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Comics and Cartoons: A Democratic Art-Form

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2007

J. Maggio
J. Maggio
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Extract

The cartoon, comic, or—as influential cartoonist Will Eisner called it—“sequential art” is an art-form that is cognitively friendly to contemporary notions of individualistic-liberal-democracy. Whereas traditional forms of art have rather hierarchical standards of aesthetics, which then enforce customary notions of power and the conventional hermeneutic pecking order, the iconography of comics and cartoons is supportive of a kind of pluralistic democratic individualism. If, as some thinkers suggest, the world is understood by cognitive images in the brain, then—as the work of C. S. Pierce, Scott McCloud, and others support—comics is an art that allows for the individual self-creation that subsequently supports democracy.

Type
SYMPOSIUM—BACKGROUND
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 237 - 239
Copyright
© 2007 The American Political Science Association

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