Autographics: The Seeing "I" of the Comics

Abstract

Recently Marianne Hirsch has argued it is necessary to think anew about words and images and their expressivity in the specific cultural and historical context of the 'war on terror'. Here Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Art Speigelman's In the Shadow of No Towers are read in terms of 'autographics': the distinctive technology and aesthetics of life narrative that emerges in the comics. Unique mediations of cultural difference occur in the grammar of comics, which make demands on the reader to navigate across gutters and frames, and shuttle between words and images, in an active process of imaginative engagement with others.