Abstract
This essay examines how frames function both aesthetically and politically in Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza. Using the recent work of Judith Butler (Frames of War and Precarious Life) to discuss comics framing, I argue that a close examination of the panel frame allows for a focus on the content of comics at the very same time as it allows one to examine the larger discourses that delineate, or fail to delineate, that content. I further argue that in Footnotes, the frame functions as a site in which comics form and human rights discourses are entangled, an entanglement that highlights Sacco's highly ambivalent attitude towards the human rights field that he both participates in and critiques. In addition to Butler, I draw on the work of McCloud, Groensteen, Eisner, Azoulay and Sontag (among others) to discuss the complex interweaving of comics form and the ethical issues that arise in representing human rights violations, formal and ethical issues that characterise all of Sacco's works.
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