Graphic testimonies : voicing the unutterable in auto/biographics of war

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Since the early 1980s graphic narratives (novels) have developed into a nuanced and complex medium of creative expression. Experimentation with aesthetics, form and narrative content have resulted in a mode of expression that allows authors and artists to represent themselves and others multimodally on the page. These representations display a dynamic range through which fiction and non-fictional narratives can be shared in graphic form. This narrative strategy has been used by numerous artist-authors to detail auto/biographical accounts of historical events and lived experiences. With the aim of contributing to the growing field of literary and visual analysis regarding auto/biographic and fictive graphic narratives, this study examines a selection of contemporary graphic narratives from specific geo-political and socio-cultural spaces such as Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Palestine and Rwanda. The selected texts this thesis examines are Footnotes in Gaza (2009), A Game for Swallows: To Die, To Leave, To Return (2012), Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda (2005) and Smile Through the Tears: A Story of the Rwandan Genocide (2007). The aim is to demonstrate how the artist-authors relay individual (private) and communal (public) traumatic experiences in graphic form.This thesis suggests that graphic narratives can convey and 'utter public and private trauma in unique ways through the interplay of verbal-visual media. By making use of aesthetic styles that may be culturally influenced or rendered in an evocative manner, the narratives are able to express narrative content to the reader, who then becomes witness to the trauma. The use of this medium also allows artist-authors to position marginalised and traumatised subjects at the forefront of the narrative, adding to the larger historical archive and understanding of historical events. This medium allows for the transmission of traumatic experiences and alternative perspectives to give increased comprehension of how trauma affects various subjects in an effort to reconfigure misconceptions of their suffering.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University