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Jabliss Dissertation Deposit Copyright 2014 Jennifer Anderson Bliss PICTURING THE UNSPEAKABLE: TRAUMA, MEMORY, AND VISUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY COMICS BY JENNIFER ANDERSON BLISS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature with a minor in Cinema Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Brett Kaplan, Chair Professor Michael Rothberg Associate Professor James Hansen Professor Nancy Blake ii Abstract This dissertation explores the intersections of memory and trauma in comics, arguing that the interrelations of the visual and the textual elements of this medium allow for an expanded understanding of how representations of trauma and memory function. This project argues for the centrality of trauma studies in comics and graphic narratives, as well as the centrality of visuality—that is, how we see and how we understand what we see—in trauma studies. Moving away from a model of literary trauma studies that focuses on “the unspeakable,” this dissertation proposes that we look instead at the intersections of the visible and invisible, the speakable and the unspeakable, through the manipulation of space and time in the comics medium. Investigating these possibilities, my research spans national and generic boundaries in order to tease out the inherent qualities of traumatic representations in the medium itself. This analysis moves from superheroes to 9/11to epilepsy to family photographs, and from America to France to Rwanda, showing the ways in which comics’ juxtapositions of words and images, past, present, and future, and presence and absence, create possibilities for representing trauma and memory. It is precisely in the spaces between images and words, between what we can see and what remains hidden, I argue, that these narratives of trauma and memory thicken and transform into dense and problematic zones of contact. This dissertation begins with an introduction to the broad ways in which the formal aspects of the medium of comics and graphic novels complement the literary and theoretical conceptions of trauma and memory, and an examination of the ways we can use comics to expand these notions to incorporate more precise ideas of the visible and visual. I then move to a series of close analyses, beginning with the superhero genre and its legacy in Chapters One and Two, looking at the Batman franchise and Alan Moore’s Watchmen and the crises—personal and iii historical, respectively—that they address. Chapter Three moves to the Rwandan genocide and its representation in both fictional and autobiographical comics, drawing together landscape, colonialism, and trauma. In Chapter Four, I move to an examination of Art Spiegelman’s response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, teasing out the complex relationship between media images and personal images as intertwining representations of trauma. Chapter Five also focuses on the power of images, arguing that Alison Bechdel’s redrawn archive of photographs and other realia in her memoir Fun Home indicates the powerful agency of images—that is, their ability to destabilize and undermine the author and the viewer’s position as spectator. Finally, Chapter Six explores the rhizomatic nature of disability in David B.’s Epileptic, suggesting that rather than considering individuals and their bodies along a linear scale between two extreme points, we can reformulate our understanding of “normalcy” through a nonlinear, multivalent spectrum of experience. This notion of a nonlinear spectrum synthesizes the difficult problems of visuality, trauma, and memory that the dissertation explores as a whole, and it offers up a new mode of conceptualizing the narrative possibilities of representing trauma. By taking in to account the absent, the hidden, the invisible, and the unspoken in these texts, “Picturing the Unspeakable” brings together the emergent field of comics studies with the recent visual and multidirectional turns in trauma and memory studies. This project offers a new way of understanding individual and historical traumas not as a question of either/or (either visible or not, spoken or silenced, past or present, etc.) but as precisely a space of contact between those conventional binaries of representation. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation owes its existence, and this author owes her survival, to so many people: Firstly, to my chair, Brett Kaplan: thank you for being so encouraging and supportive since I first arrived in Illinois; your advice and help in both scholarly and practical matters has been invaluable. Thank you also for pushing me to articulate my own arguments more strongly. To my committee members, Michael Rothberg, Jim Hansen, and Nancy Blake: thank you sharing your brilliance, and for guiding me through the muddy waters of research, writing, and professional development. To all four of you, for your patience and guidance, your feedback, your strategies and tips, and above all for your confidence and encouragement: thank you. To the directors of the Program in Comparative and World Literature during my work here, Jean-Philippe Mathy, Waïl Hassan, and Lilya Kaganovsky: thank you so very much for the years of financial, academic, and personal support. To the many incredible people I have been fortunate to meet and discuss comics with, particularly at the ACLA, PCA, and ICAF conferences: thank you for the stimulating conversations and the helpful feedback, and for connecting the ever-growing community of comics scholars. Thanks also to Cary Nelson, Harriet Murav and Anke Pinkert, among many others, for our conversations on epilepsy, German cinema, Holocaust poetry, Bakhtin, and sometimes even comic books. To Susan Gilman, Peter Kenez, and my other professors at UC Santa Cruz: thank you for helping me and intellectually shaping me early on. To my students, especially from CWL 151: thank you for your enthusiasm, your intelligence, and your curiosity; thanks also for putting up with all my lame jokes. v To the SLCL administrative staff, especially Mary Ellen, Jon, and Andrea: thank you for all your incredible work and dedication, and for answering all my questions with such patience. To Espresso, Paradiso, Aroma, Kopi, and Flying Machine: thanks for the caffeine! To mi Laurita bonita, my “ghost,” thank you for reading every jumbled wreck of a paragraph I sent to you, and thank you for all the love, trust, support, and laughter. Thanks also to Anya, for being such a wonderful friend. To my writing groups—Anya, Okla, and Fer; and Laura, Anya, Lisa, and Hapsa—thank you for reading so many chapter drafts, for pushing my writing and thinking in so many ways, and for being such good friends. To Eric and Anissa (and Leonie), for the BBQ and the love; to Faith, for the snark and snacks: thank you all for answering my annoying questions, and for being such great friends. To my many excellent friends and colleagues, including Meg, Tim, Ashley, Omar, Dasha, Shannon, Chase, and Matt, thank you for everything. Thanks also for listening to my chatter, my complaining, and my panicked moments. I am so thankful to have friends like you. To Diane and Kinnerly: Many, many thanks for our sanity-preserving dinners and chats. To k@ and Will: thank you for the love and laughter across all these years and miles. To my fantastic parents, Ann and Tim, and my siblings and their partners, Thomas and Erin, and Victoria and Matthew: thank you so much for your enduring love and support. It’s particularly great to have a mother “in the biz;” thank you, Mum, for all the academic and personal encouragement. Thanks to Duane and Judy, for raising such a lovely son, and for the unending support and kindness. Love and thanks also to Grandma Beth (we miss you) and Nanny. Finally, to Evan: words are so inadequate. Thank you for everything, everything, everything. Here’s to “wherever our lives may take us.” vi A Note on Figures Figures throughout this dissertation have been omitted to respect their copyright status. Placeholders have been included, in order to retain both formatting choices throughout and citation information for reference. vii Table of Contents Introduction: Filling the Visual Gap in Memory and Trauma Studies ........................................... 1 Chapter 1: Batman Can’t Die: Trauma, Desire, and the Batman Franchise................................. 21 Chapter 2: “As If I’ve Been Here All the Time”: Trauma, History, and Temporal Suspension in Watchmen .............................................................................................................. 82 Chapter 3: Paradoxical Visions: Traumatic and Colonial Landscapes in Comics of the Rwandan Genocide.......................................................................................................... 133 Chapter 4: The Falling Man: Resisting and Resistant Visual Media in Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers ................................................................................ 186 Chapter 5: The Photograph Looks Back: Agency, Vision, and Loss in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home .................................................................................................................. 220 Chapter 6: A Spectrum of Embodiment: Disability, Identity, and Suffering in David B.’s Epileptic.................................................................................................................... 258 Epilogue.....................................................................................................................................
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