Abstract
Abstract The objective with this study is to shed light upon how international exchanges on the comic art market contribute to democratization processes and renegotiation of hegemonies in the literary field worldwide. The focus is on how the variation in imported comics from a central language, in this case French, to the peripheral space of Sweden, can be observed during the time-period 1900–2020, as well as on which diversity importation of comics has been allowed over time. Theoretically anchored in sociological perspectives in literary studies highly influenced by Casanova’s ([1999]2004) seminal work, this contribution challenges established approaches in the field that depart from central cultural spaces in the world. Instead, this analysis highlights how the periphery gains agency on the international market and challenges relations of domination through translation practices. One hypothesis put forward consists of the idea that Francophone author-illustrators from the global South would be identifiable in the data in 1990’s, as is the case in the literary field. However, in the comics field this change emerges later, and does not appear distinctively until 2005. The change is paired with a promotion of Francophone female author-illustrators in Swedish translations, equally from the global South and the global North. The results also highlight that Sweden positions the Francophone space as hyper-central within the comics field. The specific practices adopted in the importation point to how a periphery creates agency to define a medium and a genre locally and play a role in international cultural exchanges.
Highlights
This study departs from the assumption that the concepts “languaging” (BaggaGupta 2019), “diversity”, and “democracy” could usefully be clarified through the study of comic art, and how this cultural expression emerges in translation endeavors over time in a cultural space in the global North where the comic art market is evolving
Translation flows of comics from Francophone spaces towards Sweden go through several stages and transformations during the time-period 1900–2020
The importation of Francophone comics stabilizes around the millennium shift to 10 percent of all Francophone literature, which positions the Francophone spaces as hyper-central with regards to the comics field in Sweden
Summary
This study departs from the assumption that the concepts “languaging” (BaggaGupta 2019), “diversity”, and “democracy” could usefully be clarified through the study of comic art, and how this cultural expression emerges in translation endeavors over time in a cultural space in the global North where the comic art market is evolving. The development of an awareness of factors that affect incoming flows of cultural artefacts to a local cultural space carries opportunities for acute critical reception of the same, which, in turn, can raise issues regarding how cultural expressions can become tools for democratic change Against this backdrop, the present study aims to shed light on how comics flow from one of the central producers of comic art in the global North and in the world, namely, the Francophone space (Grove 2010), are selected and translated in a peripheral cultural space of the North, namely, Sweden. An exploration of how a peripheral position filters the vast production from a central cultural space with a colonial history, and that includes comic art from transnational arenas, as well as from an Asian center like Japan, offers an overview of how the periphery makes use of its agency to promote the global South, decolonial perspectives, and marginalized voices. The results constitute the platform and context for further qualitative studies with the potential to deepen the quantitative picture, by nuancing, confirming, or disputing the analyzes of examples that emerge and are presented below
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