ‘in order to objectify [characters]’ (p. 44), which can be applied here. She is always the other, the unreachable object that can never be understood. Actions and events always seem to happen to and around her, but she is never the agent, only the reagent. She is always stoically resisting, and that is apparently her strength. However, even if McCloud’s analysis is accurate, when we consider Polak’s claim about the importance of the readers’ understanding and positioning, the reading can be seen diferently, however slightly. Following Polak, it is important to remember that the way the readers are positioned to sympathize with one character or another is crucial. The scenes analyzed here can then be understood as creative decisions that, whether consciously or not, attempt to guide readers’ experience of the lives of Altarriba Jr’s parents through sympathizing with the author’s father. Readers can, consciously or not, follow their guidance, but the authors’ sympathies are still there. That smile and hug Petra gives her husband during sex can be understood not only as an echo of Altarriba Jr’s wish for his parents being happy together, at least in the beginning of their relationship, but of her need to smile back at Antonio to make him comfortable, as part of her role as wife. Ultimately, as seen later in EAR, when Petra talks to her friend about marriage (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, pp. 166–167), sex is something men want, not women, and they need to be

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satisfed. This is a response by the system instilled in many women, and Petra’s friend exemplifes this. Petra’s friend trusts her priest when he asks her to be patient, because her husband ‘needs to vent, somehow’ (p. 167). Petra’s decision to avoid sex can be then seen as an act of resistance. She is still seen as a largely agentless object, but she can use what little agency is aforded to her to protect herself from violence, sex, and a possible pregnancy. This agency is seen to a certain extent in EAR. She is seen helping a former friend escape from Spain to prevent Francoist Regime to kill him, and in this section, Altarriba Jr is frequently represented still as a child, which can be read as a statement that he remembered this event (Altarriba Jr & Kim, 2016, pp. 177–194). However, there are two noteworthy aspects with regard to this. First, Antonio is the one risking his life to protect Petra’s friend and portrayed, then, as the male saviour. Second, this event is another important issue that is omitted in EAdV. The number of omissions, together with the perspective from which Petra is always portrayed – never her own – is what makes these two graphic narratives problematic. They need to be read together to make sure the image the reader has of Petra is more nuanced and has an awareness of the male gaze which underpins it. After all, Petra is a character here, but she was a real person, and her story could appeal to many readers who have similar experiences. The ‘new’ content introduced in EAR confrms some of the problems in their previous work, although the male gaze is still present. Knowing that EAdV was published frst is important because of its implications with regard to memory and Spanish graphic narratives – impact, visibility – but had Altarriba Jr never been questioned at the book presentation, he probably would have never sought to restore Petra’s image or come to that conclusion. This proves that representation matters, because while the graphic novel may show that good historical research has been done, there are questions to ask ourselves with regard to representation, despite our emotional, ethical, and political ties. These are two commercially successful graphic novels to which academia has paid attention, and they portray the main characters’ living experiences clearly and accessibly, since they point towards the way Francoist society worked in many respects, but they cannot completely escape the vision of women we have inherited from this period, and also earlier. Although the comics’ representation could be seen as being heavily infuenced by the Francoist understanding of – or lack thereof – women and, therefore, a criticism of it, these works were published 33 and 40 years after the death of Franco, respectively, and the need to relate to how we look at the past in general, and women in particular, in this case, is still important to consider.

Conclusion El arte de volar and El ala rota are important in contemporary Spanish graphic narratives because of their impact and because of the authors’ work and research on the protagonists’ lives and life contexts. Having won one of the frst Spanish National Comics Award in 2010, EAdV set the stage for these graphic narratives.

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This graphic novel and this award confrm certain trend within the feld to pay attention to historical memory, and it helped other works get the attention they may not have received, otherwise. Such is the case of Miguel Gallardo’s Un largo silencio, which was published again in 2012 after receiving little interest when it was previously published in 1998. Later works also gathered both media and scholars’ attention, such as Paco Roca’s Los surcos del azar (2013) [The Twists of Fate, translated by Fantagraphics] and Regreso al Edén (2020) [Return to Eden], Sento’s Dr. Uriel (2016), or the recently awarded Estamos todas bien [We’re All Fine, my translation] by Ana Penyas (2017). Penyas’s work further confrms this trend to talk about history and family, but it also flls in this gap regarding female representation in history, because she addresses both her grandmothers’ lives, and she does it from a female perspective. Her graphic novel does not deepen in their lives as much as Altarriba and Kim’s works, but Estamos todas bien represents another change of paradigm with what may come within the feld, departing from previous works, like Altarriba Jr and Kim’s. By avoiding more successfully the male gaze than Altarriba Jr and Kim, Penyas’s graphic novel may set an example of the stories graphic narratives may bring us in the future. Both EAdV and EAR have already opened up the conversation, bringing it into a diferent form and diversifying the products, making them available for a diferent audience. Because of the attention EAdV received for its award in Spain, EAR received attention too, and although it is not a ‘complement’ (Caicedo Tapia, 2019, p. 44), but a reparation and an individual work worthy of attention on its own, part of its impact comes through EAdV. However, EAR augments, corrects, and enhances the meanings of EAdV, allowing the conversation to continue, and it serves as an example of new approaches in graphic narratives. Another example can be Marina Cochet, Juan Sepúlveda Sanchís, and Antonio Mercero’s graphic novel El violeta, in which they talk about the oppression gay men sufered during the Regime, and there can defnitely be more stories, more experiences to which society has often not paid attention. EAdV and EAR do this research and representation, and they tackle ‘the need to come to terms with a past purportedly neglected’, together with the ‘moral and political restoration’ (Loureiro, 2008, p. 227). Francoism and its efects on both the people that lived through it (or died during it) and the current political situation still needs to be addressed for its long-lasting impact on society on different sides. For example, the lack of funding for the Historical Memory Law, published in 2007, has its efects on current research, which is translated into not allowing people to fnd out what happened to their relatives, or literally fnd where their graves are (Saz, 2017). Recent political changes have led the ultraconservative party, VOX, to win representation in Congress, who refuse to call Francoism a Dictatorship (Moltó, 2019), and who have infuenced the traditionally conservative party, Partido Popular, to turn to a more conservative position (López de Miguel, 2018). Plus, the current Partido Popular President continues to mock the victims of the Regime and their relatives (público.es Editorial, 2020),

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although he had done this before VOX existed and before he was the Party President (eldiario.es, 2015). The study of memory reminds us of the importance of remembering the oppression through which our ancestors lived. Doing so on a familial level, with our relatives, is a frst step that often seems the only option, as Faber hints at in his book Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War (2018), though this is not necessarily so. More needs to be done at the level of governmental institutions, because how a society remembers and dialogues with its past, as Labanyi reminds us, has to do with the modernization of it (2007, p. 91). As Faber writes, the political position from which one talks when dealing with memory matters (2018, p. 99) and saying otherwise is an oversimplifcation. Just as Polak argues, how we empathize with a victim or a perpetrator infuences how we read a comic; it also infuences our look at historical events. EAdV and EAR may still have issues with the male gaze through which the authors represent Petra, but they are working with memory and history, and they are helping it take another step forward in the development of a better, fairer history. If history is written by the winners, and the Fascists won the Civil War, not telling these histories and stories helps perpetuate memory as we already understand it, because, in the Spanish context, as Caroline P. Boyd reminds us, the Transition’s Amnesty Law from 1977 was understood more as ‘amnesia’ (p. 135), rather than as ‘Amnesty’. Remembering is as important as delving into, expanding, and questioning the existing Archive.

Note 1 Since El ala rota has not been translated into English, all translations are my own. In the case of El arte de volar, as it was translated by Adrian West and published by Adrian Cape in England [The Art of Flying, 2011], translations are his, when given.

References Altarriba, A. and Kim (2016) El ala rota. Barcelona: NORMA Editorial. ––––––-. (2009) El arte de volar. Barcelona: NORMA Editorial. Auroy, V. (2019) ‘Une vision sexuée de l’Histoire contemporaine espagnole à travers deux œuvres d’Antonio Altarriba et Kim, El arte de volar et El ala rota’ in Cahiers de civilisation espagnole contemporaine. De 1808 au temps présent, 22. Available at: https:// journals.openedition.org/ccec/7916. Ausente, D. (2013) ‘La memoria gráfca y las sombras del pasado’ in García, S. (coord.). Supercómic. Mutaciones de la novela gráfca contemporánea. Madrid: Errata Naturae, pp. 107–135. Barry, L. (2002) One! Hundred! Demons! Seattle: Sasquatch Books. Boyd, C. P. (2008) ‘The Politics of History and Memory in Democratic Spain’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 617(1), pp. 133–148. Caicedo Tapia, D. (2019) ‘Cómics, memoria y procesos masivos de violación de derechos. Una breve visita a Iberoamérica’, FORO: Revista de Derecho, 31, pp. 23–54. Dyer, R. (2006) ‘Stereotyping’ in Gigi, M. and Kellner, D. M. (eds.) Media and Cultural Studies Keywords. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 353–65.

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Eldiario.es. (2015) ‘Pablo Casado: ‘Los de izquierdas son unos carcas, todo el día con la fosa de no sé quién’’, January 14. Available at: https://www.eldiario.es/rastreador /Pablo-Casado-izquierdas-guerra-abuelo_6_345825420.html (Accessed: 8 June 2020). Faber, S. (2018) Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War: History, Fiction, Photography. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Fernández de Arriba, D. (2015), ‘La memoria del exilio a través del cómic. Un largo silencio, El arte de volar y Los surcos del azar’, CuCo, Cuadernos de cómic, 15, pp. 7–33. ———. (2019) ‘Entrevista a Antonio Altarriba’, Memoria y viñetas: la memoria histórica en el aula a través del cómic. València: Desfladero Ediciones, pp. 81–84. Gallardo, M. and Gallardo Sarmiento, F. (2012) Un largo silencio, Bilbao: Astiberri. Gardner, J. (2008) ‘Autobiography’s Biography, 1972–2007’, Biography, 31(1), pp. 1–26. Hirsch, M. (2012) The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. Hufer, L. (2001) ‘‘There is no Gomorrah’: Narrative Ethics in Feminist and Queer Theory’, Diferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 12(3), pp. 1–32. Labanyi, J. (2007) ‘Memory and Modernity in Democratic Spain: The Difculty of Coming to Terms with the Spanish Civil War’, Poetics Today, 28(1) 2007, pp. 89–116. Labrador Méndez, G. (2011) ‘Historia y decoro: Éticas de la forma en las narrativas de memoria histórica’ in Contornos de la narrativa española actual (2000–2010). Un diálogo entre creadores y críticos, pp. 121–130. López de Miguel, A. (2018) ‘El PP de Casado se reafrma en el giro a la derecha: ‘Es lo que pedía nuestra gente’’ in público.es, October 23. Available at: https://www.publico .es/politica/derechizacion-conservadores-pp-casado-reafrma-giro-derecha-pedia -nuestra-gente.html (Accessed: 20 May 2020). Loureiro, Á. G. (2001) ‘Autobiografía: El rehén singular y la oreja invisible’, Anales de Literatura Española, 14, pp. 135–150. ––––––-. (2008) ‘Pathetic Arguments’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 9(2), pp. 225–237. McCloud, S. (1993) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperCollins. Meehan, E. R. (2006) ‘Gendering the Commodity Audience: Critical Media Research, Feminism, and Political Economy’ in Gigi, M. and Kellner, D. M. (eds.) Media and Cultural Studies Keywords. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 311–321. Moltó, E. (2019) ‘El cabeza de lista de Vox por Málaga, preguntado por el franquismo: ‘Creo que no fue una dictadura’’ in eldiario.es, 28 November. Available at: https:// www.eldiario.es/rastreador/Vox-Malaga-preguntado-franquismo-dictadura _6 _840675936.html (Accessed: 20 January 2020). Monroy, P. P. (2017) ‘Recuerdos, emoción, representación. Formas de la memoria de la represión en la España actual’, Studia Romanica Posnaniensia, 44(1), pp. 63–73. Mulvey, L. (2006 [1975]) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in Gigi, M., and Kellner, D. M. (eds.) Media and Cultural Studies Keywords. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 342–352. Polak, K. (2017) Ethics in the Gutter. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Público.es Editorial (2018) ‘Casado se jacta de que las víctimas del franquismo tienen ‘pleno apoyo’ para sacar a sus familiares de las fosas’ in público.es, 16 July. Available at: https://www.publico.es/politica/casado-jacta-victimas-del-franquismo.html (Accessed: 20 May 2020). Sánchez Zapatero, J. (2017) ‘Estrategias reescriturales en el cómic de la memoria: A propósito de El arte de volar y El ala rota’ in Bowie, P., Antonio, J., Jesús, A. and González, G. (eds.) Ficciones nómadas: Procesos de intermedialidad literaria y audiovisual. Madrid: Pigmalión Edypro, pp. 337–363.

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Saz, D. (2017) ‘La falta de fnanciación para la Ley de Memoria Histórica lastra el hallazgo de más de medio centenar de fusilados en Alcañiz’ in eldiario.es, 27 November. Available at: https://www.eldiario.es/aragon/sociedad/fnanciacion-Ley-Memoria -Historica-Alcaniz_0_967654267.html (Accessed: 20 May 2020). Smith, S., and Watson, J. (2010) Reading Autobiography: A guide for interpreting life narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

12 THE PIRATE, THE QUEEN, AND THE HANDKERCHIEF Gráinne Mhaol, an Irishwoman among Men Christina M. Knopf

Comics art in Ireland, practically non-existent until the 1990s, is said to have experienced a creative ‘golden age’ in the 2010s (Barter, 2010; O’Mahony, 2014). Tales of Ireland’s past are among the most popular graphic novels in the country, such as Gerry Hunt’s Blood upon the Rose (2009, O’Brien Press), about the 1916 Easter Rising, and Will Sliney’s Celtic Warrior: The Legend of Cú Chulainn (2013, O’Brien Press), which both garnered media attention for impressive sales (Barter, 2010; O’Mahony, 2014). Though many of these stories are told in English, there is also a growing interest in, and industry for, Irish language (hereafter: Gaeilge) comics (see, for example, O’Loughlin, 2012). The publisher Cló Mhaigh Eo bridges the medium’s growing use of the Irish language with the popular topics of Irish history, legend, and lore. The company published the frst Irish graphic novel (also called coimicí) in 2001 – the award-winning An Sclábhaí that tells the story of St. Patrick’s youth as a slave boy captured by Irish raiders in the ffth century. The company has since released six more coimicí based on the history and mythology of Ireland. This chapter looks at the Cló Mhaigh Eo coimicí Gráinne Mhaol (Grace O’Malley), by writer Gisela Pizatto and artist Bruno Büll (2013), about the legendary pirate queen of sixteenth-century Ireland. The story is notable because women’s place in Irish history was long neglected, and O’Malley’s story is thus found mostly in English annals. Additionally, in her author’s note to the 2018 reprint of the defnitive biography of Grace O’Malley, Anne Chambers observes, ‘International focus on gender equality, the “Me Too” movement and other feminist campaigns, makes Grace O’Malley’s life, albeit lived over four hundred years ago, resonate even more today’ (2018, loc. 73). Indeed, the gender expectations and limits she fought in the sixteenth century are still being faced in the twenty-frst. Likewise, the tensions between the English and the Irish that were mounting then continue to shape Irish politics and identity even now. DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-15

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Gráinne Mhaol can thus be read as a reclamation of Irish history and heritage and as a statement about gender in public life, through its use of Gaeilge and Irish imagery.

Folklore, Forgetting, and Females Historiographies of women in Ireland between 1500 and 1800 are largely nonexistent prior to the early twentieth century; until the late twentieth century they were largely biographical (O’Dowd, 2014). ‘The task of the historian of women in Ireland’, writes Mary O’Dowd, ‘is compounded by the underdevelopment of Irish social history’ (2014, p. 3). Until the twenty-frst century there was a dearth of social investigations into Ireland’s past (O’Dowd, 2014), likely corresponding with the contestation surrounding how the country’s past should be remembered in terms of public memory and national identity (McBride, 2001). As Tymoczko notes, ‘In the course of centuries of conquest and subjection, Ireland’s sovereignty, wealth, and land were handed over to the English conquerors’, and with the transference of Ireland’s material substance to England ‘much of Ireland’s culture was transmuted to English standards as well, resulting in the ascendancy of English law, English decorum, English mores, and English language and literature’ (1999, p. 19). Women’s place in this history is particularly controversial, especially in regard to their roles in military engagements. The military hierarchies and religious institutions that historically structured Irish life promoted conservative views on gender relations, including divisions of labour that confned women primarily to subservient domestic roles (Sales, 1997; O’Dowd, 2014). With socio-political identities based on community loyalties and religious afliations, this has meant that women and women’s concerns were long invisible (Sales, 1997). The story of Grace O’Malley (Gráinne Ní Mháille), also known as Gráinne Mhaol (‘Baldheaded Grace’ for youthfully shearing her locks to pass for a boy on her father’s ship) ‘or Granuaile, as she is more familiarly known in Ireland’ (Chamber, 2018, loc. 119), is no exception. Biographer Anne Chambers notes, ‘Like many of her sisters, Granuaile was also a victim of the mainly male orientation of history’ (2018, loc. 122). To be recorded in Irish history, ‘heroines were required to ft a specifc mould’ of patriotism, religiosity, purity, and duty (Chambers, 2018, loc. 124). Granuaile overstepped the bounds of Irish womanhood. She may be viewed as symbolic of contested Irish identity, for while her character became the stuf of Irish lore, her infuence became a matter of English record. O’Dowd notes that the early English accounts of Granuaile ‘mocked rather than admired’ the woman pirate (2014, p. 253) and that images of her as a strong, independent woman were developed within later Gaelic folk traditions. That Granuaile’s memory should be so bifurcated between older English history, and newer Irish lore is indicative of not only the tensions surrounding national identity and women’s history but is also refective of Granuaile’s life and times.

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Granuaile lived circa 1530–1603, the same years that marked the Tudor conquest of Ireland. She was born to Owen O’Malley, the chieftain of a clan that ruled the area around Clew Bay on the west coast for more than 300 years. When Granuaile’s father died, she became the matriarch of her clan, and she carried on the O’Malley business, building wealth from legitimate trade with France and Spain, piracy, and levies on ships in exchange for safe passage to Galway. She was skilled at navigating, and circumventing, the Irish political structure of clans and chieftains by forging strategic alliances (Rennie, 2018). Sixteenthcentury Ireland was politically fragmented and punctuated by war with some military disturbance occurring nearly every decade. O’Dowd writes, ‘Although there are occasional stories of “she-soldiers”, women did not normally engage in military confict’ (2014, p. 31). Granuaile’s story is remembered, in part, because a woman fghting in, let alone leading, battles was rare. Though ‘classical writers testifed to the fghting skills of Celtic women’, Chambers notes that the rise of Christianity in the country accompanied ‘the demise in Ireland of a society ruled by powerful warrior women’ (2018, loc. 406–410). But, in the economic and socio-political chaos that resulted from the imposition of English law, language, culture, and religion, complicated by the periodic intervention of Spain and the Anglo-Spanish War, Granuaile’s primary goal was merely the survival of herself, her family, and her clan (Chambers, 2018). It is the historical placement of Granuaile that makes the telling of her story in Gaeilge so signifcant. Camille C. O'Reilly writes, Once the sole primary language of communication, since the AngloNorman invasion of 1169, Irish has been at odds with the language of invaders. Still, Irish remained the primary means of communication for almost every group and class up until the seventeenth century. (2001, p. 78) England’s 1601 victory in the Siege of Kinsale, the 1607 Flight of Earls, and the anglicizing of Gaelic Ireland with the 1609 Ulster Plantation resulted in Ireland losing much of its Irish-speaking nobility (Ó Donnaile, 1997; Ekin, 2015). From that time, Gaeilge was ‘perceived as a threat by the various ruling groups’, and ‘eforts were made to establish English as the language of law, government and the social elite’, with Gaeilge speakers being politically and economically marginalized (O’Reilly, 2001; p. 78). Beginning in the nineteenth century, however, eforts to revive Gaeilge began to form, with particular attention given to ancient history in the reafrmation and validation of Irish language and culture (Crowley, 1996). Granuaile’s life was a marker of the loss of Irish law and language. She lived during the years that saw Ireland’s fnal fall to English rule, and though she fought to save her people from England’s hand, it was that hand, and not Ireland’s, that recorded her story. That story now told in Gaeilge through Gráinne Mhaol reclaims Granuaile’s place in Irish history and reafrms Irish culture through

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language, arguably making an anti-British political statement. Not an English word can be found in the book, despite the presence of British characters and English infuences in the story itself and the predominance of English usage among Ireland’s population. Comic art is known for its use of exaggeration and simplifcation to make characters easily recognizable and their personalities readable (see, for example, Eisner, 2008; Bramlett, 2012). Acknowledging that language use and varieties may be similarly associated with various identities, roles, settings, and purposes (Finegan 2004), Bramlett (2012) has suggested that the linguistic performance by characters in comics can also serve as stereotypes, shorthand, or cues for the representations of characters. Douglas Hyde, leader of the Gaelic League/Conradh na Gaeilge, argued that Gaeilge represented Ireland’s strongest claim to nationhood and was thus the epitome of Irish national identity (see Mac Póilin, 1997). And, despite cultural revival eforts to save a language that is spoken by only a few tens of thousands left in the world, the use of Gaeilge is historically politicized as part of Northern Ireland’s rebellions (Cahill & Ó Cathail, 2007).

Mise en scène and Framing Acknowledging the gendered tensions in interpretations of Ireland’s past, the chapter is particularly interested in how Granuaile is represented and thus focuses on the comic’s mise en scène. As described by Pascal Lefèvre (2012), ‘Mise en scène in comics concerns the representation of a scene by specifc organization of its virtual but fgurative elements such as décor, props, and characters’ (2012, p. 73). Other key elements considered in mise en scène analysis include character placement, staging, costuming, visual density, and framing (Giannetti, 1995; Barsam & Monahan, 2010). Analysis of mise en scène and framing allows the critic to both describe the visual techniques and understand their functions in conveying information and narrating the story (Lefèvre, 2012). Meaning can be both derived and created through the interpretation of mise en scène elements (Sreekumar & Vidyapeetham 2015), making it an appropriate approach to consider the representation and re-presentation of a fgure whose life, as described below, is both the stuf of myth as it is a matter of record. With regard to framing, the story begins and ends with Celtic imagery premised on the ancient art of spinning and weaving in Ireland. The story opens with a picture of a spider perched in its web in the corner of door to a room in which an elderly Granuaile remembers and records her life story as presented in the coimicí. In Celtic myth, the spider is associated with old oral traditions, crawling onto the pages of recorded folklore. It is a benefcent being whose spinning abilities connect it not only to the weaving of tales but to the loom and spinning wheel, linking it with goddess traditions and the weaving of fate (Sinn, 2012). The Greek myth of Arachne and her tapestry of romantic adventures also points to aspects of gender and power in O’Malley’s tale, as suggested by Nancy Miller’s (1986) concept of ‘arachnology’ and the gendered subjectivity in writing. By

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presenting the story refectively, the narrator (the imagined O’Malley) can put events into a larger socio-political and historical context. As noted by Jalena Petrovic (2017), the Arachne myth articulates an epistemology of resistance through the continuous process of ‘women-becoming’ – an ongoing redefnition of the feminine and the use of storytelling to subvert the patriarchy. Petrovic writes, In ancient texts women’s authorship was constructed through the activity of diferent mythological weavers, knitters and embroiderers who, while creating and producing material goods, fabrics and such, had often used the “texture” of this fabric to write down their messages, opinions and visions. (2017, para. 2) The idea of Granuaile as one of these weavers of stories is reinforced as her story nears its end. Full-page illustrations are adorned with woven Celtic knots, including a Dara knot and a Trinity knot. Both are set into the page corners the way the spider’s web sits in the doorway corner. The Dara, or ‘doire’, knot is representative of the intricate root system of the oak tree, for which it is named, which was sacred to the Druids and the Celts. It symbolizes wisdom, strength, leadership, and power (Rogador, 2019). In the coimicí, it is shown in shades of orange and green, refecting the colours of the modern Irish fag, thereby linking wisdom, strength, and power to Ireland itself. The Trinity knot is prevalent in Irish history and is thought to be connected to solar and lunar cycles, the elements of earth, fre, and air, or to the mind, body, and soul (Rogador, 2019). The knots, intricately woven like a spider’s web, frame Granuaile within longstanding Irish values of physical and spiritual fortitude, while the spider’s web hints at the struggles of women in Irish culture and women’s resistance against patriarchy through weaving. The remaining mise en scène analysis focuses on four key scenes in Granuaile’s story as presented in Gráinne Mhaol: the time she earned the nickname ‘Baldheaded Grace’ by dressing as boy to board her father’s ship; an on-board battle in which she displayed both violence and skill, of which various tales were passed down through Irish folklore; her divorce from her second husband; and her meeting with Queen Elizabeth I, the machinations of which guaranteed her place in English history.

‘Baldheaded Grace’ Accounts of a young Granuaile suggest that she was disinterested in a womanly life centred on hearth and home. She longed for a life at sea, but her parents forbid her from joining her father on his ships because of her gender; the sea was too dangerous a place for a girl, especially the daughter of a chieftain. But she would not be kept away from the sea, and there is a story of her that she cut her hair, disguised herself as a boy, and stowed away on one of her father’s ships. Discovering

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her close-cut hair, Granuaile’s father reportedly nicknamed her Gráinne Mhaol or Baldheaded Grace (Carroll & Dillon, 2013). In Gráinne Mhaol, artist Bruno Büll depicts this decisive moment in Granuaile’s life across six panels. The frst is at the bottom of a left-hand page, following two bucolic landscapes over which Granuaile, in frst-person narration, reveals that though home life on the seashore is peaceful and beautiful, she wanted more. In this frst panel of her haircut, the audience looks past a stone doorway towards a simple wood-frame bed covered in a pink blanket. A pile of red hair lies on the foor beside the bed, long red tresses fall from an unseen source above, to the sound of ‘TSEAC, TSEAC, TSEAC’ – ‘hack, hack, hack’. Moving up, to the frst panel of the facing page, readers see a tight shot of a hand setting a pair of clippers onto the corner of a table, one red curl still caught between the blades. In the next panel, readers look down on the corner of a plain room: a wooden trunk with a basin and pitcher atop it sits against one wall. A cot, with a white sheet rumpled at its bottom, faces along the next wall. Two more cots can just be seen at the bottom of the panel; an assortment of clothes laid out across one. In the next panel is a person shown from chin to hip. The abdomen is bare, the chest wrapped in white bindings, and the arms raised to pull on a white tunic. Beneath this, the next panel focuses closely on a brown boot being pulled up at the ankle. The closing panel, which dominates the page, taking about one-third of the total space, features a fgure in partial silhouette standing in front of a large oval mirror. To the side of the silhouette is the corner of the table holding the discarded clippers and their trapped lock of hair. Refected in the mirror is the image of the newly transformed Granuaile, looking the part of a ship’s cabin boy in black breeches, white tunic, high-buttoned green vest, and close-cut hair in which she has placed the fngers of one hand, her other hand placed confdently upon her hip. Across these six panels are just three lines of narration. In the frst, appearing with the falling locks of red hair, Granuaile explains that home life was not enough to make her happy: ‘THEASTAIGH I BHFAD NÍOS MÓ NÁ SIN UAIM’ – ‘I wanted much more than that’. The next line of text accompanies the image of clothing strewn across a cot: ‘ANOI MO CHULTACHA NUA’ – ‘Now my new costume’. And the third appears beneath Granuaile’s refection in the mirror: ‘NÍ AITHNEOIDH ÉINNE MÉ’ – ‘No one will recognize me’. That fnal moment, when Granuaile declares ‘No one will recognize me’, is dominant in the mise en scène. It is the largest, most dense, and most colourful panel on the page. The prominence of the mirror in this panel suggests the event’s signifcance. In cinema, mirror shots draw the audience’s ‘attention to a pivotal moment in the plot or in the development of the protagonist’ (Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010, p. 76). Looking into a mirror is to confront oneself and to confront the self as ‘Other’, thus marking a psychological transformation. The mirror shot marks a moment of rupture that ‘immerses [the reader] deeper into the (often split) personality of the protagonist’ (Elsaesser & Hagener, 2010, p. 77). For Granuaile, she is navigating and reconciling her self-identity with the

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gendered expectations of society. It is a key moment for Granuaile’s story because this is when she determines that her life will not be dictated by the conventions of womanhood. This pivotal moment of empowerment is indicative of an observation made by former President of Ireland Mary McAleese that Granuaile serves as a reminder that in the ongoing ‘battle for gender equality’ that there is yet ‘a vast reservoir of female potential, talent, experience and knowledge just waiting to change to the face of the Earth’ (in Chambers, 2018, loc. 105–109). The moment Granuaile became ‘baldheaded’ was the moment she stopped waiting to change her world.

Warrior Woman Called ‘a nurse to all rebellions’, Granuaile was viewed by her enemies as a brutal pirate, who ruled the coast through violence and thievery, and she proved her mettle time and again in battle (Chambers, 2018; O’Dowd, 2014). Various stories of her courage and skill have been recounted in poems, songs, and folktales (for examples, see Rennie, 2018), and one brutal fght scene in Gráinne Mhaol highlights Granuaile’s reputation and draws attention to cultural concerns surrounding women, bloodshed, and violence. While sailing with her father, Eoghan, the O’Malley ships were overtaken by the English feet. Granuaile’s father ordered her to go belowdecks to the cabin, away from the fghting. Granuaile disobeyed his command, believing her presence on deck to be necessary for their survival. Her act of disobedience is depicted in the comic over a two-page, ten-panel, spread. The sequence opens with a view of Granuaile’s father at the ship’s wheel, smoke rising behind him, as he shoots an armoured English seaman in the foreground. Blood can be seen fying from the profled forehead of an Englishman as the shot rings out – ‘BEAING’! Her father yells, ‘DMANÚ AIR, A GHRÁINNE, SÍOS LEAT A DEIRIM’ – ‘I tell you, Grace, get down’! Granuaile’s defance is captured in the next two panes: is a tight close-up of Granuaile’s eyes, squinted with anger and determination, below which is an image of Granuiale from forehead to hip, shoulders back, bloodied sword held erect beside her, hair blowing in the wind, mouth opened in defant rage screaming ‘ÁÁÁ’; a starburst of accent lines around her suggest a release of emotion, energy, and determination. The next panel is in the centre of the page: it is dominant – taking up more than one-third of the space. Most of the background is shrouded in curls of smoke, except for a mast that emerges on the left side of the panel. Beneath the mast a man in movement is hidden by the text expressing Granuaile’s decision to fght. Granuaile herself is centred in the panel, lunging forward and to the right as she drives a sword through the chest of a man in the lower right foreground. The tip of her sword can be seen poking out of the victim’s back, surrounded by a spray of blood. A look of fury is on her face, and her non-sword hand is balled into a fst. She is garbed in stereotypical pirate attire, a black colonial chapeau on her head, large hoops in her ears, a laced leather corset over a white tunic displaying generous

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cleavage, and a wide black belt with holstered gun holding up black breeches. The fnal panel on the page is long and narrow, showing a close-up of Granuaile in profle. She is facing the reader’s right, with long red hair fying behind her, accented by the edge of her large hoop earring. Her eyes are still squinted and mouth still open in fury. A spray of blood streaks across her cheek. In the narration, she refects, ‘NÍ THUIGIM CONAS A THÁINIG ME SLÁN. IS DÓCHA GO RAIBH NA DÉITHE DO MO CHOSAINT’ – ‘I do not know how I survived. Maybe the gods protected me’. The gutter space at the edge of the page is splattered with sprays of blood, adding to the general sense of violence and chaos. The fve panels on the face page are calmer. There is less smoke, less blood. In the frst panel, readers again see Granuaile’s father at the wheel of the ship, but this time facing away from the reader as he aims his gun at an advancing enemy. The gun ‘clics’ but does not fre. The next panel shows a close-up of Eoghan’s dismayed face behind the barrel of his useless gun, which is aimed directly at the reader; his eyes are wide, his mouth agape, ofset by a fringe of dishevelled grey hair. A wide panel beneath changes perspective, and readers are now placed behind, rather than in front of, the attacker from the English navy. The Englishman’s sword swings back (‘PIIIIIIISSSSSSS’), and he runs forward, his hair fying behind him. Eoghan drops his gun and screams. Eoghan’s head and shoulders make up the next panel, as he finches to the reader’s left, teeth gritted, one eye closed against a splash of blood. The scene shifts in the last panel on the page, to a thigh-to-hat image of Granuaile, leaning forward, clutching her bloody sword, one shoulder bared by a battle-tattered tunic, teeth clenched, as she cries, ‘ABÚÚÚÚÚ’ – ‘victory’! The fght concludes over the following three pages, in which Granuaile kills the attacker threatening her father and then gives him her gun before they both continue the fght. One British ship is burned, the other three escape or fee. Eoghan criticizes, but does not discipline, Granuaile for disobeying his order. And when the galley returns to Clare Island, she is put in charge of her frst ship. The heavy use of blood across these panels and Granuaile’s repeated expressions of rage draw attention to the cultural issues surrounding women and violence. Women have a complex relationship with violence in Western cultures which, Elshstain writes, ‘are the heirs of a tradition that assumes an afnity between women and peace, men and war’ (1995, p. 4). ‘Vengeance’ is etymologically feminine, premised in the Latin root word vindicta. It can be traced back to Early Antiquity, through the vengeful murderesses of Nemesis, Medea, Hecuba, Clytemnestra, and Electra, and to the Biblical story of Judith, which combines seduction, deception, and violence, highlighting feminine vengeance as morally suspect. Female vengeance is seen as a cruel, emotionally driven, act threatening socially assumed gender behaviour and amplifying fears of the uncontrollability of woman, while masculine ideas of revenge are more accepted as a heroic virtue, based on courage and honour (Camilleri, 2015). Such fears of unchecked sexuality or womanhood are amplifed with the introduction of guns. Myrttinen writes that ‘Conventional wisdom is that men enjoy a

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“special relationship” with weapons’, particularly frearms (2003, p. 37), whereas for Browder, ‘Guns – and the possibilities of violence they promise – in the hands of women whose sexuality is unregulated or unorthodox have seemed especially dangerous’ (2006, p. 12). It is, therefore, signifcant that while folklore has connected Granuaile’s fghting prowess with the blunderbuss, Gráinne Mhaol chose to feature her fghting with a sword, while her father fought with a gun. In this way, the comic works to make Granuaile’s violence admirable. The depicted battle sequence, for example, helps to cast Granuaile within a socially acceptable image of a violent woman by demonstrating that she fought to aid her father, making her a hero worthy of cultural commemoration and not just a pirate of legend. Despite the ancient tradition of Celtic women warriors, by Granuaile’s time, ‘Women who appeared to challenge the hapless image identifed for them by the legal systems were treated harshly. They were shunned by local custom and severely punished by the judiciary’ (O’Dowd, 2014, p. 253). Thus, English literature mocked the military activities of Granuaile, and Irish poets preferred an image of her as a charitable clan matriarch in a time when the local custom was to socially ostracize a violent woman (O’Dowd, 2014, p. 253). Gráinne Mhaol thereby salvages this aspect of Granuaile’s reputation, demonstrating her violence as honourable, not only to her people but to her gender. By saving her father and surrendering her (unused) frearm to him, her violence embraces, rather than eschews, feminine responsibilities to hearth and home. Her comic book portrayal thus becomes similar to that of woman warrior, a single woman who takes up arms in accordance with female roles of victim and/or subordinate (for portrayals of violent women see Berkowitz, 2005; Howard & Prividera, 2008). In Gráinne Mhaol, Granuaile is a victim of the English, defending her father to whom she is subordinate, as indicated when she gives him her blunderbuss. Thus, actions that were mocked or ignored in her time are reclaimed as honourable according to more contemporary sensibilities.

Keeper of the Castle Seafaring skills and displays of violence were only some of the ways in which Granuaile belied traditional womanhood. Even in the roles of wife and mother, she defed expectations. Chambers writes, Convention did not deter her from superseding her more reckless frst husband in his role as chieftain, or from avenging his death. Neither did it deter her from divorcing her second husband, from taking a lover, from reuniting with her [ex-]husband who … would seem to have been content to walk in her shadow. As a mother, much to Queen Elizabeth’s amazement, she did not hesitate to ‘chastise’ one son by attacking his castle and driving of his cattle herds when he foolishly allied with her sworn enemy, or from saving the life of her youngest son when her ship was attacked by North African pirates. (2018, loc. 130)

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Moreover, such actions – particularly her divorce – again highlighted her unique placement between Irish and English social and legal structures. Granuaile culturally operated within the Gaelic society of the west of Ireland, but she all took strategic advantage of allying herself with English governance when it suited her purposes (O’Dowd, 2014). Granuaile availed herself of the English law that gave widows the right to dower or a third of their husbands’ estates, and she also took advantage of the Gaelic customs of divorce and separation, which were simultaneously in practice until the seventeenth century (O’Dowd, 2014). When she tired of her second husband, Risteard (Richard) Bourke, she used an old Brehon Law to achieve a divorce (O’Dowd, 2014; Carroll & Dillon, 2013). While ‘Iron Richard’, as he was known for either an iron suit he wore or for iron mines on his land, and his men were away, Granuaile locked herself into his home of Carraigahowley (Rockfeet) Castle. Upon Richard’s return, she called out to him three times, ‘Richard Bourke, I dismiss you’, which both granted her a divorce and left her entitled to the castle and its harbour – which was likely all she had wanted from the marriage to begin with (Carroll & Dillon, 2013; Chambers, 2018). This event is captured across two pages of 11 panels in Gráinne Mhaol. It is one of the more dialogue-rich scenes in the book, with the story told through the exchange between Granuaile and Risteard rather than through Granuaile’s frst-person narration. The eye is drawn frst to the top panel of the frst page, which features the towering Carraigahowley Castle, against a blue sky. At its base, to the left, is the sea and, to its right, a group of men wondering why they cannot get into the locked castle. The day is bright with few clouds. The following panel is visually split between the blue sky and the dark grey stones of the castle, between which is Granuaile, in a golden dress, peering over the castle rampart. She laughingly calls out that Risteard must stay there and is not allowed in: ‘HAHÁ! NÍ LIGFIDH MUISE! TÁ AN DLÍ ANN, A RISTEAIRD’! The next panel, in the centre of the page, gives a tight, downward-facing view of Risteard, dressed in a dark red shirt and cape with blue trousers; he looks up at his ex-wife, calling her name in supplication, ‘A GHRAINNE’! In the next panel, the perspective has changed to look at Risteard at eye-level, but he is shown from the back, still looking up at the castle, as he notes ‘NACH Í ATÁ GLIC’ – ‘I am a fool’, because she is entitled by law to take the feet. Behind him, and in the foreground of the panel, are two of his men looking on. The next panel focuses on Risteard’s observers; shown from the shoulder up, the man on the reader’s left, dressed in blue, explains to the man on the right, who is dressed in red, that according to the law, anyone can ask for a divorce after a year, and that appears to be what Granuaile is doing. The last panel on the frst page is also the last panel in the scene to show Granuaile. In bust against the sky, a hand waving at neck height, she calls down, ‘DIÚLTAÍM DUIT, A RISTEAIRD’ – ‘Thank you, dear Richard’! On the second page, the last fve panels of the scene focus on Risteard and his men as they mount their horses and leave the castle. Risteard remarks that

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Granuaile is a she-devil and that there is nothing to do but for him and his men to leave because the law is with her. But he also knows that she still cares for him and that this divorce was about getting his castle and ships. In the last panel, Risteard is seen leading his men as they ride away from the castle and towards the reader. Though Granuaile is not pictured, her narration overlays the image and notes, ‘CÉ GO RAIBH MUID SCARTHA DE RÉIR DLI CHÓNAIGH MUID LE CHÉILLE CUID MHAITH AR FEADH SEACHT M BLIANA DÉAG EILE … THUIGEAMAR A CHÉILE’ – ‘Although we were separated by law, we lived together another seventeen years … We understood each other’. The entire scene is visually framed by Carraigahowley Castle, which appears in entirety in the frst panel on the top of the left-hand page and in the last panel on the bottom of the right-hand page. In both, the castle is seen in its larger landscape, surrounded by rolling green hills and the sea. Sixteenth-century castles, such as Carraigahowley, practically served ‘as residential, administrative and defensible foci within their landscapes’, notes Creighton, ‘yet their iconic rôles as symbols of power and infuence coexisted with, and sometimes transcended their military importance’ (2002, p. 65). The castle was a clear symbol of noble authority, and its appearance in literature often functions to emphasize the exceptional nature of the characters within its walls (Liddiard, 2012). Granuaile is thus bestowed with the noblesse and power that is associated with the image of the castle. Indeed, as she calls down from the ramparts to dismiss her husband, she appears to be a physical part of the structure, like a gargoyle protecting its keep. Carraigahowley Castle dominates the landscape, rising between the sea and the road, Granuaile ensconced in its solid walls. The image is representative of Granuaile’s rule by sea and land and her continued strength against the forces of nature, society, and politics that could undermine the safety of her clan. The cluster of men at the castle’s gate is seen in most of the panels depicting Granuaile’s divorce scene. In literature, ‘the castle gate marks the cultural boundary between the castle and the outside world’ (Liddiard, 2012, p. 142). The gate in Gráinne Mhaol efectively marks the division between the public, or outside, world of man and the private, or inside, world of woman in sixteenthcentury Ireland. But in this instance, Granuaile has redefned the dynamic. By taking control from inside the home, she has extended her political infuence in the greater outside world; the household she controls as a wife, or ex-wife, is also a military fortifcation and a governing seat. Her superior position in this event is visually depicted by her physical position relative to Risteard and his men; she looks down on him, and he looks up at her. The scene inverts traditional gender power relations in which men are dominant and women subservient. Not only is this signifcant for sixteenth-century Ireland but for modern Ireland as well. Twentieth- and twenty-frst-century Irish society experienced uneasiness about the existence of and threats to the patriarchal dividend – the economic and social advantages to men as a group through the maintenance of an unequal gender order (O'Connell, 1995, p. 82). Within these social and cultural structures, poverty among women and women’s ability to balance paid work and childcare have

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been notable problems in Irish society (O’Connor, 2006). A 2013 depiction of Granuaile gaining political and personal power over and from men is, therefore, a statement about gender relations and women’s contributions to society in both the sixteenth and twenty-frst centuries.

The Queen’s Handkerchief By the 1590s, Granuaile’s reign was increasingly threatened by the English government. She, her family, and her clan were being personally persecuted by Sir Richard Bigham, governor of Connaught. In 1593, Granuaile wrote her frst letter to Queen Elizabeth I. When Granuaile’s troubles escalated in Ireland – which included her imprisonment, the capture of one son, the killing of another son, and the starvation of her people – Granuaile set sail to visit the Queen in person (Chambers, 2018). The ofcial paperwork required for the visit is the stuf of history; what transpired in the conversation between the two women – both female rulers in patriarchal times, both of a similar age – is the stuf of legend and lore. It is believed that Granuaile attended court with her grey hair bound in a knot, dressed in a plain woollen cloak, or was perhaps barefooted and clothed in a traditional Irish costume. It also said that the women conversed in Latin, Elizabeth knowing no Gaelic and Granuaile unable to speak English (Chambers, 2018; Carroll & Dillon, 2013) – though she composed ‘a series of petitions in the English language to the queen and her advisers’ (O’Dowd, 2014, p. 27). No matter how it happened, the results of the meeting were a peaceable alignment of England’s interests with Granuaile’s. The pirate’s meeting with the Queen unfolds over the course of seven pages in Gráinne Mhaol. This analysis focuses on just three pages, in which a cultural misunderstanding threatens the burgeoning diplomatic relationship. Assorted fanciful tales recount how Granuaile is thought to have bested Elizabeth I in their time together. The tale that is told by Pizatto and Büll is of a moment when Granuaile requires a handkerchief. The Queen ofers her a lace-edged one, which Granuaile uses and then tosses into a nearby fre, shocking Elizabeth and her attendants who expected her to place the fne cloth in her pocket – an idea that disgusts Granuaile. The event is shown across 12 panels. The frst three panels depict Granuaile sneezing, Elizabeth handing her a handkerchief, and Granuaile using it. Two panels, one left-justifed on the page and the other rightjustifed, then focus on Granuaile’s hand as she releases the handkerchief into the fre. Between, and behind, the interior edges of these panels is an image of Elizabeth’s face, mouth agape in surprise. The remaining panels appear across two facing pages and are the primary focus of analysis. The frst page is comprised of just three panels and is dominated by the fames of the fre. At the top are two small panels showing a close-up of the burning logs as the handkerchief comes to rest on them. The third panel flls most of the page, and it places readers inside the freplace, looking out across the logs and fames to see the back of Granuaile, arms slightly raised in a defensive

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posture, looking at the Queen, who has one hand to her open mouth in surprise and the other reaching out as if to retrieve the doomed handkerchief. Behind her are two male attendants also looking on with open mouths, raised arms, and grasping fngers. On the opposite page, the fre recedes to the background, in three panels that focus on the women in conversation. Elizabeth wears a black dress with pufy white sleeves, accented with red and gold. An Elizabethan collar frames her face beneath a red highbrow updo. Granuaile wears a high-necked green and white dress with gold and red accents in Celtic design. Her greying hair is down but restrained in a snood. They both look the part of royalty, and the shifting perspective provided across the three panels helps to further envision them as equals. In each panel, Elizabeth is on the reader’s left and Granuaile on the right. The frst, at the top, focuses on Elizabeth’s face as she looks at Granuaile, whose profle is only partially visible. A thought-bubble emanates from both women: Elizabeth thinks, ‘NACH AISTEACH IAD NA GAEIL’ – ‘how strange the Irish are’, and Granuaile thinks, ‘NACH AISTEACH IAD NA SASANAIGH’ – ‘how strange the English are’. In the next panel, the reader sees the two women equally from the side as the Queen laughs and Granuaile smiles. In the fnal panel, readers look down on the scene, from behind Elizabeth and to front-andside of Granuaile, who notes they continued to talk as though nothing had happened – ‘ACH LEAN SÍ UIRTHI AG CAINT AMHAIL IS NÁR THARLA AON RUD’. Throughout the sequence, the freplace and its roaring fre are prominent. In Zoroastrian religion, Isani notes, fre is ‘an ancient and complex symbol associated with both creation and destruction’ (1972, p. 385). Walcutt, in his analysis of Moby Dick, argues that fre represents both good and evil; it provides light that destroys darkness, but it is also capable of harm and destruction, and in understanding ‘that “evil” and “good” are not separate but one, fre brings about a kind of enlightenment’ (1944, p. 307). Psychoanalysis adds that fre is also connected to ideas of sexuality, power, and life (Flournoy, 1920). As the backdrop for, and deus ex machina in, the story of Granuaile’s meeting with Queen Elizabeth, the fre highlights the scene’s dynamics. These two powerful women, at a time when women as a class had no power, are enemies who fnd new understanding through a burned handkerchief. Fire’s symbolism of sexuality, power, destruction, and renewal are all present in the moment, and visuals of the fre help the reader to sense the intensity and signifcance of the meeting and conversation. Additionally, given Granuaile’s precarious position – as an Irishwoman and a pirate – it is all the more notable that she was not fguratively burned by the literal burning of the handkerchief.

Conclusion Women have long been overlooked in the history of Ireland, and Irish history has long been shaped by English infuence (O’Dowd, 2014; Tymoczko, 1999). Gráinne

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Mhaol makes inroads towards addressing both of these factors by presenting the pirate queen, Grace O’Malley, as a fgure who corresponds to the standards of heroic and romantic Irish history, who is a woman of historical signifcance, and whose very story is Irish. She is portrayed as not letting her womanhood interfere with her obligations to her clan, while her gendered transgressions are tempered through womanly devotion to her kin. She is shown to have the sword-fghting prowess of celebrated woman warriors in Gaelic folklore and her violence is made virtuous through its use in defence of her family. She is not only presented as a formidable foe to English rule, but the use of Gaeilge and Celtic symbols to tell her story marks her as culturally and politically as Irish. In sum, Granuaile’s story is told through Gráinne Mhaol in such a way as to make it relevant not only for the history, folklore, and public memory of Ireland but also for readers navigating the ongoing struggles for gender equality in the West today. As Granuaile says at the end of Gráinne Mhaol, ‘ANOIS AGUS MÉ AG FÉACHAINT UAIM AMACH AR AN FARRAUIGE AGUS AR NA TAILTE SEO AR THROID MÉ AN OIREAD SIN ARE SON … NÍL AR M’INTINN ACH AN SAOL ATÁ ROMHAM AS SEO AMACH’ – ‘As I look out at the sea and lands for which I fought so much … I think of the life ahead now’.

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PART 4

Historiographics

13 EXPRESSIONS OF SUBJECTIVITY Recent Historical Events Represented in TwentyFirst-Century Chilean Autobiographical Comics Paloma Domínguez Jeria and Mariana Muñoz

Remembering is both an individual and a collective act. On the one hand, subjects can create their own narratives, focusing on the atmosphere, sensations, and emotions that certain events evoke (El Refaie, 2012, p. 121); on the other hand, the individual memory is pinned to the social sphere, since the representations of these events are determined by society, its needs, and values ( Jelin, 2002, p. 20). Remembering is essential for the narration and permanence of historical events that can ‘mark’ a country. As Jelin writes, In more general, familiar, or communal terms, remembering, forgetting, and commemorating become crucial when they are linked to traumatic political events and situations of repression and annihilation, or when they involve profound social catastrophes and collective sufering. (2002, pp. 11–12) Remembering and storytelling are linked, because we use them to describe our point of view to ourselves and to others and thus rebuild our life story (El Refaie, 2012, p. 100). Autobiographical comics highlight this type of narrative. El Refaie (2012, p. 17) defnes the genre as stories that are between fction and non-fction, because memory cannot be trusted. Furthermore, the story is always determined by the subject’s historical view, reinterpretation, and selection of the included life fragments. Chute highlights the fact that this genre gives room to be [An] idiom of witness, a manner of testifying that sets a visual language in motion with and against the verbal in order to embody individual and collective experience, to put contingent selves and histories into form. (Chute, 2012, p. 3)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-17

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From a psychosocial perspective, Kramsch (2009, p. 322) understands subjectivity as the symbolic meaning that we give to ourselves, through our own perceptions, emotions, and thoughts. In the world of comics, the analysis of this type of subjectivity has been based mainly on North American and European works (El Refaie, 2012; Chute, 2010; Miller, 2007), leaving out the voices of authors from Latin America, as is the case of Chile. For this reason, we propose that paying attention to autobiographical comics of Chilean authors contributes to the understanding of discursive practices that are outside the cultural hegemonies imposed by the western artistic supremacy. Furthermore, autobiographical comics in Chile and abroad are only now being studied from the perspective of historical memory, but almost all of them focus on the atrocities that took place during dictatorships (Carrasco et al., 2017; Hinojosa, 2018). For this reason, it is necessary to study recent events in our historical memory and also to consider the infuence of the authors’ subjectivity in the staging of these events. This chapter asks two questions: Which historical events do Chilean autobiographical comic authors depict? What are their subjective points of view of the historical events, and how do they express them? To answer these questions, we describe the subjective viewpoints of several Chilean autobiographical comic authors on recent historical events. Out of a total of 29 publications of autobiographical comics in the country, from 2010 to 2018, we found only four authors who ventured into these topics: Elisa Echeverría (2012), Edmundo Browne (2013), Marcela Trujillo (2011), and Vicente Cociña (2012). The research methodology we used was the multimodal discourse analysis, and we based our categories of analysis on the proposals of El Refaie (2019), Kramsch (2015), and Machin and Mayr (2012). We will frst provide the context of autobiographical comics in Chile, their emergence, and main characteristics. Then, we will separate the analysis of the works into two central topics: stories about the 2010 Chilean earthquake and narratives regarding the political demonstrations that have been happening in Chile since 2010. To conclude, we will present the factors that may have infuenced the gradualness with which subjectivity is shaped and present projections for future research. In Prehistorieta de Chile [Prehistory Cartoon of Chile] (2003, pp. 63–66), Jorge Montealegre refers to what could be the frst Chilean autobiographical comic book, Cautiverio feliz y razón de las guerras dilatadas del Reino de Chile [Happy Captivity and the Reason for the Wars of the Kingdom of Chile], published in 1673, written by the Creole Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán. In the book, the author recounts his experience as a prisoner of the people during the War of Arauco (1550–1656). The narrative is drawn in four sequential vignettes distributed vertically on the page, as the author, a Creole soldier, graphically recounts his capture. Besides this temporally distant example, Chilean autobiographical comics only recently began to be published in the early years of the twenty-frst century. The frst published comic strips were the Crónicas íntimas de una chilena en

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la Gran Manzana de Maliki Cuatro Ojos [Intimate Chronicles of a Chilean in the Big Apple, by Maliki Four-Eyes], the alter ego of New York-based Chilean artist Marcela Trujillo, published in The Clinic newspaper between 2002 and 2003, which paved the way for her later works. It was thanks to Trujillo’s stay in the USA that she got to know the underground and alternative comics of authors such as Aline Kominsky, Julie Doucet, and Phoebe Gloeckner. In Chile, autobiographical comics published in print began fnding audiences and room in the marketplace in 2010. In regard to their general characteristics, Muñoz (2023) states that these comics are black-and-white books published mostly by independent publishers, and some are compilations of works that were initially well-received, such as a digital periodic publication (blogs or Facebook posts, for example), and others are extensive stories designed for book printing. Most of its authors have backgrounds in illustration or graphic storytelling, and they consider themselves more as ‘storytellers’ than comic authors. Most of these books are one-of publications, where the therapeutic component of the activity was important in addressing issues such as motherhood/paternity, meta-narratives, intertexts from the media, body image, fear, childhood, and interpersonal relationships. Finally, the authors use indicators of reality such as photographs, margin writings, and representations of locally and internationally known places to show that the story being read is ‘real’ (El Refaie, 2012, p.158). The use of these indicators can contribute to the involvement of the reader, that is, how much the reader identifes with the characters (McCloud, 1993, p. 42). Given the fact that Chile is a country that is afected by natural disasters and the efects of a 16-year civil-military dictatorship, one might assume that the memory of traumatic experiences would serve as the basis for a considerable production of graphic narratives, as they have in literature, art, and audiovisual media. Curiously, this is not the case in the Chilean autobiographical comics reviewed above, which are about individual experiences triggered by private events. Within the books that focus on individual stories that emerge from collective crises, specifcally the civil-military dictatorship, we found only two extensive works: Historias Clandestinas [Clandestine Stories] (2014) and Fuentealba ’73 (2017). In the frst, Ariel Rojas-Lizana, a teenage boy, and Sol Rojas-Lizana, Ariel’s little sister, share their experiences growing up in a safe house that sheltered people who were part of the political resistance and persecuted by the regime, where danger and fear were part of their daily life. In the second, a prominent Chilean cartoonist, Ricardo Fuentealba Rivera, chose three memories that deeply touched him while he was living through the coup d'état and the dictatorship years. Natural disasters and political history from 2010 onwards are events that have been captured in diferent autobiographical comics. The frst topic, natural disasters, has two publications whose extensive and consistent storytelling reveals the experience of the authors during the earthquake of 2010. These works are Anomalía (2012) [Anomaly] by Elisa Echeverría and Dibujos por madera [Drawings of Wooden Houses] (2013) by architect Edmundo Browne.

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By contrast, those experiences linked to political activity, discontent, and civil participation are only ‘scenes’, self-contained vignettes that, in the whole of each author’s publication, contribute to achieving the objective of the autobiographical story defned by Phillipe Lejeune as that in which a real individual tells his life by enhancing his identity (1991, p. 48). This is the case of texts such as Diario Íntimo de Maliki Cuatro Ojos [The Intimate Diary of Maliki Four-Eyes] by Marcela Trujillo (2011) and Año Sabático [Sabbatical] by Vicente Cociña (2012). Chile is a zone of natural disasters. Earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches, foods, and waterspouts are consequences of our geography, and we are raised knowing that these events will occur at some point in our lives. However, it is one thing to know it and another to go through it. On 27 February 2010, at 03:34, Chile sufered the largest earthquake in its history. The epicentre was located of the coast, in the Bíobío Region, resulting in a tsunami. A total of 525 people died and 23 were missing. Unlike other kinds of disasters, such as pandemics, the psychological consequences of earthquakes are related to their unpredictability and sudden occurrence. This generates anxiety and cognitive uncertainty. There are also aftershocks, which make people relive the original trauma and elevate their state of anxiety. The disruption of routine and property damage can afect and change regular family roles (Magaña et al., 2010, p. 170). One of the ways that the personal experience of trauma in a catastrophe can be captured is through the study of subjectivity. Kramsch (2015, p. 322) states that subjectivity is produced discursively. The subjects form the self through the symbols that we create, the chains of meanings that we build, and the meanings that we exchange with the other, while in the process of using language, whether thought or spoken, the self takes positions as a speaking or thinking subject (Kramsch, 2015, p. 322). Subjectivity is determined by embodied perspective. This approach can be understood as a way to explain the human mind, which is always connected to a physical body that interacts with the world (Wilson, 2002, p. 625). Embodiment plays a fundamental role in the study of author’s subjectivity because the body gives meaning to our existence and identity, the emotions and perceptions experienced, as well as the memory of the subject (Kramsch, p. 329). One way to analyze subjectivity from an embodied perspective is through the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Lakof and Johnson defne it as ‘understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another’ (1986, p. 5) in a way that is systematic. The metaphors we identifed are based on the taxonomy of visual metaphors proposed by El Refaie (2019) and conceived for the comic medium. The frst type is pictorial metaphors that are defned, by Forceville (2008, p. 464), as meanings that emerge from diferent forms of representation from one or more specifc entities. Besides adding a new subtype to the pictorial metaphor category, El Refaie (2019, p. 117) also adds two others: spatial and stylistic metaphors. The former corresponds to the metaphorical meanings that emerge from the correlations between the experience of the body in space plus other abstract concepts, while the latter consists of the metaphorical meanings

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that emerge from the style of words, images, abstract visual elements, for example, pictorial runes, and the materiality of the book (El Refaie, 2019, p. 117). The above allows us to analyze the construction of subjectivity from an individual perspective. Nevertheless, it also has social components. Kramsch (2015, p. 322) subjectivity is shaped by interaction with the environment through the discourse of other subjectivities in process. This other is understood as the refection of the self that allows him/her/them to understand who he/she/they is/are. Considering these individual and social aspects, she states that subjectivity in discourse is at the intersection of the individual and the social. In the following, we analyze two comics based on the experience of the 2010 earthquake and tsunami in Chile. First, we discuss Anomalía (2012) [Anomaly] and the conceptual metaphors the author uses to dig into her individual subjectivity. Then, we examine Dibujos por madera (2013) [Drawings of Wooden Houses] to see the construction of the self in discourse through others.

Anomaly: From Fear to Acceptance Elisa Echeverría's Anomalía (2012) [Anomaly] relives the trauma of the 2010 Chilean earthquake. In this book, she shows her and her family’s experience during this event, from the day before the earthquake until the recovery of normality. The narration is mainly based on herself, to the extent that there is almost no dialogue between the characters, and most of the written parts of the stories are contained in the captions that retell her perceptions and actions. Taking this into account, the book gives the reader a place from which to observe the narrator/author’s emotions and state of mind. In Echeverría’s book, the most important and recurrent pictorial metaphor that appears is the animalized representation of chaos, which she calls Anomalía. The narration starts with a sequence of a dream where Elisa is running up a hill, escaping from a wave-shaped panel that follows her. Once she arrives at the top, she turns and faces the chaos: a monster with feline features and a ghostly body with scales that comes out of the ocean. While the waves devour the city, the monster is standing in the water, looking at her menacingly (Figure 13.1). After the dream, the narrator’s frst words are ‘no creo resistirme al caos tanto como le temo’ (Echeverría, 2012, p. 3) [‘I don’t think I can resist chaos as much as I’m afraid of it’]. With this statement, we understand that Elisa’s problem is her anxiety about the unknown, about the possibility of the occurrence of some tragedy that could break the routine and the harmony of her family. Even though the dream is in the foreword, it is a preview of what is about to happen; it exhibits her state of mind before the earthquake/tsunami and her fears towards any kind of catastrophe. When the monster appears again (Echeverría, 2012, 17), she shows us the contrast between her expectations and reality. After the natural disaster, the family returns to their home, and they fnd that their neighbourhood is almost intact. Nevertheless, she knows the possibilities of having her house torn down by the

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FIGURE 13.1

Anomalía, Elisa Echeverría, 2012, p. 5. Copyright © 2012 Elisa Echeverría.

earthquake and tsunami and dying by drowning. This is expressed through two diferent types of drawings on the same page. While her reality shows her, lying on the bed expressionless and the ceiling that she is looking at, her feelings and her expectations are depicted by an Anomaly coming out of the waves, ready to destroy a house. On this page, we can identify the other two types of metaphors. In terms of the stylistic ones, there is a diference between the static and constrained images of the panels of the reality versus the loose hatches and the distorted perspective used in the depiction of Anomalía below. We can interpret this in relation to embodiment and stability. In an earthquake, the earth literally moves, so the body loses balance. This is represented in the book in various scenes, from the earthquake to the aftershocks. All are represented with messy lines and distorted human fgures and objects. However, the lines with more movement (typically freehand) can also be interpreted in emotional terms since the sensation of physical instability is brought to the semantic feld of emotional instability. In this sense, Echeverría’s anxiety is shown by fgures that have less defnition and more movement; they are looser and more erratic. As for the spatial metaphor, we can see that it is represented inside the panels showing ‘reality’, while the expectations are outside the panel, using the rest of

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the page, including the gutters. The fear of what could happen is bigger than the reality, and it needs to take more space in the storyline and on the page itself. This is a subtype of spatial metaphor called compositional metaphor, in which ‘spatial relations of verbal or visual elements on the page or double-page spread evoke metaphorical meanings’ (El Refaie, 2019, p. 117). In addition to the expansion required to show her anxiety, using Anomalía and the waves devouring her house, we see drops of the waves on the panels, which means that her fears burst into the external present. The rest of the book looks at how Echeverría manages to adapt to Anomaly. As the book shows a gradual return to normality after the tragedy, the use of black in the background of the page becomes less frequent, and the representation of the characters and environment becomes more defned. This can also be seen in the way Anomalía is drawn (Echeverría, 2012, p. 48). Using a diegetic metaphor, which is ‘spatial relations in the storyworld evoke metaphorical meanings’ (El Refaie, 2019, p. 117), we see Elisa next to Anomalía. Unlike the frst time we see the monster, here it is smaller, and, instead of facing her in a threatening way, they walk side by side. The metaphor of the path is used to show that Elisa is now able to live with the possibility of chaos, because she knows that it is part of life and that, in time, it is bearable. The image is represented outside the panels, and the background is completely white except for the lines that show the path. This represents the path into the unknown, on which both Elisa and Anomalía turn their backs to the reader, straight into the future.

Social Subjectivity: A Look into the Other One of the main problems caused by earthquakes and tsunamis is property damage. As a result of the 2010 earthquake in Chile, over 500,000 houses were damaged, and 2,000,000 people were afected in the main cities, interior villages, and the coast of the Bíobío and Maule regions (Leiva & Quintana, 2010, p. 162). Magaña et al. (2010, p. 170) point out that these types of catastrophes are both natural and social. This is because some of the main factors that infuence the psychological aftermath of these events are the economic and material consequences, which increase when the economic and fnancial resources of a nation are insufcient to cope with them. Therefore, even though the natural repercussions of destruction are inevitable, state social policies and private responsibilities in the construction of houses can make a big diference in people’s lives and return to normality (Magaña et al., 2010, p. 170). Unfortunately, in Chile, the actions of the State were not efcient, as Edmundo Browne evidences in his story. In Dibujos por madera (2013) [Drawings of Wooden Houses], the author tells of his experience helping two families in Cauquenes and Quirihue. After the families lose their homes, Browne starts a campaign to raise money for the construction of new houses with the help of friends and the afected. In contrast to Echeverría’s work, where the goal is to show the way that the self confronted the cataclysm, this book has a practical

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goal. Browne wants to share his actions, the blueprints of the houses, and the way he collected the money so that his experience can be an example of something that can be done in the case of another catastrophe. The aim of the book permeates the construction of the initial self presented at the beginning. Browne, with some guilt, recognizes his privileged socioeconomic situation. He feels impotent towards the sufering of those who lost their homes. In this sense, the self is an agent and an exemplifer; facing the other, it takes on a welfare position. In contrast to the author’s self, the others in the story are friends, family members, and the victims. The inclusion of friends allows the construction of the agent-self, by helping him to collect the necessary resources and to construct the houses. However, the victims question Browne’s motives and make him face a reality that is much more complex than just providing material aid. Months after the construction is completed, Browne decides to visit the people he helped and learns that none of the women from the families are living in the houses. One feels extremely uncomfortable on land that is not hers, and the other would rather sleep in rubble and get sick than live in the space she was given (see Figure 13.2). From a discourse analysis perspective, this twist in the story should not surprise us, as the women who lost their homes are barely present during the management and building process, and the few times they are, they hardly have a voice. We can say that the victims were excluded; they were given a passive role as opposed to the agency of the self as a provider, which is demonstrated by their non-representation in the discourse (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 102). The story of Browne’s self takes a turn when he realizes the mistake he made, which reveals a national perspective: he should not have taken the position of benefactor, but of collaborator, and worked together with the victims to solve their problems. This is why, at the end of the book, Browne starts to talk about a ‘we’ that is inclusive. In the words of the author: An earthquake stirs and shakes us, raising the old dust and exposing a reality that usually goes unnoticed or that we do not want to see. Perhaps the good thing is that the shock it produces breaks down the marked social barriers in our country and allows us to actively mobilize to try to help others and, in the long run, ourselves. This project involved 183 people, and it proves that all you need is the will and desire to do something. (Browne, 2013, p. 239) Considering Kramsch’s proposal (2015), we can see how Browne’s ego, in contrast to the others/victims, unveils a problem in Chilean society: the socio-economic barrier can blind us from seeing others, because they have been invisible all their lives. Those who are victims are immediately deprived of their possibility of agency. By the end, Browne learns and consequently shows that the only way forward as a country is to show inequality and work as a collective.

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Dibujos por madera, Eduardo Browne, 2013, pp. 172–173. Copyright © 2013 Eduardo Browne.

The year 2006 was a key year for Chilean politics, but especially for citizens, because it installed in the collective a new way of living politics. High school students changed the focus of their actions and ‘moved from interest in recreational activities – such as music festivals – to information campaigns and political

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debates’ (Somma & Bargsted, 2015, p. 6). The students rallied together and demanded that the University Selection Test be free and that the student transit pass could be used without limits, among other requests. After the Ministry of Education refused the requests, the pingüinos (‘penguins’, a name given to Chilean schoolchildren because of the colours of the compulsory public education uniform) took over their schools and marched through downtown Santiago. Before this uprising, which marked a turning point in social demonstrations in Chile, there was the 1988 plebiscite where voters decided to end the dictatorship and democratically elect a president in the 1989 election. During the 1990s, the country began a so-called transition period, during which the organizations and parties that had fought for this change lost the common goal that had united them and had inspired the massive mobilizations that characterized the protests during the 1980s: the fght against the dictatorship. In the 1990s, the prevailing view was that young people were apathetic, uninterested, or politically uncommitted, which was refected in their low political participation. Jorge Baeza and Mario Sandoval (2009) reviewed literature on the new political practices of young Chileans and identifed three hypotheses. The frst is political disafection, which, in the words of Somma and Bargsted, is ‘a complex attitude of distancing and generalized indiference towards political activity’ (2009, cited in Baeza & Sandoval, 2009, p. 8), since young people feel the political system does not represent them and does not incorporate their interests. The second is the displacement in time of responsibility, where they propose a delay in decision-making and adulthood. Finally, the third hypothesis is that indiference regarding politics is not real but is a new type of political practice. Young people do not want political power. They want to focus on daily matters and minorities. Their action is direct, and it moves away from political parties. They have a wide repertoire of topics that refect their identity as a group, where action trumps any desire to be in the limelight. They value collaborative work between groups with similar objectives, they believe diversity is a strength, and they rely on self-management and self-training. The streets continue to be the place where young people publicly manifest these new political practices, where ‘marching is in itself a ritual act; since it brings together young people who share representations and demand to be recognized as citizens’ (Urzúa, 2014, p. 48). According to Bajtin, this practice has a spirit similar to a carnival: a performance where all those who participate are active, there is no stage, and the members are not separated from each other. On the contrary, by experiencing the carnival, people have ‘ free and familiar contact’ (1971, p. 312, emphasis in original), where everyone is part of a group that is visible as such. The revolución pingüina [penguin revolution] marked this new stage in the manifestation of social actors and paved the way to what would become, in 2011, the university movement, with pingüinos becoming undergraduates. Moreover, this happened in the frst right-wing government since the return to democracy, where university students and pingüinos shared the same cause. In Sebastián

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Valenzuela’s opinion, in 2011, digital activism was the great ally that brought the demonstrations not only to the streets but also to social media, where ‘connective action is structured around communication networks, and its power or viability depends exclusively on the communication happening on digital platforms’ (2013, p. 82). It is this digital component that defnes young activists (Baeza and Sandoval, 2009, p. 1399), where the visibility of the protest actions takes place in both spaces: the streets and the screens. According to Sergio Urzúa, recent demonstrations are characterized by their massiveness and the novelty of their staging, which has contributed to their dissemination even in traditional media and to the opening of dialogue (2014, p. 41). Thus, with carnival eccentricities, as Bakhtin would say, the student marches, and the social movement in general managed to ‘democratize the feld of visibility’ (Urzúa, 2014, p. 42).

Carnival and Protest: New Forms of Citizenship The 2011 student movement was the most represented political event in our sample, specifcally in the works of Marcela Trujillo (a.k.a. Maliki) and Vicente Cociña. Maliki talks about this march in her book El Diario íntimo de Maliki 4 ojos [The Intimate Diary of Maliki Four-Eyes]. From the beginning, Maliki’s comic shows the author experiencing the 2011 student movement ‘from home’, unlike her experience as a young anti-Pinochet rebel in the 1980s, when she marched in clandestine and dangerous protests to remove the dictator from power, as she recalls in the same book. This new march is ‘lived’ through news reports that show images of violence between hooded demonstrators and the police. However, the images she sees on social media and the accounts of her niece and nephew tell a diferent story: they show a creative, novel, satirical, critical, and almost ‘happy’ carnival. The author’s attention is drawn to the allegorical foats, the ninots or falla monuments, and the costumes, which range from Eastern cultural icons such as dragons (very present in the northern part of the country) to characters from traditional and digital media, such as Sailor Moon or Mario and Luigi, which reinforces the idea of carnival in the visual dimension of the work. These intertexts speak about a young generation that grew up feeding on media but also appreciate local culture. Although Maliki discusses repression, her drawings show the things that most caught her attention, from an artistic standpoint, in the new ways in which young people were demonstrating: a crowd of people working as a whole, groups within that crowd gathered under specifc slogans and their banners. The groups we can see are divided into factions: the secondary school students who are dressed in the uniform of an emblematic school in the capital; the university students whose access to higher education is defned by their ability to pay rather than their personal skills or merits; and other groups led by a hooded demonstrator (the only

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one who could be ‘looking’ at the reader) with more violent phrases, related to proft or crime. For example, the sign that says ‘La nueva forma de cogotear’ [The new form of robbery], at the bottom right of Figure 13.3. Cogotear is a Chilean slang word for a violent assault that comes from cogote, meaning neck; it is also a direct allusion to the government. This book, as most of her work, has diverse narrative levels that the reader needs to pay attention to if they want to ‘live’ the experience as evoked by the author in her noisy, euphoric, and diverse representation. Thus, we have the voice of the narrator, the dialogue bubbles of the characters, comments in the margin, sounds (specifcally the chants of the young demonstrators), and the slogans of the posters. If we return to the categories established by Machin and Mayr (2012, pp. 77–102) classifying social actors according to linguistic and visual representations, we fnd in Maliki’s work an intention to bring the reader closer to her subjectivity by individualizing the voice and image of her nephew Simon and

FIGURE 13.3

Diario Íntimo de Maliki Cuatro Ojos, Maliki, 2011, p. 129. Copyright © 2011 Marcela Trujillo.

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her niece Amanda (pingüinos). At the same time, she portrays her relationship with them horizontally, as she depicts herself as young as her nephews. This is because the adult receives teachings, content, or experiences from the younger generation. In spite of this closeness, Trujillo gives the reader a bird’s-eye view of the magnitude of the march. This perspective is also shared by Vicente Cociña in his work on the same protest. Both represent the crowd that attended the march as a mass, perhaps not powerful but with clean hands, that the reader watches from a privileged position above, just like the digital records made by neighbours and the recordings of security cameras and media drones who, in turn, put into circulation the visual imagery that the artists also adopt. Returning to Baeza and Sandoval (2009, p. 1399) together with Machin and Mayr (2012, p. 100), the strength of the new political practices of young people, apart from valuing diversity and respecting individualities, lies in the collective: there is a discursive and representative homogenization. As for Vicente Cociña’s work, the reference to the 2011 student movement is inserted in a book that grew from the publication of autobiographical comics in his blog. In these comics, which generally have a nine-panel structure, Cociña narrates diferent experiences in chronological order; several are memories shown in book format. The topics are varied and do not maintain the thread that Maliki evidences in the byline of her Diary, where she defnes herself as a ‘single 40-year-old plump brunette, mother of two little girls, painter, cartoonist and teacher from Santiago, who cannot lose weight, fnd her prince charming, nor save money’ (2011, p. 7). Cociña has stood out in Chilean illustration with his work Alameda de ida y vuelta (2015) [Back and Forth on Alameda], a book that shows a journey through the main artery of Santiago de Chile, from both sides of the street. It is his practice as an urban portraitist that echoes in his autobiographical comics. Specifcally, in the comic about the great student movement march, which he is careful to specify took place on 30 June 2011, you can see part of the route the crowd followed with identifable landmarks, unlike the work of Maliki, where the people stood out. In Figure 13.4, the visual representation of the social actors is homogeneous, within the collective, and it is at the level of the texts that the author individualizes his experience, although he shows a lower degree of subjectivity. Thus, during the march, the author talks to a friend (his roommate, introduced in previous pages), implying that they went together and talked face to face. He also meets his father, who, according to Machin and Mayr (2012, p. 81), is characterized by a role (father) rather than his own identity and talks on the phone with another friend. He even gives the reader space and shares his thoughts in the middle of the march. Unlike Maliki, Cociña has fewer narrative layers, and his work is not as intimate. Overall, 2011 was a year of social and political turmoil in Chile. According to Juan Fernández Labbé, that year there were 176 days in which people protested

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FIGURE 13.4

Año Sabático, Vicente Cociña, 2012, p. 49. Copyright © 2012 Vicente Cociña.

(2013, p. 10), and it was not only the students who took to the streets but also different groups that supported various causes, such as the struggle of the Mapuche people and the environment. In fact, Cociña devotes a comic strip in the same book to one of the marches held in Santiago against the Hidroaysén project: a government proposal for the

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construction of fve hydroelectric plants that would have serious consequences for the natural environment (Figure 13.5). This march does not seem to be a meaningful life experience for him but rather one of the many activities that can come as a surprise on any given day. Again, at the textual level, we fnd dialogues and the inner voice of the author, but also the cry of two attendees of that event

FIGURE 13.5

Año Sabático, Vicente Cociña, 2012, p. 33. Copyright © 2012 Vicente Cociña.

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that become key in changing the representation of Cociña’s self. While we can identify and see the avatar of the author before and after the march, during the march Cociña tends to disappear or blend into the collective. This happens specifcally in the next-to-last panel of the sequence, when a group of demonstrators runs away from the guanaco (water cannon) announced in the previous panel. Even though the reader looks on from afar, thanks to Cociña’s detailed drawing, it is possible to recognize diferent types of individuals who, due to certain stereotyped features in society, we can identify as part of the crowd. Thus, we fnd an academic or intellectual, a hooded demonstrator, an ofce worker, a bearded adult who was a revolutionary when he was younger, among others. He is careful to have a balanced proportion of gender representation, albeit in binary form. In Machin and Mayr’s (2012, p. 82) terms, Cociña objectifes some participants, which in this case would make the reader closer to the group, generate empathy, and at the same time make the reader feel far from the homogeneous collective. The last protest event identifed in Cociña's work is a bicycle ride against a bill drafted by the political right to regulate the coexistence of pedestrians, cars, and bikers. Cyclists were particularly restricted in the bill, precisely at a time when the bicycle as a means of transportation was becoming a part of many people’s lives. This time, with Plaza Dignidad [Dignity Square] as the meeting point, Cociña attends with his partner. In his representation, once again, we see part of the route and the landmarks in specifc locations. The darkness depicted by the cross-hatching makes the fgures of the couple identifable in both their individualities (closeness) for Machin and Mayr (2012, p. 100) and their participation in the collective (distancing). This time, the author gives visual and textual protagonism to those who raise their voices (with a megaphone) against the bill, to quickly give rise to insults towards politicians and the police, alternated with giggles and laughter: the carnival, on this occasion, has some violence that leads to pleasure and collective euphoria. In any case, it is a written carnival, since at a representational level one can barely distinguish smiles (Figure 13.6). In the introduction to this chapter, we posed two questions. Regarding our frst question of ‘which historical moments represented in Chilean autobiographical comics’, we were surprised by the small amount of texts that mention historical events. Even though the 2010 earthquake was one of the most traumatic events in the recent history of our country, only two authors have explored it. The rest of the events relate to the resurgence of political demonstrations that took place in Santiago, the capital, where the city stands out as the protagonist. This goes to show the problem of the centralization of the country, since those who examined the earthquake topic are either residents of the epicentre, like Echeverría, or knew the afected people directly, like Browne. As Browne mentions in his book, despite the seriousness of the event, when something like this happens outside the capital, it quickly ceases to be a national concern. The second question asks, ‘what are their subjective points of view of the historical events and how do they express them?’ First, we believe that the narrative

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Año Sabático, Vicente Cociña, 2012, p. 24. Copyright © 2012 Vicente Cociña.

extension of the works is key to better understanding the authors’ subjectivity. In both Echeverría and Browne’s work, we can see their inner process and the way they construct and change themselves through the storyline, while Maliki and Cociña’s work portray choose a news style for reporting the events. This register

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allows them to show the manifestation as more objective. Nevertheless, that tacitly implies a declaration of principles since the representation of the collective requires commitment. Along with this, the individualities that compose that group are homogenized by being presented as stereotyped fgures, which change according to the culture in which they are inserted. Second, we want to mention the afordances of autobiographical comics to address historical events. In those who delve into private experiences and introspection, as in Anomalía, emotionality takes on greater prominence, which is evident in the diference between the representation of quiet moments versus moments of telluric activity. Hence, the use of diverse multimodal metaphors is essential for the materialization of abstract aspects such as the fear of chaos, personifed in the fgure of Anomalía. In contrast, in the rest of the texts, subjectivity was more focused on the representation of others. Thus, while Browne gives a face to the victims afected by the earthquake, Maliki and Cociña highlight the collective. Although this work reviews the entire corpus of national autobiographical comics published on paper, the webcomic is a privileged expression for the study of recent political events, as its digital nature facilitates the immediacy of dissemination and ensures greater circulation when going ‘viral’. Future research could focus on identifying the iconographic choices in the representation of news events linked to personal experiences and from which position the authors show their subjectivity.

References Baeza, J. and Sandoval, M. (2009) ‘Nuevas Prácticas Políticas en Jóvenes de Chile: Conocimientos acumulados 2000–2008’ [New political practices in Chilean young people: Accumulated knowledge 2000–2008], Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud, 2(7), 1379–1403. Available at: https://www.redalyc.org/pdf /773/77314999009.pdf (Accessed: 26 April 2020). Bajtín, M. (1971) ‘Carnaval y literatura [Carnival and literature]’, Revista Eco, 129, pp. 311–338. Browne, E. (2013) Dibujos por madera [Drawings of Wooden Houses]. Santiago: Ocho Libros Editores. Carrasco, J. C., Drinot, P. and Scorer, J. (eds.) (2017) Comics and Memory in Latin America. Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. Chute, H. (2010) Graphic women: Life narrative and contemporary comics. New York: Columbia University Press. Cociña, V. (2012) Año Sabático [Sabbatical]. Santiago: Chancacazo Publicaciones. Echeverría, E. (2012) Anomalía [Anomaly]. Concepción: Nébula. El Refaie, E. (2012) Autobiographical comics: Life writing in pictures. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. El Refaie, E. (2019) Visual metaphor and embodiment in graphic illness narratives. New York: Oxford University Press. Forceville, C. (2008) ‘Metaphor in Pictures and Multimodal Representations’ in Gribbs, R. (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Though. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 462–482.

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Fuentealba, R. (2017) Fuentealba ’73. Santiago: Pehuén Editores. Hinojosa, H. (2018) ‘Una memoria ilustrada: Problemas de la narrativa gráfca histórica contemporánea en Chile’ [An Illustrated Memory: Problems of Contemporary Historical Graphic Narrative in Chile], CuCo, (11), pp. 52–80. Jelin, E. (2002) Los trabajos de la memoria [The work of memory]. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Kramsch, C. (2009) The multilingual subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kramsch, C. (2015) ‘Identity and Subjectivity: Diferent Timescales, Diferent Methodologies’ in Dervin, F. and Risager, K. (eds.) Researching identity and interculturality. New York: Taylor & Francis. Lakof, G. and Johnson, M. (1986) Metáforas de la vida cotidiana [Everyday life metaphors]. Madrid: Cátedra. Leiva, M. C. and Quintana, G. R. (2010) ‘Factores ambientales y psicosociales vinculados a síntomas de ataque de pánico después del terremoto y tsunami del 27 de febrero de 2010 en la zona central de Chile’ [Environmental and psychosocial factors linked to panic attack symptoms after the earthquake and tsunami of February 27, 2010 in the central zone of Chile], Terapia psicológica, 28(2), pp. 161–167. Lejeune, P. (1991 [1975]) ‘El pacto autobiográfco’ [The autobiographical pact]’, in V.V.A.A., ‘La autobiografía y sus problemas teóricos. Estudios e investigación documental’ [Autobiography and its theoretical problems. Documentary studies and research]’, Suplementos Anthropos, 29, pp. 47–61. Available from: http://sergiomansilla .com/revista/aula/lecturas/imagen/lejeune-philippe-el-pacto-autobiografco.pdf (Accessed: 10 October 2018). Lizana-Rojas, S. and Lizana-Rojas, A. (2014) Historias Clandestinas [Clandestine Stories]. Santiago: LOM. Machin, D. and Mayr, A. (2012) How to do critical discourse analysis: A multimodal introduction. Londres, California, New Delhi & Singapore: Sage. Magaña Frade, I., Silva-Nadales, S., and Rovira Rubio, R. (2010) ‘Catástrofe, subjetividad femenina y reconstrucción: Aportes y desafíos desde un enfoque de género para la intervención psicosocial en comunidades afectadas por el terremoto’ [Catastrophe, female subjectivity and reconstruction: Contributions and challenges from a gender perspective for psychosocial intervention in communities afected by the earthquake], Terapia psicológica, 28(2), pp. 169–177. McCloud, S. (1993) Understanding Comics. The invisible Art. Northampton: Kitchen Sink Press Inc. Miller, A. (2007) Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip. Bristol & Chicago: Intellect. Montealegre, J. (2003) Prehistorieta de Chile. Del arte rupestre al primer periódico de caricaturas [Prehistorycal-cartoon of Chile. From rock art to the frst cartoon newspaper]. Santiago: RIL Editores. Muñoz, M. (2023) Me cuento y me muestro. Cómic chileno autógrafo y autofcticio contemporáneo [I tell and show myself. Autograph and self-fction contemporary Chilean comic]. PhD Thesis. Pontifcia Universidad Católica de Chile. Somma, N. and Bargsted, M. (2015) ‘La Autonomización de la protesta en Chile [The autonomization of the protest in Chile]’ in Cox, C. and Castillo, J.C. (eds.) Socialización Política y Experiencia Escolar: Aportes Para la Formación Ciudadana en Chile [Political Socialization and School Experience: Contributions for Citizen Training in Chile]. Santiago: Ediciones UC, pp. 209–240. Trujillo, M. (2011) Diario Íntimo de Maliki Cuatro Ojos [The Intimate Diary of Maliki FourEyes]. Santiago: Ril editores.

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Urzúa Martínez, S. (2014) ‘¿Cómo marchan los jóvenes en el Chile de postdictadura? Algunas notas acerca de la apropiación del espacio público y el uso político del cuerpo [How are young people going in post-dictatorship Chile? Some notes about the appropriation of public space and the political use of the body]’, Última Décadai, 23(42), pp. 39–64. Available at: https://scielo.conicyt.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0718 -22362015000100003&script=sci_abstract&tlng=p (Accessed: 25 April 2020). Valenzuela, S. (2013) ‘De la acción colectiva a la acción conectiva o cómo superar la dicotomía ciberoptimismo-ciberpesimismo [From collective action to connective action or how to overcome the cyber-attitude - cyber-pessimism dichotomy]’ in Millaleo, S. and Cárcamo, P. (eds.) Medios sociales y acción colectiva en Chile [Media and collective actions in Chile]. Santiago: Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo. pp. 71–94. Available at: https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/bitstream/handle/10625/53131/ IDL-53131.pdf?sequence=1 (Accessed: 26 April 2020). Wilson, M. (2002) ‘Six Views of Embodied Cognition’, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 9(4), pp. 625–36.

14 PUNŤA THE DOG GOES TO THE SECOND ITALO–ABYSSINIAN WAR Czech, Polish, and American Comic Heroes in the Real-World Confict of 1935–1936 Lucie Kořínková and Pavel Kořínek

When a popular Czech funny animal character of the 1930s, a friendly anthropomorphized canine hero called Punťa,1 travelled to Abyssinia to help locals against fascist aggression, it was something never-before-seen in Czechoslovak comics. Intricacies of contemporary real-world politics and military conficts had been present in the local cartoon, caricature, and comics traditions for several decades at that point. Czech and Slovak readers of humour magazines were familiar with funny, sometimes sequential, depictions of the Second Boer War or conficts in the ‘Far East’. Punťa’s diplomatic and symbolic mission to help Haile Sellasie’s forces and Abyssinian citizens introduced these topics to children’s comics. For emerging Czech comics aimed at a younger audience, this was the frst time a popular series followed and depicted war events as they were happening and therefore had to consider how to interpret and use war-time situations and how to deal with the development of the war that quickly became a gory massacre, not at all suitable as a source for children’s entertainment. No matter how extraordinary Punťa’s mission was, on the following pages, we will focus not exclusively on his involvement in the war in Africa but rather look at the broader context of that story. We will approach the Czech political and cultural response to the Second Italo-Abyssinian war in general, and we will try to briefy summarize why a Central European country was so deeply interested in what was happening so far away. On the material of Punťa’s Abyssinian adventures, we will analyze how the interest in the events of international politics led Punťa’s creators to a sort of dead-end in developing their hero’s story. Comparing Punťa’s story with other Czech, Polish, and American comic strips that, at the time, sent their main characters to war to help Abyssinians will show that both such a dead-end and its solution were in no way unique. Elaborating on the Abyssinian topic made comics creators engage black images and, with that, black stereotypes. Those biased images of blackness represent a prevailing global DOI: 10.4324/9781003386841-18

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undercurrent in period popular visual culture. This undercurrent was so powerful that – as we will demonstrate through several texts aimed at Italian children of the second half of the 1930s – it was able to diminish other ideological diferences, such as which of the fghting sides the text rooted for. All that makes the Abyssinian adventure of a Czech doggie Punťa in many regards a global matter. However, before we get to more details of these issues, we must at least very briefy explain who Punťa was, and what his Czech comics history pedigree and his origin story were.

Punťa: The Star Is Born During the two decades of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938), comics were slowly but surely becoming an integral, though oftentimes fringe, part of popular entertainment. Sequential caricatures and proto-comics forms had been well known in local contexts since the latter half of the nineteenth century, but only in the frst years of long-hoped-for independent Czechoslovakia did Czech and Slovak creators fully commit themselves to the emerging medium. As in neighbouring countries, Czech and Slovak comics of this era were predominantly realized as ‘text comics’, without speech balloons, but with accompanying text (often in verse and rhyme) underneath the panels. In the 1920s, comic strips and serials with recurring characters were introduced and these comics claimed their space on the pages of humour magazines, weekend editions of the daily press, and in children’s periodicals. There were even attempts to establish a dedicated magazine focusing on sequential series for children, but these projects usually failed by the end of the magazine’s inaugural year.2 It took until the 1930s for Czech comics to establish its frst successful publication platforms and to fnd its frst proper comics star characters.3 Some of these heroes are well known even today, including Ferda Mravenec (Ferda the Ant, frst introduced in 1933) by Ondřej Sekora or Rychlé šípy (Fast Arrows, frst introduced in 1938) by Jaroslav Foglar and Jan Fischer; others are all but forgotten, remembered only by a small group of comics afcionados and historians. Punťa and his eponymous children’s magazine, the frst successful and long-running magazine of Czech comics for younger audiences, is a prime example of the latter category. Over its eight years of operation (1935–1942), 140 issues of this two-colour landscape format magazine were prepared, containing hundreds of pages of its titular comic series and dozens of accompanying strips and serials, both original to the magazine and translated from Italian, English, and, during the Second World War, Dutch sources4 (Figure 14.1). But the history of Punťa goes deeper than that, and it even crosses the ocean.5 The valiant canine hero debuted in Czech on the pages of the children’s supplement of the women’s lifestyle magazine List paní a dívek (Women and Young Ladies Paper, published by the Rodina publishing house) in February 1934. Even though this weekly magazine did not in any way acknowledge this fact, the frst dozen published episodes were direct translations from the American comics

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The cover of the inaugural issue of the Punťa magazine, summer 1935.

strip Dolly Dimples and Bobby Bounce by Grace Gebbie Drayton (1878–1936).6 Drayton’s strip, originally syndicated by King Features in 1928–1933, listed two protagonists in its title, but in fact, it starred a trio of heroes, since Dolly and Bobby were nearly always accompanied by a friendly dog, Comfy. Drayton’s original strips were not reprinted in chronological order in List paní a dívek, nor did they follow any discernible narrative logic. It seems that the editorial staf had only limited access to the source strip and therefore had to use and print whichever episode was readily available at the time. After a few translated episodes, the editors decided to resolve this recurring problem once and for all. René Klapač (1905–1980), an experienced Czech comic artist, was hired to produce new episodes in a similar style while the in-house editor of the children’s supplement Marie Voříšková (1907–1987) functioned as a scriptwriter for the strip, and Punťa was born. With Voříšková and Klapač at the helm, the ‘nationalized’ strip redirected its focus to the animal protagonist – Dolly and Bobby, renamed Hanička and Vašík in Czech, were still present, but most episodes now followed Punťa’s (the US strip’s Comfy’s) adventures at home as well as abroad. The audience seemed to enjoy it; sales of the magazine went up, and letters from young readers, which started to arrive in the editorial ofce in astounding quantities, praised the friendly canine hero. In response to this positive reception and hoping to cash in on the strip’s popularity, the publishing house Rodina decided in the early months of 1935 to prepare a numbered series of four anthology booklets reprinting all the previously published episodes. These sold out immediately and had to

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be reprinted several times, and Rodina resolved to continue with the magazine under the same title. Starting with issue number fve in September 1935, the booklets transformed into a fully developed comics magazine with the title Punťa. A variety of new accompanying series were introduced, as well as other types of magazine content: editorials, articles, illustrated poems, serialized illustrated prose stories, doit-yourself (DIY) craft projects, and letters pages. Readers were encouraged to subscribe, and new, even more engaging stories were promised. During its frst phase, as a monthly (from September 1935 to October 1938), Punťa magazine functioned as a reprint platform of sorts, at least in terms of the titular series. Of the magazine’s 16 pages, six were reserved for comics. Four of these usually reprinted the Punťa episodes that had appeared in List paní a dívek over the previous month, and two were available for other comic series by various collaborating creators or for translations. The canine hero Punťa, as imagined and realized by Voříšková and Klapač, was quite a ‘modern man’, even though he was a dog. Not only did he prefer to walk on two legs, but he was a contemporary, up-to-date urbanite, living in the city and enjoying its glamour and its allures: Punťa attended costume balls and was an ardent cinephile, fond of contemporary popular culture. Having the success of Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse on their minds, Punťa’s creators wanted to establish a star status7 for their canine hero and intended to present Punťa as a celebrity of Czech youth culture of the 1930s. This ambition was refected in his famous acquaintances. Over the years, Punťa in the comic strip stories befriended several real-life celebrities, most prominently Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Shirley Temple, and travelled with them all around Czechoslovakia and Europe, as well as overseas. At the same time, he was a home-loving character: together with his bickering spouse Kiki, they raised their dog children and enjoyed the warmth of a loving family. What’s more, they were surrounded by a circle of good and loyal friends, Hanička (Dolly), Vašík (Bobby) as well as Bimbo, a black boy that Punťa and Kiki had saved from certain death, when they visited Africa for the frst time.8

Bimbo, the Friendly Boy from Africa Since the nineteenth century, Africa was in Western minds considered a wild and uncivilized area of adventure and challenge. Such a view only refected the colonial mentality and the history of European treating the continent (Nederveen Pieterse, 1992, pp. 34–39, 108–113). In popular culture in general, plots situated in Africa have often dealt with adventures like shipwrecks or adventurers or ‘explorers’ getting lost in the wilderness or facing African animals, but also local people, often presented as cannibals. The continent was frequently represented as an undiferentiated area. In cartoons and comics, a shared repertoire of basic features was employed (separately, or in any possible combination) to signal the adventure is set in Africa. Besides half-naked black men in grass skirts, the setting

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usually featured their round huts with grass roofs, palms, deserts, or other signals of hot weather in general, and exotic animals: elephants, lions, hippopotami, snakes, zebras, girafes. Oftentimes, there were also cacti and tigers, even though these belong to other continents: their symbolic value as ‘exotic’ prevailed over the factual geographical distribution of species. In the very frst story arc in which Bimbo appears, the creators of the series used all these stereotypes. The story begins with Punťa and Kiki crash-landing their hot-air balloon in Africa; then among the palms and cactuses, they meet a snake and an elephant, and on their way back from the wilderness to civilization they rescue a little black boy Bimbo from the hands of other Africans who intend to eat him. Grateful for his life, Bimbo becomes their friend and decides to follow Punťa and Kiki to Europe. The series’ depictions of both Bimbo and his home continent followed many stereotypes. Czechs had no real colonial history nor the general population of the time had many possibilities to meet black people. That said, colonial thinking or at least automatic presumptions of cultural white supremacy were common among the Czech people of the interwar era and therefore ‘normal’ and in important ways ‘invisible’ for them. As Richard Dyer states in his infuential work on the representation of whiteness in Western visual culture, ‘the invisibility of whiteness as racial position in white (which is to say dominant) discourse is of a piece with its ubiquity’ (Dyer, 2017, p. 3), it is a position of ‘subject without properties’. This invisibility is nevertheless confictual, paradoxical: ‘White identity is founded on compelling paradoxes … a stress on the display of spirit while maintaining a position of invisibility; in short, a need always to be everything and nothing, literally overwhelmingly present and yet apparently absent …’ (Dyer, 2017, p. 39). Punťa the anthropomorphized dog is depicted as ‘white’, both in literal and symbolic senses of the word, as one without properties, but his racial characteristics are from time to time explicitly mentioned when it is considered necessary (usually when there is a contrast to be established with the Other, meaning a non-white character): ‘No one did hurt them / so when they reached the land / of the boat they quickly jumped, / black Bimbo and the dogs [meaning Punťa and Kiki] white’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1935). In the Western popular culture of the 1920s and the 1930s, representations of black people as savage and uncivilized often went hand in hand with depicting them as child-like, as if such people were only ‘big children’ in need of education and upbringing. This supposedly child-like quality of black people was often used as a source of (patronizing) entertainment, ranging from American minstrel shows – where whites mocked black culture and gave birth to the infamous tradition of blackface – to supposedly funny cartoon and comics depictions of a black man as clumsy, naïve, silly, or overenthusiastic compared to ‘white standard’ (Nederveen Pieterse, 1992, pp. 132–136).9 Along with race-biased thinking, black visual stereotypes were also incorporated into Czech popular culture seamlessly. Klapač did not have to invent the features of his Bimbo from scratch; the visual culture of his time ofered

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him a ready-made – and quite limited – set of black image patterns. Fredrik Strömberg categorizes ‘at least seven diferent basic Black stereotypes that have been established in comics mostly aimed at the white public’ (Strömberg, 2012, p. 35). Of this typology, Bimbo would fall into the category of ‘piccaninny’, arguably the most common depiction of black children in popular visual culture from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.10 In the handbook How to Draw Funny Pictures (1928) by E. C. Matthews, American creators aspiring to become cartoonists or comic artists were even ofered precise instructions on how to draw a funny picture of a black man: besides the colour of the skin, the main features should have been a wide nose, exaggerated lips, and ruffed hair (quoted in Walker, 2004, p. 54). Bimbo’s lips are strongly exaggerated, as are the whites of his eyes, and no matter what the weather is, he is always barefoot and half-naked, wearing only a grass skirt. This lack of clothing is suggestive of his ‘lack of civilisation’: he often faces the modern European world with simple-mindedness or clumsiness, which triggers comic situations. The series’ captions often redundantly stress the fact that Bimbo’s skin is black (even though we can clearly see it in the pictures themselves), thus emphasizing Bimbo’s Otherness.

Second Italo-Abyssinian War (1935–1936) and Czechoslovakia Bimbo and Punťa’s participation in the Second Italo-Abyssinian war was the only occasion throughout the magazine’s history when Bimbo appeared in a less stereotypical setting and when the magazine’s content somehow refected a slightly more accurate image of Africa. Although the confict took place thousands of miles away from Central Europe, it did capture public attention. After several months of tension, on 3 October 1935, Italian troops invaded Abyssinia (today’s Ethiopia), one of the few independent African countries that withstood the colonial ‘Scramble for Africa’ at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, when European powers invaded and colonized nearly the whole continent. By attacking Abyssinia, Benito Mussolini aimed not only to enlarge Italy’s colonies but also to present Italy as a major imperial power on the international stage, deserving more prestige. The crucial element of Italian reasoning for the invasion was its so-called civilizing mission in the underdeveloped region.11 Although the ofcial propaganda spoke about bringing civilization to the locals, the reality of the Italian military’s actions in Abyssinia was horrifc: chemical attacks and aerial bombardment aimed not only at the Abyssinian military but also at civilians.12 The Abyssinian forces faced both the numerical and technological superiority of the Italian army. At the beginning of May 1936, the Emperor Haile Selassie fed the country. Three days later, Italian troops marched into the capital Addis Ababa, and on 7 May 1936, Italy announced the annexation of Abyssinia (although fghts with rebels and war atrocities continued for the next three years).

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The war in Abyssinia had a substantial impact on the international scene as it shattered the credibility of the League of Nations and proved its inefectiveness in solving crises and guaranteeing peace. Economic sanctions were imposed on Italy in reaction to its unprovoked attack on a fellow member of the League (Abyssinia had joined in 1923), but with no real impact (Kvaček, 1966, p. 183). In the end, European powers acknowledged the Italian occupation of Abyssinia as a fait accompli, and in July 1936 the sanctions were lifted. The League of Nations thus took the role of an idealistic, yet meaningless bystander. In Italy itself, the invasion strengthened Mussolini’s position. Furthermore, Adolf Hitler made use of Italy’s isolation on the international scene to bring Germany and Italy closer together. The inefectiveness of the international intervention also encouraged German remilitarization of the Rhineland. Small European nations thus witnessed international events that, with regard to their future security, were more than worrisome (Kershaw, 2016, pp. 255–256). Coincidentally, during the crisis, Eduard Beneš, the foreign minister and, after 18 December 1935, president of Czechoslovakia, presided over the Assembly of the League of Nations; in Czechoslovakia, politicians, press, and to varying degrees the public watched the events in Abyssinia very carefully. Opinions on the Abyssinian confict naturally difered – as did opinions on Italy, fascism, colonialism, the League of Nations, international sanctions, Czechoslovakian foreign afairs, and even Beneš himself. These diferences in many regards followed other political divisions in the domestic public sphere. Political commentators on the right tended to have sympathy for Italy and repeated the ‘civilisation myth’ of ofcial Italian propaganda. Some expressed relief that Italy expanded into Africa, not Europe. Liberal and left-oriented papers condemned Italian aggression, and some pointed out that events in Africa rearranged power relations within Europe, which might weaken the position of the League of Nations and thus endanger future security and even Czechoslovakia itself. European peace was a common concern for them all, regardless of political orientation.13 In an article on the Abyssinian crisis, a Prague newspaper that conveyed the government’s views, called Československá republika, warned the Czechoslovak public that even though this crisis may seem reassuringly distant, it was a possible harbinger of a future international position for Czechoslovakia. One day a Central European country might be viewed as fringe and exotic, too: ‘The African matter is exotic to us, but in the future, it might happen that our matter will be exotic to others’ (Procházka, 1935, pp. 1–2). Regardless of political views, the distant war became a common topic of public discussions at the time. Especially at the beginning of the confict, the Czechoslovak press kept publishing not only news and commentaries on political and military developments but also information about Abyssinian society, culture, geography, and politics. Not only was it necessary for understanding the context of the confict, but it was also an attraction for readers, since this information was often presented as a report about something geographically and culturally distant, even exotic and strange. Czech readers learned new facts, and

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with that they also enriched their vocabulary with some new words and expressions, such as the Abyssinian nobility title ‘ras’ or the imperial title ‘negus’, which was explained to mean ‘king of kings’. Articles of this type were found on the pages of the daily press or in illustrated family magazines. The forid language that stressed the supposed exoticism of Abyssinia sometimes rather surprisingly also appeared in highly specialized periodicals. For instance, in March 1936, Mlékařská hlídka (Milkman’s Patrol), a supplement of a shipping and trade journal for dairy producers, included a short article on chicken breeding in Abyssinia that opened in a way typical for the time: As internationally everyone’s focus is on the Italo-Abyssinian war, we, too, bring some news about that mysterious land of the King of the Kings, and of the Rases. In Abyssinia, chicken breeding is common and high yielding. (Anon, 1936, p. 2; our emphasis) Abyssinia, then, was everywhere. When a phenomenon fnds its way into jokes people tell each other, when it is laughed at in humorous works, when it is absorbed by popular culture, we can be sure it is on people’s minds. In a Czech comic short story from 1935, the butt of the joke is not only connected to the then-current confict in Abyssinia, but it also hinges on the amount of knowledge about Abyssinia that the general public had recently learned from the press: ‘Those times are gone’, the landlord said, ‘when people knew only a little about Abyssinia. Oh my gosh, guys, those things going on! However, such a war does our knowledge good indeed. Half a year ago, who of us knew anything about the Abyssinian system of government, about their emperor, about the area or population or even the capital of the country?’ (Brutus, 1935, p. 545) Even Czech youngsters were informed. The children’s magazine Malý hlasatel (Young Herald) published a story about a group of boys re-playing the ItaloAbyssinian war in the felds near the Czech town Uherské Hradiště (Anon, 1935c, p. 7). There were comical plays and sketches, songs, and cartoons that joked about Abyssinia.14 Stereotype of the region’s underdevelopment became a recurring comedic motif in the adult and youth press alike (Figure 14.2). For instance, in December 1935 the popular long-running humour magazine Humoristické listy (Humour Pages) published this joke titled ‘Report from the battlefeld’: Italian aeroplanes successfully bombed the Abyssinian city Makalé. They caused severe damage to the buildings of the city. The related material losses are estimated to be about a thousand sheaves of reed and four truckloads of clay for pointing the huts. (Anon, 1935e, p. 616)

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FIGURE 14.2

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‘An Abyssinian armour-plated vehicle’ (Anon, 1935d, p. 18), a cartoon from the children’s magazine Malý hlasatel.

A month later, young readers of the children’s magazine Malý hlasatel encountered a cartoon of two half-naked black men with machine guns riding a rhinoceros, which was titled ‘An Abyssinian armour-plated vehicle’ (Anon, 1935d, p. 18). Whereas the motifs of Abyssinia’s poor infrastructure and lack of Western-style civilization were common features in all sectors of the press, there were great diferences between the levels of disdain or sympathy held for the Abyssinians. Periodicals for young readers unequivocally rooted for the locals and supported ‘the little David’ against the Italian ‘Goliath’. Further adding to these portrayals was the tradition of depicting Africa as a wild and savage place dedicated to adventure, where local people were presented as wild, ‘yet uncivilized’ – and therefore child-like, and similar to young readers. This applies to Czech children’s magazines that discussed the Abyssinian war in general, but even more to Punťa, which focused on the war in close detail for several months. Editorials and articles published in the Punťa magazine often ofered informative texts imitating ‘real’ newspaper (or family magazine) articles on topics that might seem interesting to children. These included funny stories about animals or stories about children around the world and their lifestyles. In December 1935, the magazine published its frst text dedicated to the topic of the Abyssinian war – a long article by Marie Voříšková (Voříšková, 1935). It focused on Abyssinian children in the war and discussed the moral issue of treason. The child-focused

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perspective of the text was not out of place among other articles in the magazine nor was the presence of pedagogical aspects. Its serious tone, on the other hand, was rather new to the magazine at the time. The frst sentence of the text opened in medias res – ‘Italians seem to have encountered troubles in that Abyssinian war’ (Voříšková, 1935, p. 3) – implying that the war itself needed no introduction and that readers were already familiar with the basic contours of the topic. The article further dealt with the reasons for the Italians’ ‘troubles’: the region’s poor infrastructure was slowing down the invasion. In line with the prevailing view of that time, as represented in period Czech press, Abyssinia was called ‘a totally uncivilised country’ (Voříšková, 1935, p. 3). However, the article’s main emphasis was on the moral problem of treason. In its opening paragraphs, the defection of one Abyssinian military leader to the Italians was recounted in detail and condemned in harsh terms. In the latter part of the article, the perspective of poor Abyssinian children was added: because the roads are bad and Abyssinian citizens of already-occupied areas refuse to repair them, according to the article, poor little local kids were hired by Italians for a ridiculously low wage to gravel them. The topic of treason thus becomes an ethical problem for children, too. Voříšková says that ‘the little Abyssinians do not understand that they help the enemy to conquer their homeland’ (1935h, p. 3). Their situation is presented as a cautionary example to Czech children: ‘Would you do such a thing, even if a usurper of your homeland promised the moon to you? Of course, you would not!’ The broadly shared adult worries about the Czechoslovak future spoke here and found their way into the moral lessons taught to Czech children (Figure 14.3).

FIGURE 14.3

The cover of the December 1935 issue of the Punťa magazine.

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The cover of the December 1935 issue of the Punťa magazine featured an illustration of Bimbo and Punťa feeing tanks approaching over the horizon. The pair’s equipment is in stark contrast to the army vehicles: Punťa is equipped just with a pith helmet and a camera, whereas Bimbo is wearing his usual grass skirt and holding nothing but a spear. Obviously in terror, they are running towards the viewer, and the perspective from below implies the viewer is in a position similar to the heroes of the image: as someone to whom the tanks pose a threat. This depiction heralded Punťa and Bimbo’s adventure in the Abyssinian war, which would begin in the Punťa comic strip a couple of weeks later. The creators of the strip started their work on the Abyssinian episodes towards the end of 1935, but the process from the frst draft to printed episode always took several weeks, and the frst Abyssinian episode was frst published in the children’s supplement of List paní a dívek in March 1936.

Week by Week, Episode after Episode Let us follow the plot and the chronology of the Abyssinian episodes as they were published, juxtaposed with the course of war-time events as they unfolded.15 As noted, the strip’s production schedule meant that the comic remained constantly weeks behind what happened in the war. Voříšková’s decision to situate a longer story arc of the strip in Abyssinia hence must have come at the end of the year 1935, at the time of an Abyssinian counterofensive. However, before the frst episode of this story arc appeared in print, Italian troops had dominated the battlefeld once again, and the Abyssinian prospects in the war had become practically hopeless. Punťa ‘in print’ was thus headed to a very tragic adventure. In the beginning of the frst episode in this sequence, Punťa wakes up suddenly, remembering that he has not seen his friend Bimbo for quite some time (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936a). This episode was published in the second half of March 1936, when the organized military resistance of the Abyssinian army shattered under Italian military superiority, supported by chemical attacks. In the next episode, Punťa learns about the war in Abyssinia from Vašík, and it has been concluded that Bimbo must have left for his homeland to help his people against the enemy (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936b). For the very frst time in the history of Punťa comics, readers are told that Bimbo comes not from an abstract ‘Africa’ but from a particular country – he is Abyssinian (Figure 14.4). Punťa the dog decides to help his friend, and from the very beginning, he plans to take part in combat: ‘I will follow Bimbo to Abyssinia and join their army’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936b).16 This episode was published in List paní a dívek at the end of March – when the desperate Abyssinian Emperor Haile Selassie deployed the elite Imperial Guard as the last attempt to reverse the tragic situation on the battlefeld. The next episode, titled ‘Punťa is trembling in fear – he is brought before the Emperor’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936c),17 appeared a week later, after the Abyssinian army’s last counterattack had failed. The rest of the army was being decimated in retreat and fnally poisoned by the water of Lake

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FIGURE 14.4

‘Punťa is trembling in fear – he is brought before the Emperor’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936c).

Ashangi, which Italian aircraft had sprayed with deadly chemicals. However, in this episode Punťa has just come to Abyssinia and is fnally facing the reality of the battlefeld. The third panel of this episode represents a scene resembling the one on the cover of the December issue of the Punťa magazine: a couple of poorly armed Abyssinians are feeing an Italian tank – and Punťa cannot do anything but join them. The depiction of local people in this episode follows some, but not all, visual stereotypes that tended to be employed when depicting native African citizens. Once again, their lips are massively exaggerated, but only one little boy is wearing a grass skirt, all the adult men in this episode (as well as in the following one) are dressed in white tunics and trousers in accordance with photos of Abyssinian civilians published in the Czech press at the time. Some of the men in the strip are even holding guns, not spears. In the next panel row, Punťa is captured. The caption underneath the panel in which Punťa is taken hostage reads: ‘As soon as the black man saw him / the man jumped and caught him / by the back of his head / saying: “What are you doing here, you white vermin?”’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936c). The caption thus explicitly states Punťa is ‘white’ in a racial sense: in contrast with

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the background of ‘black’ Abyssinia, Punťa’s ‘whiteness’ (see above) once again becomes visible in the strip. In the depictions, it is stressed even more by the fact he is wearing a clear symbol of white colonial dominance: a pith helmet. Punťa’s whiteness becomes a twist in the plot, because for the local people it is a reason to suspect him of being an Italian spy. That is why he is captured and expects to be brought before Haile Selassie himself. On his way to the Emperor, the captive runs into Bimbo – wearing a tunic for the frst time in the history of the strip and also having an actual job: he says he works as a page at the imperial court. In the next episode (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936d), Bimbo accompanies Punťa to the Emperor and successfully defends him, so he is peacefully released. The artist René Klapač clearly did visual research for this episode, as not only his depiction of Haile Selassie bears a striking resemblance to Emperor’s face, but the way he is dressed also resembles the ceremonial garment Haile Selassie had worn for his coronation as shown in his ofcial portrait. On the way from the court, Punťa swears to Bimbo that he is going to fght with Abyssinians and for Abyssinians as their loyal friend and that he will pose ‘a fearful threat to ’talians’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936d). Here, suddenly, the tone of the story shifts, and the tragedy of war is nearly forgotten and replaced with pun-based comedy. In the following panels, Punťa becomes a threat, not to Italians, who in Czech are pejoratively called ‘Talián’, but to a Czech sausage colloquially called ‘talián’.18 The episode may have started in front of the solemn face of the Emperor, but it ends with a cheerful sausage feast. The sausage joke shifted the whole tone of the comic strip. In the next episode (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936e), the comedy continues and the war is completely ignored. Bimbo, Punťa, and a group of Abyssinian boys make various practical jokes with a pair of trousers (e.g. using them as a chimney over an open fre). Then the strip re-focuses on Punťa’s homeland, and for the next couple of weeks, its readers follow the lives of three of Punťa’s children. Two months later, at the end of June, in the episode titled ‘Punťa gets a letter that his daughter got married’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936f ), both storylines are brought back together. Punťa is still in Abyssinia, and in the caption for the opening panel, the narrator sums up what happened to Punťa ‘in the meantime’, since we last saw him. These events are presented only in writing: The war in Abyssinia is over, and Punťa, still so far far away, rests together with his buddy Bimbo after the fghting. At the very last moment, they saved their souls through retreat. Now, they are hiding in a deep forest, still a bit fearful and anxious. (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936f) In the next panels, Punťa and Bimbo sent a friendly bird to spy in a nearby town to see whether the situation has calmed down. The bird comes back and

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reports that it is still ‘a living hell’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936f ). References to something happening ‘out of sight’ like this are uncommon in the strip, but the reason for this choice seems obvious – children should not witness war atrocities committed on the people their hero rooted for. This episode (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936f ) further distances itself from the actual Abyssinian reality in other ways, too. In most of the episodes, until as late as the one about Abyssinian boys having fun with a pair of trousers, all the boys – including Bimbo – wear tunics. Here, suddenly, Bimbo is again clad in his usual grass skirt. Whereas in the previous Abyssinian episodes, signs of actual infrastructure were visible in the background of the panels, now Punťa and Bimbo are once again staying in a grass hut among palms and cacti. The depictions thus return to the ‘safe space’ of stereotypical visualization of Africa. In the next episode, they both fnally leave Abyssinia. Punťa decides to go home to re-join his family, and he advises Bimbo to accompany him, because ‘here, you could expect nothing but woes’ (Voříšková & Klapač, 1936g). Having made their decision, they cross a desert and simply get on a train – and leave for good, both physically and mentally. Never again did Bimbo mention his Abyssinian origin, and hardly ever does he change his grass skirt for other clothes. No available source can bring explicit evidence for the reasons why Voříšková as Punťa’s scriptwriter decided to focus on the topic of the Abyssinian war so closely (no other Czech children’s magazine did that to such extent)19; however, the explanation might lie in the following: Voříšková was in constant search for new ideas for strip,20 the war in Abyssinia ofered a popular topic already present in the Czechoslovak press of that time, but it also opened another possibility for an African adventure, a locus communes in the genre, only this time happening here and now. As we saw when reading Voříšková’s article on the Abyssinian war in the Punťa magazine, she was also ready to use history in progress to teach Czech children some moral lessons. And fnally, there probably also was her personal interest – two years later she went to North Africa to write a series of articles for List paní a dívek. Whatever the original purpose was, she obviously did not think through what engaging with the war could mean.21 As the confict evolved and Abyssinian defeat seemed inevitable, it caused a morally problematic situation that led to the above-mentioned abrupt twist in the story arc. The pun that helped her out was not of her own invention; on the contrary, playing with two various meanings of the Czech word ‘Talián’ in the context referring to the confict in Abyssinia was rather common and can be found in other Czech humorous works of the time.22 This was not the only time the comic echoed other voices of the day.

Comic Witnesses of the Second Italo–Abyssinian War Punťa and Bimbo were not the only Czech comics characters who participated, actively or from a distance, in the Second Italo-Abyssinian war. The large amount of coverage this confict received in national news, which was – as discussed above

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– at least partially connected to Czechoslovakia’s direct diplomatic involvement, was refected in a proliferation of depictions of real-life events in the period’s popular culture. František Voborský, Václav Lehrer, and other cartoonists utilized jokes about Abyssinia in their works, usually showing local Abyssinian populations in a positive light (but still as ‘primitive’ and ‘uncivilized’) and Italians as aggressive oppressors.23 On 9 November 1935, a Czech painter, cartoonist, and comics artist Josef Lada (1887–1957) started Zprávy z Habeše slovem a obrazem (News from Abyssinia in Words and Pictures), an adult humour strip in which he cast himself as a war correspondent. This new series, by the already famous illustrator of Jaroslav Hašek’s satirical novel Dobrý voják Švejk (The Good Soldier Švejk), was heavily advertised on the front page of the newspaper Večerní České slovo (Evening Czech Word). Despite being promoted, it was swiftly discontinued on 20 November, without a word of explanation, after only four published episodes (in those episodes, the hero did not even leave Czechoslovakia). We may only speculate whether this quick discontinuation had something to do with the development of the war: it may well be argued that Lada or the editors of the newspaper might have decided that the real-life atrocities, as described in Czech press, were no longer compatible with light cartoonish entertainment. Similar echoes of the Second Italo-Abyssinian war can be found in comics from all around the world. Often it was just a feeting glimpse, an opportunity for a joke or two, but in few rare cases, this real-life confict played a larger role and was depicted in more detail, with more focused interest. It seems worth mentioning that when ‘Lada the war correspondent’ ceased his activities, another artist was getting ready for the task. At the end of November 1935, the protagonists of Bud Fisher’s syndicated comic strip Mutt and Jef (prepared at the time by Al Smith [1902–1986], but with Fisher’s signatures in panels) travelled to Addis Ababa with the same task in mind, wanting to write about the confict from the frst-hand experience and hoping to interview Haile Selassie.24 For a few weeks, Mutt and Jef lived their lives in an Abyssinian context, residing in towns and in the desert, as well as hiding in trenches. Detailed depictions of actual, real-life war events were nevertheless never present. The ‘exotic’ setting ofered a new set of props for the long-running strip, merely a new backdrop on which to stage familiar escapades for a famous comical duo. Mutt’s and Jef’s African adventure ended on 3 February 1936, when the duo boarded the steamer back to the United States. It is worth mentioning that in the context of Central European comics of that era, there was at least one long-running comic strip that approached the war’s reality slightly more ‘head on’, while it retained its simplifed cartoon style. Przygody Bezrobotnego Froncka (The Adventures of Jobless Froncek) by Polish cartoonist Franciszek Struzik (1902–1944) was published daily in the newspaper Siedem Groszy (Seven Grozsy) from 1932 to 1939 (see Rusek, 2016; 2018 for more). This comic strip depicted the adventures of a former miner, and, over the years, its hero travelled to many countries and encountered various dangers. In the autumn of 1935, Froncek packed his sword and old revolver and together with his dog Ciapek went to Abyssinia to help locals against Italian aggression.

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For nearly half a year, readers of the Katowice-based newspaper followed Froncek’s adventures in the Second Italo-Abyssinian war. Like Punťa, Froncek had an audience with Haile Sellasie, but while Voříšková and Klapač stepped back and did not depict actual war atrocities, Struzik and his strip, aiming at adult readers, persevered. For nearly half a year, Siedem Groszy published funny comic strips which addressed the reality of the far-away confict. While many episodes reproduced the typical ethnocentric stereotypes of their time and drew their jokes from the age-old and well-tested repertoire of ‘funny’ depictions of Africa and its inhabitants as uncivilized and primitive events like Italian forces’ destruction of a Red Cross facility or deadly bombardment with chemical weapons took a central stage from time to time. Froncek’s war adventures were popular, and in March 1936 some of the earlier episodes were promptly reprinted in a landscape format collection Przygody Bezrobotnego Froncka na wojne v Abisynii (The Adventures of Jobless Froncek in the Abyssinian War). Several weeks later, however, Struzik faced a question that had also haunted his colleagues from Czechoslovakia and abroad: how to reset the comics’ status quo, when the outcome of the depicted war was not the one their creators had hoped and argued for? Like many European and American comics heroes before him, Froncek simply boards a train and goes home, leaving the defeated and decimated Abyssinians to their destiny and doom (Struzik, 1936, p. 8).

Conclusion In the end, the only possible way out for all the comic heroes who had been sent by their creators to fght side by side with the locals in the Abyssinian war was to leave and to forget. Froncek cries when he says good-bye to his new Abyssinian acquaintances at the train station. Punťa, on the other hand, does not even shed a tear on his way out of Africa. He does bring his black friend with him back to Europe, but on the way back they somehow both forget that Bimbo was ever Abyssinian. Leaving behind and forgetting is, of course, a method frequently used in long-running comic strips or series, employed when their creators want to move on to a new adventure. Heroes of these comics thus tend to be, in this regard, characters without history. That said, Punťa the dog is not quite like this as his family history stays with him throughout the series. The information about the wedding of his daughter (which Punťa learned from the letter he received in Abyssinia, in Voříšková & Klapač, 1936f ) was not lost for the future of the series, while all the experience with Abyssinia – e. g. his audience with Haile Sellasie as well as his feeing from Italian tanks – was. What helps all these comics heroes to cope with a situation that, in the real world, would be emotionally shattering is the fact that in the comics panels they do not leave behind real friends with particular names, faces, and personalities, only friendly, but visually interchangeable nameless black men with whom they stayed and sometimes even had some fun.

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Popular culture, or indeed culture in general, is never truly ideologically innocent. It always refects shared opinions, biases, and power relations of the actual world, even when it seems not to have an intentional ideological agenda. Punťa or Froncek (or their creators), for instance, did not intend to openly state their position regarding race. Nevertheless, they still did in a way as they employed the shared visual language already biased with stereotypes. To illustrate it even more clearly, we shall now briefy look at the other side of the barricade of the Abyssinian confict. In Italy, the fascist regime was determined to make use of children’s culture to ideologically form and shape the next generation. They tried to organize and control not only school curricula but also the children’s leisure time: this includes their games, puzzles, stories, even some objects of daily use, as well as the Italian comics series published in children’s magazines, which the regime recognized as an important propaganda tool. Celebrating the Italian colonial expansion in Africa became an inherent part of that ideological message (Ferris, 2012, p. 56), and Italian boys were being prepared for their future role as soldiers and colonizers through, for example, fction stories about brave Italian men fghting in Africa, by Tombola di Etiopia: Storica, Geografca, a strategy board game situated in Abyssinia, or by a tableware set decorated with colonial imaginary, pith helmets included (see Luca, 2012). Italian comics of the time depicted the confict in Abyssinia through the discourse of the ‘civilising myth’: Italians were the liberators, bringing modern civilisation to the primitive ‘otherness’ of Abyssinia. In these stories, ‘good Abyssinians’ were only those who acknowledged the cultural superiority of their new masters, helped them, and obeyed their orders (Ferris, 2012, p. 64). On 2 February 1936, the popular Italian children’s magazine Corriere dei Piccoli published the instructions on how to make a black ‘Abyssinian head’ of cardboard with marbles in matchboxes behind the cut-out eyes. Because of a counterweight, this head was then able to oscillate and roll its eyes. Italian children were encouraged to play a game called ‘the Abyssinian and the aeroplane’: in that game, the jiggling head and the rolling eyes alluded to horror presumably felt by Abyssinian people when hearing the incoming Italian air forces. Two weeks later, the same magazine advised Italian mothers that a suitable carnival costume for the season was ‘a little negro girl’, with a banana skirt around her waist and henna colouring on her face (quoted according to Ferris, 2012, p. 63). The magazine Punťa often published creative projects for its readers, too. In the above-mentioned game from Corriere dei Piccoli, the magazine readers played the role of Italian invaders posing a deadly threat to an Abyssinian. Because of its political messaging, a game like that was out of the question in the Punťa magazine, since its editors (and comics creators) basically followed the ofcial political position of the Czechoslovak government in this international matter. To them, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia was an act of reprehensible international aggression. On the other hand, instructions for making the black cardboard face with rolling eyes itself would not have been out of place on its pages. Editorial

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staf of the magazine also added their bit to the infamous tradition of blackface: the costume for Bimbo in the 1938 comic theatre play about the canine hero and his friends Punťa honí gangstery (Punťa in pursuit of the gangsters) by Marie Voříšková was founded in the same stereotypical and derogatory tradition as the costume from the Italian carnivals of 1936 (Figure 14.5). On 8 December 1935, the beloved Italian version of Mickey Mouse, Topolino, met an ‘Abyssinian doctor’ on the pages of the Italian children’s magazine Il Gazzettino dei Ragazzi (see Ferris, 2012, pp. 64–66). Comparing the face of this negatively framed fgure of a primitive charlatan and the facial features of the positively framed fgure of Bimbo, we can hardly see any differences in their depictions – stereotypical physiognomy is present in both instances. Comics of the era (and visual popular culture in general) refected the political views of their creators and editors on the Abyssinian confict and its participants. However, no matter which side of the confict the comics rooted for, there was an oftentimes unrefexive undercurrent of racial biases and visual stereotypes (that mutually supported and nurtured each other). This undercurrent was truly ubiquitous and, for the most part, immune to actual sympathies and political afliations. Punťa’s undertakings in Abyssinia (as well as the Abyssinian adventures of Froncek) considered the Abyssinians to be ‘the good guys’ in the confict. However, the representations of those good guys were – maybe unintentionally – building on the same stereotypical patterns and biases as the Italian depictions

FIGURE 14.5

‘Punťa in pursuit of the gangsters’ (theatre play), promotional photo (as reprinted in the March 1940 issue of the Punťa magazine).

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of the primitive Abyssinian locals. In the frst episodes about Abyssinia, René Klapač temporarily shifted his visual patterns for depicting black characters and Africa, nevertheless, getting rid of all the stereotypes and inventing a radically new visual language was – for the time being and for the artist situated within dominant Western structures with its hegemonic whiteness – a nearly impossible task. When the creators of the series removed the events of the actual Abyssinian war from readers’ line of sight, all the earlier abandoned visual stereotypes returned in full force. As Richard Dyer states in his introduction to White, white people create the dominant images of the world and don’t quite see that they thus construct the world in their image; white people set standards of humanity by which they are bound to succeed, and others bound to fail. Most of this is not done deliberately and maliciously, there are enormous variations of power amongst white people, to do with class, gender, and other factors. … White power none the less reproduces itself regardless of intention, power diferences and goodwill, and overwhelmingly because it is not seen as whiteness, but as normal. (Dyer, 2017, pp. 9–10) This may very well be true up to these days, but it surely was the case in interwar Czechoslovakia and its comics aimed at young audience.

Notes 1 His name – which is common as a dog’s name in Czech – can be translated as ‘Spotty’. 2 In 1926, Koule (Sphere) magazine was launched, modelled after the long-running Italian comics newspaper Corriere dei Piccoli, and in 1927, the newly established magazine Kocour (Cat) tried to build on the popularity of Felix the Cat cartoons and comic strips. This major global celebrity notwithstanding, it lasted only fve issues. For more information on these early Czechoslovak comic periodicals, see Kořínek (2012). 3 At least commercially and according to its readers, while literary and didactic criticism of that era usually looked at comics with disdain. In the eyes of the contemporary society, comics were perceived and considered solely as a part of kids/youth culture and therefore were usually considered (and judged) according to their depiction of proper manners and good examples, and their educational/pedagogical merit. It goes without saying that with these criteria in mind, comics were usually found detrimental to the proper development of young readers. 4 Punťa was originally published monthly, and from October 1938 it was published fortnightly. In 1942, the publishing house Rodina was forced to cease its operations following Nazi (Protectorate) intervention. 5 For detailed information about the history of Punťa see Kořínek & Kořínková (2018). 6 For more on Grace Drayton and her comic strips see Robbins (2013, pp. 16–20) and McGrath (2012). 7 For discussion on how the creators and producers of Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse constructed and employed ‘star status’ of their celebrity protagonists see Canemaker (1996); McGowan (2019, pp. 46–50; Felix); and Apgar (2015, pp. 137–159; Mickey).

278 Lucie Kořínková and Pavel Kořínek

8 The frst African adventure of Punťa, while being a part of a longer story-arc, consisted of ten episodes, originally published in List paní a dívek nos. 536–545 from January to April 1935. All these episodes were collected in Punťa no. 4, 1935. 9 The monograph by Nederveen Pieterse (1992) is dedicated to the topic of the image of blacks and Africa in Western visual culture in general. 10 For more on that stereotype see David Pilgrim’s entry for the Jim Crow’s Museum of Racist Memorabilia website (Pilgrim 2012) and for ‘piccaninnies’ as depicted in early comic strips see Saguisag (2018, pp. 56–58). 11 For detailed accounts of the confict and its context see Barker (1968; 1971) or Del Boca (1969). 12 For more see Del Boca and Rochat (1996). 13 For more details on the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in Czech press, see Sysel (2010). 14 See for instance Ualual (1935b). Lyrics of a cheerful song ‘What is sung in Prague. A sad Abyssinian song’ went like this: ‘Once there was a fair good maiden, / she was in love with an Abyssinian. … / “Look, how much my heart is pounding! / That’s because the Duce’s coming. / He promised us macarons, / but he’s bringing just cannons”’ (Anon, 1935b, p. 516). 15 We will follow the dates these episodes were published for the frst time, i.e., when they were printed in List paní a dívek. All the discussed episodes then appeared in the May, June, August, and September issues of the Punťa magazine; these reprints were thus published at the time when Abyssinia had been conquered. 16 Text captions are originally in verse and rhyme, to express the meaning we translate in prose. 17 The original Czech title of the episode uses emperor’s title ‘něguš’, one of these new words that Czechoslovak audience was introduced to in 1935. The fact that the editors of the magazine aiming at younger children did not fnd it necessary to explain this, serves as further evidence of the above-mentioned wide societal dissemination of these Abyssinia-related words. 18 The name honours Emmanuel Uggè, a Prague butcher and sausage maker of Italian origin who at the end of the nineteenth century introduced this delicacy to Czech consumers. 19 The company archive of the Rodina publishing house did not survive, René Klapač later emigrated to the USA, and there are no relevant documents in Voříšková’s family archive. 20 For more on that (as well as for the information about attempts to gain topics from the readers) see Kořínek & Kořínková (2018, pp. 53, 74–79). 21 In the history of the strip, it was not the only case – for more see Kořínek and Kořínková (2018, pp. 74–79). 22 For example, this pun is twice repeated in a cheerful monologue that was published as a program suggestion for comic performances – Ualual (1935a). The humour magazine Humoristické listy brought a joke with this pun already at the time of the international tension before the Italian invasion (Anon, 1935a, p. 435). 23 For a more detailed list see Czech comics historian Martin Foret’s ‘Políčka konfiktní a válečná. Refexe války a konfiktu v českém komiksu’ (Small Fields of Confict and War. Refections of War and Confict in Czech Comics) (2016). 24 When introducing himself to the British gentleman, Augustus Mutt describes himself as ‘a war correspondent for the Daily Blah’ (Mutt and Jef, 23 November 1935).

References Apgar, G, (2015) Mickey Mouse. Emblem of the American Spirit. San Francisco: The Walt Disney Family Foundation Press.

Punťa in the Second Italo–Abyssinian War

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Anonymous (1935a) ‘Bude válka, bude!!! Bursa práce hlásí’ [There will be war, for sure! Labour market announces!], Humoristické listy 78, no. 36 (30 August), p. 435. Anonymous (1935b) ‘Co se zpívá po Praze. Habešská dumka (1935)’, Humoristické listy 78, no. 43 (18 October), p. 516. Anonymous (1935c) ‘Talián v rukou ‘Habešanů’’, Malý hlasatel 1, no. 8 (26 October), p. 7. Anonymous (1935d) ‘Pancéřované auto Habešanů’, Malý hlasatel 1, no. 12 (23 November), p. 18. Anonymous (1935e) ‘Zpráva z bojiště’, Humoristické listy 78, no. 51 (13 December), p. 616. Anonymous (1936) ‘Chov slepic v Habeši’, Český Lloyd 52, no. 21 (11 March), supplement Mlékařská hlídka, p. 2. Brutus (1935) ‘Pozor na Habeš’’ Humoristické listy 78, no. 45 (1 November), p. 545. Barker, A. J. (1968) The Civilizing Mission: The Italo Ethiopian War 1935–6. London: Cassell. Barker, A. J. (1971) Rape of Ethiopia, 1936. New York: Ballantine Books. Canemaker, J. (1996) Felix. The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat. New York: Da Capo Press. Del Boca, A. (1969) The Ethiopian War 1935–1941. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Del Boca, A. and Rochat, G. (1996) I gas di Mussolini: Il fascismo e la guerra d’Etiopia. Roma: Primo piano. Dyer, R., (2017) White. Twentieth anniversary edition. London & New York: Routledge. Ferris, K. (2012) Everyday Life in Fascist Venice, 1929–40. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Foret, M. (2016) ‘Políčka konfiktní a válečná. Refexe války a konfiktu v českém komiksu’, in Kratochvil, A. and Soukup, J. (eds.) Paměť válek a konfiktů. Praha: Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR – Nakladatelství Akropolis, pp. 145–154. Kershaw, I. (2016) To Hell and Back. Europe 1914–1949. New York: Penguin Books. Kořínek, P. (2012) ‘In Our Next Issue. Formats of Czech Comics’, in Kořínek, P. and Prokůpek, T. (eds.) Signals from the Unknown. Czech Comics 1922–2012. Řevnice: Arbor vitae, pp. 12–35. Kořínek, P. & Kořínková, L. (2018) Punťa. Zapomenutý hrdina českého komiksu (1934– 1942). Praha: Akropolis. Kvaček, R. (1966) Nad Evropou zataženo. Praha: Svoboda. Luca, F. (2012) ‘Italy: Colonial Adventures’, in Kinchin, J. and O’Connor, A. (eds.) Century of the Child: Growing by Design 1900–2000. New York: Museum of Modern Art, pp. 127–129. McGowan, D. (2019) Animated Personalities. Cartoon Characters and Stardom in American Theatrical Shorts. Austin: University of Texas Press. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (1992) White on Black. Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press. McGrath, W. (2012) ‘Grace Drayton, a Children’s Illustrator Who Also Portrayed Young Women: A Biographical Sketch’, International Journal of Comic Art, 14(2), pp. 239–263 Pilgrim, D. (2012) ‘The Piccaninny Caricature’. Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia (Ferris State University). Available at: https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS /news/jimcrow/antiblack/picaninny/homepage.htm (Accessed: 2 May 2021). Procházka, R. (1935) ‘Válka ve východní Africe’, Československá republika, no. 230 (4 October), pp. 1–2. Robbins, T. (2013) Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896–2010. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books

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Rusek, A. (ed.) (2016) Dawny komiks polski tom 4 – Przygody Bezrobotnego Froncka. Warszawa: Prószyńki Media. Rusek, A. (2018) ‘Komiks v okresie międzywojennym / Comics in the Interwar Period’, in Wabik, A. (ed.), Teraz komiks! / Comics Now!. Krakow: Muzeum Narodowe v Krakowe, pp. 62–97. Saguisag, L. (2018) Incorrigibles and Innocents. Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Strömberg, F. (2012) Black Images in Comics. A Visual History. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. Struzik, F. (1936) ‘Przygody Bezrobotnego Froncka’, Siedem groszy 5, no. 125 (7 May), p. 8. Sysel, J. (2010) Habešská válka na stránkách československého stranicko-politického tisku. Student thesis. Masarykova univerzita. Ualual, F. (1935a) Kam se hrabeš – Na tu Habeš!. Veselý solový výstup pro každý humoristický večer. Praha: Fr. Švejda. Ualual, F. (1935b) Já chci jenom Habešana! Veselá deklamace pro dámu pro každý humoristický večírek. Praha: Fr. Švejda. Voříšková, M. (1935) ‘Haló – Haló – Zvukový urnál ‘Punti’’, Punťa 1935, no. 9, pp. 2–3. Voříšková, M. & Klapač, R. (1935) ‘Černý Bimbo se psím párem přeplaví se – Gibraltarem’, List paní a dívek 1935, no. 545 (1935/14), children’s supplement ‘List našich dětí’ (reprinted in Punťa 1935, no. 4, p. 15). Voříšková, M. & Klapač, R. (1936a) Po takové noci rušné ani sny se nezdaj slušné. List paní a dívek 1936, no. 595 (1936/12), children’s supplement ‘List našich dětí’ (reprinted in Punťa 1936, no. 14, p. 12). Voříšková, M. & Klapač, R. (1936b) ‘Punťa tou í po Habeši a hned problém zčerstva řeší’. List paní a dívek 1936, no. 596 (1936/13), children’s supplement ‘List našich dětí’ (reprinted in Punťa 1936, no. 15, p. 7). Voříšková, M. & Klapač, R. (1936c) ‘V Punťovi je malá duše, přivedou ho před – Něguše’, List paní a dívek 1936, no. 597 (1936/14), children’s supplement ‘List našich dětí’ (reprinted in Punťa 1936, no. 15, p. 8). Voříšková, M. & Klapač, R. (1936d) ‘Punťa má vojenské plány, jak vyřídit Taliány’, List paní a dívek 1936, no. 598 (1936/15), children’s supplement ‘List našich dětí’ (reprinted in Punťa, 1936, no. 15, p. 11). Voříšková, M. & Klapač, R. (1936e) Punťa s Bimbem, páni, dámy, předvedou trik s kalhotami. List paní a dívek 1936, no. 599 (16/1936), children’s supplement ‘List našich dětí’ (reprinted in Punťa 1936, no. 15, p. 12). Voříšková, M. & Klapač, R., (1936f ). Punťa se dovídá z psaní, e má dcerku mladou paní. List paní a dívek 1936, no. 609 (1936/26), children’s supplement ‘List našich dětí’ (reprinted in Punťa 1936, no. 17, p. 12). Voříšková, M. & Klapač, R. (1936g). Puntíček u tou í domů a co Bimbo říká tomu? List paní a dívek 1936, no. 610 (1936/27), children’s supplement ‘List našich dětí’ (reprinted in Punťa 1936, no. 18, p. 14). Walker, B. (2004) The Comics before 1945. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

INDEX

Africa 5–6, 109–114, 116–118, 120–125; Cabo Corso (Ghana) 109, 113, 125; colonial stereotypes 6; Ethiopia (Abyssinia) 259–260, 264–274; South Africa 115, 117–119 agency 46, 171–172, 181, 192, 195–196, 201–202, 205, 207, 215, 246 Aguirre, Camilo 39, 48–50, 53, 63 Ahmed, Sara 180 Allende, Salvador 188–190, 192 Altarriba Jr., Antonio and Kim 201–216 Altenberg, T. and Owen, R. 9–10 Aman, Robert 12 Americas 90–93, 95, 114, 123, 156, 188, 190, 192; colonization of see colonialism; as invented 91; Latin America 5, 32, 39, 40, 48, 89–90, 190, 192, 198, 240; Mesoamerica 93–94, 96; North America 4–5; U.S. American 4–5, 8, 27, 71, 259–260, 263, 274 anachronism 30–31, 34n8, 35n10, 115 Anderson, Benedict 68, 73, 180 antiquity, idolization of 69, 74, 81–87; see also Greece Appadurai, Arjun 180 archive 61, 68, 75–78, 81, 87; as alternative archive 180; as archive of resistance 177; see also memory art 3–10, 158, 177, 182, 220; artistic styles 136–142; classical art 138; historical

context of 154; Soviet political art 130, 136, 142, 148–149 assimilation 174 Assmann, Aleida 68, 75 Assmann, Jan 68, 78 asylum-seekers 39–47, 54, 63; see also refugee authenticity 2, 40, 73, 96, 129, 134 Ayoko clan 109, 113–115, 120, 125 Bakhtin, Mikhail 19, 26–27, 249 bande dessinée 3–4, 6, 8, 71 Beaty, Bart 174 Belgium 19, 20, 24, 27–28, 31–33, 35n14 Bennett, Jill 180 Black Statue of Aphrodite, The (comic) 67–68, 71–72, 75–76, 81, 85 Blackness 46, 118; Black images 112, 259; racial stereotypes 113, 259, 262–264; see also racism Borges, Bruno 176–179 Brabant 11, 19, 21, 27, 29, 30–34; strategic essentialism of 19, 34 Browne, Edmundo 240–241, 245–246 Büll, Bruno 13, 220, 225, 231 Bulling, Paula 39–48, 63 Buraco (comic) 171, 175–178, 180–181 capitalism 91–92, 98, 112, 115, 117, 120–125, 153, 155–158, 160, 165–166;

282

Index

as anti-capitalism 109, 111, 120–121, 125; critiques of 12, 117 Chile 12–13, 187–199; Chilean earthquake (2010) 240, 243; Chilean identity construction 191, 247–249; truth commissions 189 chronotope 19, 26–28; Greek etymology of 26 citizenship 40, 70, 86, 95–96, 101, 166, 175–176, 192, 247–249, 259, 268, 270 civilization 113, 117, 121, 125, 263–264, 267; East vs. West 75, 81; Greek 74, 81, 86; Mesoamerican 93, 96, 100; myth of 265, 275 class 29, 79, 111, 113, 120, 139, 154, 157–158, 161, 163, 277; as middle-class 163–166; as working class 25, 138, 157, 175, 178 classifcation 1–11, 42, 112–115, 194, 250 Cociña, Vincente 251–252, 254 Colombia 11, 39–40, 48–51, 53, 59, 61–63 colonialism 7, 89–92, 94, 96–97, 100, 102, 110, 112, 116, 118, 122–124, 172, 265 comics: academic study of 2–11; as autobiography 6, 13, 78, 180, 190, 194, 201–205, 212, 239–242, 251, 254, 256; as comics-making 172–173, 181–182; as cultural or political discourse 70, 87, 111, 119, 171, 177–178, 182, 187; as entertainment 71, 190, 259–260; as meaning-making 208; as social construction 1–11; as subversive 154; as sui generis 2; as temporal 1; “text comics” 260; as underground 190–192; Western standard of 174–175 Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) 242 consciousness 205–206; as historical 10; as national 73, 81, 86, 180; as patriarchal unconscious 213; self-consciousness 204; as social 110 culture 2, 4, 8–10, 68, 70, 72, 93, 95–96, 100, 125, 156, 162–163, 165–166, 221–222, 227; popular culture 130–131, 153–154, 158–159, 161, 163, 166, 188, 262–263, 266, 273, 275–276; as primitive 113–114; systemic erasure of see colonialism; visual culture 67, 78, 139, 202, 260, 263–264 Czechoslovakia 259–277 Czubaj, Mariusz 160, 164

defnition 1–2, 5, 7, 10, 41, 60, 67, 79, 134, 155, 192, 224, 230; as social construction 2 dependency theory 122–123 Díaz, Porfrio 95, 97, 100 dichotomy 67–69, 72, 75, 81–82, 85–87 diference: constructions of 1–11, 51, 124, 277; diferentiation 175; as ideological 260 discrimination 40–41, 54, 193–194, 196 displacement 11, 39–40, 48–57, 59, 61–63; as existential 39; internal displacement 48; as “process of deracination” 50; as systemic 50–51 dissent see resistance Drayton, Grace Gebbie 261 Dyer, Richard 207, 263, 277

De Dobbeleer, Michel 11, 28 decoloniality 12, 90–92, 113, 118, 123

gaze: as male gaze 201–217; as regime of the gaze 51

Echeverría, Elisa 240–241, 243, 245, 254–255 economy 89–102, 153–167 education 28, 33, 86, 90, 96–97, 100–102, 124, 158, 176, 188, 190–191, 248–249, 263; as colonialism see colonialism Eighty Years’ War 21–23, 26, 30 El ala rota (EAR) (graphic novel) 201–208, 210, 212, 214–217 El arte de volar (EAdV) (graphic novel) 201–208, 210, 212, 214–217 El Refaie, Elisabeth 239–243, 245 Enlightenment (European) 74, 92 equality 79, 111, 113, 120, 124–125, 222, 226, 233; as inequality 49, 73, 93, 111, 124, 131, 153, 189, 193, 246 Es.Col.A. (Espaço Colective Autogestionado do Alto da Fontinha) 175–180 ethnicity 42, 67, 72, 73, 78, 142; ethnocentric stereotypes 274 experience 13, 40, 43, 49, 116, 131, 154, 162, 164, 167, 177, 190, 194–198, 201–217 Fanon, Frantz 6 Faust-Scalisi, Mario 12 Finland: Finnish Civil War 129, 132–133, 135, 145, 148; Finnish Communist Party 12, 130, 132; Finnish culture 129–131 Flanders 20–21, 28, 33 fumetti 2–3, 71

Index

gender 187–199, 201–217, 220–233; gender-based violence 12; as identity 193–194; multiplicity of 197; patriarchal lens 202; as resistance see resistance; transgressions of 232 genre 20, 71, 78, 180–181, 213, 239, 272 Germany 2, 11, 39–63, 95, 130, 140, 145, 265 Gomez, Felipe 11 governance 69, 120, 154–155, 178, 229 Gráinne Mhaol (graphic novel) 13, 220–222, 224–226, 228–233 graphic narrative 68, 75, 201, 213, 215–216, 241; as cultural product 39, 67 graphic novels 3, 8, 11–12, 27, 39–63, 129–130, 132–149, 153–167, 174, 202–216; see also comics Greece: Greek culture 69, 73, 76–78, 81, 85; Junta 68–69, 71, 82, 86; modern Greek identity 11, 67–87; as national identity 67–69, 72–73, 85; Westernization of 79 Guerra, Pablo 39, 48, 50, 53, 56, 59, 61, 63 Gypsy Orchestra (comic) 67–68, 71–72, 75, 78–79, 81–82, 85 Hebron, Malcolm 27, 29 Hergé 19, 23–25 ‘Het Spaanse spook’ (lecture) 19–34 historietas 2, 4, 90, 196 history: as historical context 50, 154, 166, 224; historiography 221, 239–256, 259–277; misrepresentations of 30, 206–207; as narrative construction 32, 129, 133, 148; new historicism 154 home: constructions of 41–43, 48; as prison 41–42 humor (as narrative tool) 20, 25–26, 28, 30, 32, 171, 178, 180, 189, 191; as iconoclastic 181 identity construction 11, 60, 187, 196; center/periphery 89, 92, 98, 125, 155, 163–165, 172–182, 222; as colonialism see colonialism; as cultural 11, 73, 191; as ethnicity 67–78; as gender 193–194, 221; as national 12, 39, 67–87, 189, 191, 221, 223; otherness 112, 114, 125, 222, 225, 264, 275; as racial 263; as self-identity 225; as sexual 19, 187–199; as social group formation 31, 34, 72, 180, 187

283

ideology 7, 69–71, 79, 85, 112, 123–125, 135, 154–156, 167, 188, 201, 212–213, 260, 275; as ideological framework 71, 166; as ‘the ideological I’ 204 Im Land der Frühaufsteher (comic) 39–41, 46, 62–63 imperialism see colonialism indigenous peoples 6–7, 50, 94, 96, 98–101, 110–111, 114, 188 interpretation 10, 13, 51, 67–68, 71–72, 75, 78, 87, 118–119, 129, 131, 148–149, 153–154, 159, 179, 192, 194, 196, 198, 205, 213, 223, 239, 244, 259; see also translation Ireland 220–233; Celtic women warriors 228; Irish history 220–222, 224, 232–233; Irish language (Gaeilge) 13, 220, 222–223, 233 Isusi, Mikel Bermello 13 Italy 2–4, 71, 162–163, 173, 260, 264–265 Jeria, Paloma Domínguez 13 Johan Vilde 12, 111–116, 120–121, 124–125 Kalaïtzis, Giannis 11, 67–69, 71–73, 75–77, 80–86 Klapač, Rene 261–263, 269–272, 274, 277 Klonowski, Piotr 160, 163 Knopf, Christina M. 13 knowledge 11, 76, 78, 82, 87, 96, 102; as hegemonic 92; knowledge production 191 Knutsson, Magnus 110, 117, 119–120 Kořinek, Pavel 13 Kořínkova, Lucie 13 Kramsch, Claire J. 240, 242–243, 246 Kunzle, David 5, 171, 188 La Palizúa (comic) 39, 48–49, 51–52, 58, 61, 62 land grabbing 40, 48–50, 61, 63 language 4–11, 73, 76, 86–87, 90, 96, 102, 114, 142, 173, 203, 213, 222–223, 231, 239, 242, 275, 277; etymology 2–3, 26, 227, 250; and heritage 13; as social construction 10 Lefèvre, Pascal 20, 34n3, 223 Lenin, Vladimir 129–130, 134, 139, 142, 144, 147–149 Lent, John 5, 7, 189 Lewandowski, Wojciech 12 Lía y sus Líos (comic) 194, 198 Loureiro, Ángel 202–203, 205, 216

284 Index

Lundström, Janne 110, 113–116, 118, 120–122 Machin D. and Mayr, A. 240, 250–251, 254 Maier, Gabi 11 Maliki (Marcela Trujillo) 249–251 manga 2–4, 173; as irresponsible pictures 3 manhwa 2–3, 173 Mapuche 187, 189, 252 Martín, Antonio 202–203 Marxism 119–120, 137, 188; neo-Marxism 122 Massey, Doreen 41–42, 44, 48–49, 51 Matilainen, Jesse 129 McCloud, Scott 1, 202, 213–214, 241 McKinney, Mark 3 meaning-making 10–11, 51, 154, 160, 208, 223, 242, 245 memory 39, 49, 57, 61, 68–69, 81, 181, 202–203, 205, 215, 217, 239, 241; as afliative 212–213; as cultural 67–68, 72–73, 75–78, 87; as historical 75, 213, 216, 240; as living/embodied 78, 242; as post-memory 204; as public 221, 233; as reference memory 75 Mendes, Marco 179–180 Mesoamerica 93–94, 96; Mesoamerican cultures 94 metaphor 9, 78, 82, 114, 120, 162, 164, 171–172, 178, 242–245 Mexico: critical history of 93–102; Mexican independence 12, 89, 93–97, 99–102; Mexican Revolution 89–91, 93, 95, 97–99, 101–102 Mignolo, Walter 89, 91–92, 101, 115 migration 11, 39–40, 48, 50, 54, 130–132, 149 mise en scene 223–225 modernidad/colonialidad 94 modernity 74–75, 91–92, 124–125, 203 Moura, Pedro 12 Mulvey, Laura 201–203, 207, 213–214 Muñoz, Mariana 13 narrative construction 12–13, 55–56, 203–204, 207, 239; as antinarrative 182 narratology 202 nationalism 30, 69, 129–131, 136; and narrative construction 19, 30, 52, 73; nationalism discourse 69; as nationhood 187–192, 198–199, 223; as transnationalism 9

Nederveen Pieterse, Jan 112, 262–263 neoliberalism 153–167; as ideological apparatus 166; neoliberal capitalism 160–167; and privatization 165 New Left ideology 12, 110–114, 117, 119–120 O’Dowd, Mary 221–222, 226, 228–229, 231–232 oscillation 67–69, 74–75, 78, 81–82, 86–87, 203, 213, 275 Osiedle Swoboda (graphic novel) 153–154, 158–167 Östberg, Kjell 111, 125 Papaki, Ioanna 11 past (the) 70, 75, 191, 203–204; narratives of 8, 30, 34, 51, 57–60, 68, 82, 101, 159, 166, 205, 215; as (un) translatable 63; whitewashing of 188 Pellegrin, Annick 11–12 Persepolis (graphic novel) 174–175 perspective 12, 39, 67, 69, 82, 92, 115–116, 131, 154–155, 164, 171, 174, 190–192, 201, 204, 214–216, 227, 229, 232, 240, 242–244, 246, 251, 268–269; as colonial 113; as Eurocentric 112; as historical 171–172 Phantom, The (comic) 12, 109–112, 116–124 Pinheiro, Raphael Bordallo 177 Pinochet, Augusto 188–190, 192, 249 Pizatto, Gisela 220, 231 Polak, Kate 202, 207–208, 213–214, 217 Poland 12, 153–167 Portugal 2, 12, 171–182; Portuguese comics 171–175, 177 postcolonialism 6, 111–112, 114, 121, 123–124, 190 power 4, 12, 41, 51, 70, 89, 92–93, 115, 118, 124, 132, 172, 177, 180, 182, 191–192, 195, 223–224, 230–232, 249, 264, 275, 277; as censorship 28, 188, 190; as control 41, 51, 61, 69, 89, 94–95, 97, 129, 158, 188–192, 275 primitive 46, 96, 110–115, 121, 262–263, 267–268, 273–277 Punťa (magazine) 13, 259–277 Quijano, Aníbal 91–92, 102, 112 race 6, 49, 73, 89, 100, 102, 154 racism 40–41, 45–46, 48, 63, 92, 110–112, 115, 118, 263–264, 270,

Index

275–276; anti-racism 110–111, 113–118, 124–125 Rancière, Jacques 171, 177, 181 Rantala, Oskari 12 refuge 11, 39, 45, 63 refugee 39–40, 43–47, 68, 197; see also asylum-seeker religion 69, 73, 86, 90, 96–97, 102, 120, 161–162, 195, 201–202, 206–208, 210, 212, 214, 221–222, 232; as authentic/ real 96; religious experience 162; religious imagery/symbols 195, 232 resistance 4, 6, 11, 30, 49–51, 69, 131, 133, 171, 177, 180–182, 189, 214–215, 224, 241, 243, 269; as “womenbecoming” 224 rights, minority 187–199; see also power ritual 69, 73–79, 82, 114, 248 Rius (Eduardo del Río) 12, 89–102 Said, Edward 6 Santos, Boaventura de Sousa 172 satire 68, 81–83, 85, 160, 162, 176, 249 savage see primitive Second Italo-Ethiopian War 13, 259, 264, 272–274 sexuality 12, 76, 79, 90, 192, 207, 227–228, 232; and nationhood 199; as sexual agency 195; as sexual identity 187–199; and sexual pleasure 195; as sexual plurality 199 siege narrative 19, 21–22, 26–30, 49, 134 Sin mascar palabra (comic) 39–40, 48–49, 52–56, 61–62 slavery 85, 96, 109–110, 113, 115–116, 119, 124, 220 Śledziński, Michał 12, 153–154, 158–167 socialism 109–125 Sousa, Nuno 176–178 Soviet Union 119, 129–133, 135–136, 138–139, 142, 145, 148–149 space 39–63; and (dis)connection 48; as narrative construct 40; spatial isolation 43; theories of 40 Spain 21, 32, 89, 90, 93–97, 100, 202–205, 215–216, 222; Spanish Civil War 212, 217; Spanish conquest 12, 29, 89; Spanish culture 13 Spivak, Gayatri 180 Stalin, Joseph 129–149 storytelling 7, 51, 63, 239, 241; as hegemonic 46–47; as subversive 224 Strömberg, Fredrik 1

285

subjectivity 73, 192–194, 197, 212, 223, 239–256; as individual 13, 243–245, 250; as social 245–249 Suomen suurin kommunisti (graphic novel) 129–149 Supnem, Katherine 2, 187, 192–194, 196–199 Suske en Wiske 19–33 Sweden 2–3, 6, 12, 109–125 symbolism 29, 50, 158, 164, 213, 224, 232, 240, 259, 26; of colonial dominance 2713; of color 40, 42, 46, 137, 142, 227, 229, 231–232; as national identity 67, 78, 221 Team Fantomen 110, 117–118 Tintin (comic) 19, 24–25, 28, 31–32, 34 Töppfer, Rodolphe 4–5 tradition 2, 5–8, 10, 26–27, 39, 50, 73–85, 119, 138, 161, 163, 166, 172–173, 221, 223, 227–228, 230, 259, 263, 267, 276 translation 3, 44, 46–47, 63, 75, 87, 194; of experience 46–47; as meaningmaking 9–11, 173; see also language trauma 46, 50–51, 129, 189, 198–199, 204, 239, 241–243, 254; sexual trauma 208–209; traumata 187, 189–191, 205, 212 Typhon (comic) 67–68, 71–72, 75–76, 81–82, 84–86 Urzúa, Sergio 248–249 Vandersteen, Willy 11, 19, 21–34 Vieco, Camilo 39, 48, 59, 61, 63 violence 12, 28–29, 41, 49–51, 56, 61, 113, 130, 149, 178–179, 193, 197, 215, 224, 227–228, 254; state-sponsored violence 40, 48, 61 Vořišková, Marie 261–263, 267–274 whiteness 109–125, 263, 271; hegemony of 277; as identity 114; as invisibility 263; “white on black” representation 112; white supremacy 263; see also racism World War II 34, 129, 138, 149, 156–157, 260 xenophobia 40 Zanettin, Federico 9–10 Zapatero, Sánchez 206