(In)Visible Bodies: Rewriting the Politics of Passing in Incognegro, a Graphic Mystery by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece

Conference (2013, January 03)

How can passing across racial lines be described and conveyed in the comics form? Can the medium develop specific strategies to comment on the themes of transgression and crossing inherent to the trope of ... [more ▼]

How can passing across racial lines be described and conveyed in the comics form? Can the medium develop specific strategies to comment on the themes of transgression and crossing inherent to the trope of passing? This paper shows how the graphic novel Incognegro (2008) goes beyond the traditional socio-historical analysis of passing and plays thematically, generically, and visually with the politics of the trope. Incognegro, set in the US in the early 1930s, depicts a light-skinned African American reporter who passes for white in order to investigate lynchings of blacks in the deep South. Because white papers do not consider these events to be news, the reporter condemns these dreadful acts in the column titled “Incognegro” that he writes for a New York-based newspaper, The New Holland Herald. Thus he risks his life using his “passing abilities” to protect the rights of the community he is trying to defend from white hegemony. In this way, Incognegro challenges the conventional tragic mulatto figure that passes for white to avoid racism and violence or to improve his/her social status. In addition, it echoes the common black trickster figure who practices “masking” to outwit his enemies or opponents, and calls into question the biological, social, and cultural representations of race as perceived by the white dominant group. Here the racial passer functions as an “outsider from within” who can challenge the black vs. white binary model. Moreover, the text subverts narrative paradigms from superhero comics and detective fiction to point out the arbitrariness of racial ideologies and the fallibility of notions of justice and truth. This subversion is further complicated by the comic’s “color free” art (black and white, sans halftones or gray tones), which defies essentialist representations of race. In sum, Incognegro argues that the ambiguities of racial categorization are best represented through a similarly ambiguous literary genre—one that not only challenges generic norms and traditions but also “writes back” to both the mainstream and alternative wings of American comics production. [less ▲]

Towards a Vocabulary of Displacement and Utopian Possibilities: Reading Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival' as a Crossover Text

in Studies in Comics (2012), 3(1), 83-106

Freedom, Memory, and Identity: The Paradoxical Individual/Collective Dialectic in Steve Darnall and Alex Ross’s Graphic Novel 'Uncle Sam'

Conference (2012, March)

As his star-spangled costume and his usually firm posturing suggest, Uncle Sam impersonates the United States and symbolically reflects the nation’s most cherished values and ideals such as freedom ... [more ▼]

As his star-spangled costume and his usually firm posturing suggest, Uncle Sam impersonates the United States and symbolically reflects the nation’s most cherished values and ideals such as freedom, exceptionalism, and (masculine) strength. As such, he connects the projects of nationalism and patriotism with the scale of the individual. In other words, he embodies the American motto ‘out of many, one.’ Steve Darnall and Alex Ross’s rewriting of the character, however, strongly contrast with this dominant perception of Uncle Sam in their eponymous 1997 graphic novel. Their narrative shows a distressed and lunatic homeless man wandering the streets of an unknown American city. As he roams the streets, he undergoes an identity crisis that coincides with a crisis of memory, both of which complicate the relation between the symbolic individual body and the collective American unconscious. On the one hand, the character represents the values of freedom and democracy that the US government has strived to implement. On the other, he realizes that the paradigm of the nation cannot be understood as a monolithic entity, and that the plurality of voices that inhabit his persona – and, quite paradoxically, the country – cannot uphold this meta-narrative of American unity. In asking whether or not Uncle Sam is one of U.S., Darnall and Ross comment on the paradoxes of freedom and the myth of the melting pot. [less ▲]

Review of Françoise Kral's 'Critical Identities in Contemporary Anglophone Diasporic Literature'

in South Asian Diaspora (2012), 4(1), 117-119

Comix 2000

in Groupe ACME (Ed.) L'Association: Une utopie éditoriale et esthétique (2011)

Portraying 9/11: Essays on Representations in Comics, Literature, Film and Theatre

Book published by McFarland (2011)

Problematizing the Migrant Imaginary in Shaun Tan’s Graphic Narrative 'The Arrival'

Conference (2011)

(In)visible Bodies: Crossing Racial Lines in the Graphic Novel

Conference (2011)

Congostrip, La Bande Dessinée Congolaise

in Revue Nouvelle (2010)

How to use comics in the ESL classroom?

in Journal de BabeLg (2009), 27