Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:15:56.980Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Global Graphic Protest Narrative: India and Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2021

Abstract

This article situates the graphic narrative form within the current politics of protest movements. It argues that the graphic narrative captures the forms of civil disobedience that shape late-twentieth-century and twenty-first-century protest. Protest movements increasingly operate within, or in accordance with, the systems they seek to challenge. The graphic narrative, similarly, combines complicity and critique in its narrative style and structure. The argument draws on two examples from different regional and political contexts—Vishwajyoti Ghosh's graphic narrative about the years of emergency rule in India in the 1970s, Delhi Calm, and Amir Soltani and Khalil's work on Iran's Green movement, Zahra's Paradise—to show how the global graphic narrative acts as an archive of popular protests that inform present-day movements and offers a platform for those movements to perform civic action. It advocates a new formalist approach to the global graphic narrative as a popular protest form.

Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Almeida, Paul. Mobilizing Democracy: Globalization and Citizen Protest. Johns Hopkins UP, 2014.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations, edited by Arendt, Hannah, translated by Zorn, Harry, Pimlico, 1999, pp. 245–55.Google Scholar
Bhatia, Gautam. Comic Century: An Unreliable History of the Twentieth Century. Illustrated by Ghosh, Vishwajyoti, Penguin Books, 2004.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold, and Hobby, Blake, editors. Bloom's Literary Themes: Civil Disobedience. Infobase Publishing, 2010.Google Scholar
Brister, Rose, and Walzer, Belinda. “Kairos and Comics: Reading Human Rights Intercontextually in Joe Sacco's Graphic Narratives.” College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, 2013, pp. 138–55.Google Scholar
Brooke, John L., and Strauss, Julia C.. “Conclusion: Notes Toward a Global Synthesis.” State Formations: Global Histories and Cultures of Statehood, edited by Brooke, et al. , Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 345–60.Google Scholar
Bukatman, Scott. The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit. U of California P, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? Verso, 2009.Google Scholar
Chaney, Michael A. Introduction. Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels, edited by Chaney, U of Wisconsin P, 2011, pp. 39.Google Scholar
Cherniavsky, Eva. Neocitizenship: Political Culture after Democracy. New York UP, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chute, Hillary L. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Belknap Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. “Law and Disorder in the Postcolony: An Introduction.” Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, edited by Comaroff and Comaroff, U of Chicago P, 2006, pp. 156.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. “Reflections on Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-ology: Citizenship and Difference in South Africa.” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, vol. 9, no. 4, 2003, pp. 445–73.Google Scholar
Cvetkovich, Ann. “Drawing the Archive in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.” Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, nos. 1–2, Spring 2008, pp. 111–28.Google Scholar
Devitt, Amy J.Re-Fusing Form in Genre Study.” Genres in the Internet: Issues in the Theory of Genre, edited by Giltrow, Janet and Stein, Dieter, John Benjamins Publishing, 2009, pp. 2747.Google Scholar
Dhavan, Rajeev. Publish and Be Damned: Censorship and Intolerance in India. Tulika Books, 2008.Google Scholar
Dittmer, Jason. “Geopolitical Assemblages and Complexity.” Progress in Human Geography, vol. 38, no. 3, 2014, pp. 385401.Google Scholar
Dittmer, Jason, and Latham, Alan. “‘The Rut and the Gutter’: Space and Time in Graphic Narrative.” Cultural Geographic, vol. 22, no. 3, 2015, pp. 427–44.Google Scholar
Elahi, Babak. “Crossing Tehran Avenue: Digital and Urban Spaces in Tehran.” Cultural Studies, vol. 26, no. 6, 2012, pp. 956–81.Google Scholar
Fawaz, Ramzi. The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics. New York UP, 2016.Google Scholar
Flowers, Arthur, et al. I See the Promised Land: A Life of Martin Luther King Jr. Tara Books, 2010.Google Scholar
Gardner, Jared. “Archives, Collectors, and the New Media Work of Comics.” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 52, no. 4, 2006, pp. 787806.Google Scholar
Ghosh, Vishwajyoti. Delhi Calm. HarperCollins Publishers India, 2010.Google Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks. Translated by Buttigieg, Joseph A., Columbia UP, 1992. European Perspectives.Google Scholar
Guha, Ranajit. History at the Limit of World-History. Columbia UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing ‘the Popular.’” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 4th ed., edited by Storey, John, Pearson Longman, 2009, pp. 508–18.Google Scholar
Harlow, Barbara. Resistance Literature. Methuen, 1987.Google Scholar
Hassler, Alfred, and Resnik, Benton. Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. Illustrated by Barry, Sy, Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1957.Google Scholar
Hatfield, Charles. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. UP of Mississippi, 2005.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Vol. 1, translated by Knox, T. M., Oxford UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Hess, Stephen, and Kaplan, Milton. The Ungentlemanly Art: A History of American Political Cartoons. Macmillan, 1968.Google Scholar
Holmberg, Ryan. “Inverted Calm: An Interview with Vishwajyoti Ghosh.” The Comics Journal, 23 Oct. 2013, www.tcj.com/inverted-calm-an-interview-with-vishwajyoti-ghosh/.Google Scholar
Holston, James, and Appadurai, Arjun. “Introduction: Cities and Citizenship.” Cities and Citizenship, edited by Holston, , Duke UP, 1999, pp. 118.Google Scholar
“Iran Exile Uses Web Comic to Tell Story of Opposition.” BBC News, 14 Feb. 2012, www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-17020328/iran-exile-uses-web-comic-to-tell-story-of-opposition.Google Scholar
Isin, Engin. “Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen.” Subjectivity, vol. 29, 2009, pp. 367–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jain, Kajri. Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art. Duke UP, 2007.Google Scholar
Jasper, James M., and Poulsen, Jane D.. “Recruiting Strangers and Friends: Moral Shocks and Social Networks in Animal Rights and Anti-nuclear Protests.” Social Problems, vol. 42, no. 4, 1995, pp. 493512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kozol, Wendy. “Complicities of Witnessing in Joe Sacco's Palestine.” Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature, edited by Swanson Goldberg, E. and Schultheis Moore, A., Routledge, 2012, pp. 165–79.Google Scholar
LaMarre, Thomas. “Manga Bomb: Between the Lines of Barefoot Gen.” Comics Worlds and the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale, edited by Berndt, Jaqueline, International Manga Research Center, 2010, pp. 263308. Vol. 1 of Global Manga Studies.Google Scholar
Levine, Caroline. Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network. Princeton UP, 2015.Google Scholar
Lewis, John. With Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell. March: Book One. Topshelf Productions, 2013.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. Translated by Bostock, Anna, Merlin Press, 1978.Google Scholar
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. Harper Perennial, 1994.Google Scholar
Mehta, Benita, and Mukherji, Pia. Introduction. Postcolonial Comics: Texts, Events, Identities, edited by Mehta, and Mukherji, , Routledge, 2015, pp. 126.Google Scholar
Miller, Carolyn R.Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 70, no. 2, 1984, pp. 151–67.Google Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories. Edited by Bal, Mieke and Vries, Hent de, Stanford UP, 2006. Cultural Memory in the Present Series.Google Scholar
“Protest, Vb.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/153192.Google Scholar
Rajewsky, Irina O.Border Talks: The Problematic Status of Media Borders in the Current Debate about Intermediality.” Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality, edited by Ellestrom, Lars, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 5168.Google Scholar
Robins, Steven, et al. “Rethinking Citizenship in the Postcolony.” Third World Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 6, 2008, pp. 1069–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romero, Luis Gomez, and Dahlman, Ian. “Introduction: Justice Framed: Law in Comics and Graphic Novels.” Law Text Culture, vol. 16, 2012, pp. 332.Google Scholar
Rooney, Ellen. “Form and Contentment.” MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 1, 2000, pp. 1740.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. Phaidon Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Salmi, Charlotta. “Reading Footnotes: Joe Sacco and the Graphic Human Rights Narrative .” Trans/Forming Literature: Graphic Novels, Migration and Postcolonial Identity, special issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 52, no. 4, 2016, pp. 415–27.Google Scholar
Smith, Sidonie. “Human Rights and Comics.” Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels, edited by Chaney, Michael A., U of Wisconsin P, 2011, pp. 6172.Google Scholar
Smith, William. Civil Disobedience and Deliberative Democracy. Routledge, 2013.Google Scholar
Soltani, Amir, and Khalil, . Zahra's Paradise. First Second, 2011.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence, U of Illinois P, 1988, pp. 271313.Google Scholar
Tarlo, Emma. Unsettling Memories: Narratives of Emergency in Delhi. Hurst and Company, 2003.Google Scholar
Trejo, Guillermo. “The Ballot and the Street: An Electoral Theory of Social Protest in Autocracies.” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 12, no. 2, 2014, pp. 332–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trodd, Zoe. Introduction. American Protest Literature, edited by Trodd, , Belknap Press, 2006, pp. xixxxix.Google Scholar
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books, 2002.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. “Politics as a Vocation.” 1918. Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by Gerth, H. H. and Wright Mills, C., Routledge, 2009, pp. 77128.Google Scholar
Whitlock, Gillian. “Autographics: The Seeing ‘I’ of the Comics.” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 52, no. 4, 2006, pp. 965–79.Google Scholar
Wolfson, Susan J.Reading for Form.” MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 1, 2000, pp. 116.Google Scholar