Worlds of Vision

Thinking Geographically Through Comics

Authors

  • Juliet J Fall Département de Géographie & Environnement, Université de Genève

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v20i1.2037

Keywords:

Comic geographies, Empathy, Feminist geography, Graphic narrative, Visual geography

Abstract

The spatial visuality of comics has received substantial attention from comics’ scholars and, more recently, from cultural and political geographers. These have shown how reading comics is an embodied, codified, learnt and culturally-situated activity. Viewer involvement takes place through the distinctive devices, vocabulary and grammar of comics: parts are observed while the whole is sensed and constructed. In this experimental academic comic, I explore how this active involvement might help orient critical geographical practices. Comics’ specific visuality makes readers labour to produce meaning, translating the spatiality of two-dimensional sequential images into four-dimensional narrative, what Dittmer has called ‘a map of time’ (2010).

Methodologically, I use détournement (Debord 1956) to build a visual argument that combines a text-based scholarly literature review with a limited corpus of pre-existing images taken from two recent popular Italian comics to tell a story. Reading between images, texts and gutters makes concrete the paradoxical materiality of words and discursivity of images, while building upon a purposefully limited visual corpus. This dialogue of images and words results in a call for an empathic geography, connecting bodies and experiences visually, suitable for representing a fragmented world built upon making sense of a diversity of viewpoints.

References

Berardi, G. 2018. La Spada Stregata. Julia, Le Avventure di una criminologa. Milan, S. Bonelli Editore

Berardi, G. 2018. Super Hero. Julia, Le Avventure di una criminologa. Milan, S. Bonelli Editore

Campbell, D. 2003. "Cultural governance and pictorial resistance: reflections on the imaging of war." Review of International Studies 29: 57-73.

Carleton, S. 2014. "Drawn to change: Comics and critical consciousness." Labour/Le Travail 73(1): 151-177.

Debord, G. & Wolman, G.J. 1956. Les lèvres nues. Online archive. http://sami.is.free.fr/Oeuvres/debord_wolman_mode_emploi_detournement.html

Dittmer, J. 2010. "Comic book visualities: a methodological manifesto on geography, montage and narration." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35(2): 222-236.

Dittmer, J. and A. Latham 2015. "The rut and the gutter: space and time in graphic narrative." cultural geographies 22(3): 427-444.

Fall, J. J. 2015. "Resisting through and with comics." Environment and Planning. D, Society and Space.

Haraway, D. 1988. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist studies, 14(3), 575-599.

Holland, E. C. 2012. "To think and imagine and see differently”: popular geopolitics, graphic narrative, and Joe Sacco's “Chechen war, Chechen women." Geopolitics 17(1): 105-129.

Hughes, R. 2007. "Through the looking blast: geopolitics and visual culture." Geography Compass 1(5): 976-99

Kuus, M. 2010. Critical Geopolitics. The International Studies Encyclopedia, Volume II. R. Denemark. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell: 683-701.

Laurier, E. 2014. "The graphic transcript: Poaching comic book grammar for inscribing the visual, spatial and temporal aspects of action." Geography Compass 8(4): 235-248

McCloud, S. 2006 (2007 for French edition). Faire de la Bande Dessinée. Paris, Delcourt

McKinney, M. 2008. History and Politics in French-language Comics and Graphic Novels. Jackson, University Press of Mississip

Meskin, A. 2007. "Defining comics?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65(4): 369-379.

Meskin, A. 2011. "The philosophy of comics." Philosophy Compass 6(12): 854-864.

Miller, A. 2008. Citizenship and city spaces: bande dessinée as reportage. History and Politics in French-language Comics and Graphic Novels. M. McKinney. Jackson, University Press of Mississipi: 97-116.

Moore, A. 2009. Maps as comics, comics as maps. Proceedings, 24th International Cartography Conference (ICC 2009).

Nicley, E. P. 2009. "Placing blame or blaming place? Embodiment, place and materiality in critical geopolitics." Political Geography 28: 19-22.

Peterle, G. 2015. "Teaching Cartography with Comics: Some Examples from BeccoGiallo’s Graphic Novel Series." J-Reading-Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography 4(1).

Peterle, G. 2017. "Comic book cartographies: a cartocentred reading of City of Glass, the graphic novel." cultural geographies 24(1): 43-68.

Sacco, J. 1993. Palestine. Seattle, Fantagraphics.

Sacco, J. 2011. Safe Area Gorazde: The Special Edition. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books.

Sharpe, J. 2011. "Subaltern geopolitics: introduction." Geoforum 42(3): 271-273.

Toal, G. 1996. "An anti-geopolitical eye: Maggie O'Kane in Bosnia 1992-93." Gender, Place and Culture 3(2): 171-185.

Whitlock, G. 2006. "Autographics: the seeing 'I' of the comics." Modern Fiction Studies 52(4): 965-979.

Whitlock, G. and A. Poletti 2008. "Self-Regarding Art." Biography 31(1): v-xxiii.

Downloads

Published

2021-01-25

How to Cite

Fall, J. J. (2021). Worlds of Vision: Thinking Geographically Through Comics. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 20(1), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v20i1.2037

Issue

Section

Creative | Alternative