Rocío G. Davis – A Graphic Self

Reading Journal – Session 11 – 17/01/2017

Rocío G. Davis – A Graphic Self

·         as contemporary transcultural autobiographies negotiate renewed forms of experiences, these texts become experimental and revisionary narratives, which challenge textual authority and prescriptive paradigms

·         the increasingly dialogic nature of life writing reflects a multi-voiced cultural situation that allows the subject to control and exploit the tensions between personal and communal discourse within the text, and signify on a discursive level

·         her memoir explains in particular ways the present self, and reasserts how the past can only be known and understood through narrative – in her case, a multilayered form of narrating

·         the reader accompanies the writer as her self-as-child learns about heritage culture and experiences historical events, fashioning a seemingly artless insider perspective that is, nonetheless, complexly layered

·         the study of comics operates a significant link between textual and visual studies

·         comics as a sophisticated and developed medium, a set of cultural signifying practices in which the intersections of culture, history, ethnicity, and gender can be effectively negotiated by cartoonists and their adult readers

·         the potential of the graphic narrative as a highly dynamic text, as opposed to the more static single-image narrative painting or plain text, determines the dialectic between text and image, providing creators with a wider range of artistic and imaginative possibilities

·         flexibility of the comics to literally represent memory, dreams, possibilities, and engage the idiosyncrasies of the present

·         cartooning as a form of amplification through simplification. When we abstract an image through cartooning, we are not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential “meaning,” an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t (McCloud, 1994: 30, emphasis in original)

·         I propose to read Satrapi’s transcultural graphic autobiography as a literary and cultural site for the negotiation and management of the memory of childhood perceptions and positioning, family, history, politics, religion, and social transformation

·         Graphic narratives contain more gaps than a traditional autobiography – even those written in as separate stories – and we must therefore read the design and intention behind the textual destabilizations and the cultural implications of such fragmentation

·         Satrapi uses the conventions of Western perception of Iranian culture to criticize it from her transcultural position

·         By giving her memoir Iran’s historical name, she posits the text as a doubled narrative of memory – that of a country and a childhood lost, as well as the intricate connection between the two

·         Marji’s story is one of contradictions, of a child finding herself between cultural, political, religious, linguistic and social demands and impositions

·         “I cannot take the idea of a man cut into pieces and just write it,” she explained. “It would not be anything but cynical. That’s why I drew it. People are not ready to read a book about all the misery of the third world, and I don’t blame them” (Bahrampour, 2003: 1)

I am not a reader of comics or biography, so both are still new and interesting genres to me and after last session with Prof. Packard I am still fascinated by the different opportunities drawings present to tell a story, and especially this story. Everything on the page is intentional, more than with movies or books is something that I have not considered before he said it on Tuesday, as well as the fact that a comic often depicts the absence of an action instead of the action itself. Combining these things with the information from this essay – that Satrapi would have been unable to write a text about her memories without sounding overly cynical, but was able to draw her memories with a humor that would have been absent otherwise – is really telling of the power and opportunity that a graphic memoir possesses. She is able to share her memories and juxtapose the different aspects and influences in her life in a way that seems effortless, humorous, truthful, but never too much. It highlights the good and the bad for Western audiences unfamiliar with this part of Eastern history in an easily accessible way without being either too funny or too horrific.