Reading the Invisible in Marjane Satrapi’s Graphic Memoir Embroideries

Abstract

Visibility and visual representation are widely regarded as positive for selfhood and political recognition, especially as regards the genre of the graphic memoir. However, Edouard Glissant’s essay “For Opacity” (1990) overturns this notion by insisting that visibility leads to oppression: to see is to claim to know, and the ‘understanding’ of the other is only possible if one admits the existence of the other into one’s own epistemological system. This chapter works through these two issues—the ethics of visibility and the counter-argument for an ethics of invisibility in visual culture—with a discussion of the position of the reader/viewer, followed by an analysis of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir, Embroideries (2003). Critical commentary on Embroideries has placed the author at either end of the ‘should hide/should reveal’ binary regarding women and the Middle East, a view which leaves the reader without agency. Using Glissant’s notion of opacity, this chapter suggests a method of reading eye contact in Embroideries (seeing the invisible by seeing the seeing) to enter into a more reciprocal relationship than theories of the gaze tend to allow. This approach to reading can also be applied broadly to reading visual narratives in general.