Indian Graphic Novels: Visual Intertextualities, Mixed Media and the “Glocal” Reader

Abstract

In this article I want to look at how and to what effect Indian graphic novelists employ visual intertextualities and mixed media in their works. After the introduction of four categories of visual referencing in the graphic novel (allusion, direct and indirect quote, appropriation) a detailed analysis of selected examples from Appupen, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Amruta Patil and Sarnath Banerjee’s works will show how the authors appropriate a broad variety of both Indian and non-Indian visual cultural utterances to add extra layers of meaning to the narrative. We see how the references enter into a dialogue with the diegetic world and introduce their (real or imagined) original context into the new works. As a result the components communicate with one another, especially when several apparently disparate references come together in a single image. Not only the host narrative but also the referenced cultural utterances themselves acquire new meaning and new narrative power. The analyses shed light on how visual intertextualities position the graphic novels considered here within an extradiegetic “glocal” cultural arena in Ronald Robertson’s sense. The Indian graphic novel requires, to a much higher degree than its “Western” counterparts, a “glocal” reader who can navigate local, national and global cultural spaces.