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Document Type

Article

Abstract

[First paragraph]

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

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