Maps and Memory in Takoua Ben Mohamed’s La rivoluzione dei gelsomini

Abstract

Within the growing field of transnational comics culture, marked by the great success of works such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Italian comics have not received sufficient attention. This paper reads Takoua Ben Mohamed’s latest graphic novel, La rivoluzione dei gelsomini (2018), from a Mediterranean and transnational perspective. My analysis focuses in particular on the dynamics of memory and space as they emerge in the visual narrative of the book. Through a series of maps that either lack definite points of departure and arrival or fail to show a clear way of getting from one point to another, the novel visualizes the non-linear movement of Takoua’s personal and collective memory across the Mediterranean, a memory that cannot be attached to a singular space, but rather constantly travels, and that can only be archived “on the move.” On a broader, collective level, Ben Mohamed’s graphic novel foregrounds the non-linear, rhizomatic, and constantly shifting movement across spaces and boundaries that necessarily characterizes contemporary transnational memories and experiences, while also pointing toward—and visually mapping—alternative ways of inhabiting and belonging within and across boundaries and borders.