Marjane Satrapi Research Articles

Les filles de Méliès: l’exception culturelle, analogue aesthetics and women filmmakers of le cinéma-monde

ABSTRACT This article examines transnational francophone films from writer-directors Marjane Satrapi and Chloé Mazlo, filmmakers who show how the politics of l’exception culturelle [the cultural exception] have made French cinema a multiply exceptional force in world cinema. The analogue effects in Poulet aux prunes/Chicken with Plums (2011) and Sous le ciel d’Alice/Skies of Lebanon (2020) mark an aesthetic resistance to the homogenising force of digital photorealism while also reflecting an approach to filmmaking pioneered by Georges Méliès, particularly his ground-breaking work in set design and cinematography. As women filmmakers, their reliance on practical aesthetics to present stories set outside l’Hexagone (mainland France) represent the French commitment to the diversity of cinéma-monde. This article argues that these filmmakers and their films have benefitted from policies rooted in l’exception culturelle while expanding the sense of ‘exception’ in a French context to mean films directed by women, films featuring analogue effects and films that reflect transnational identities and cross-cultural collaboration. Both Poulet aux prunes and Sous le ciel d’Alice frame an expanded logic for l’exception culturelle that has shaped more than three decades of contemporary French cinema.

Apprendre à douter des critères de la vraisemblance ou l’art de l’intrigue chez Marjane Satrapi

L’article prend le contrepied de la thèse selon laquelle la vraisemblance serait la principale mesure-étalon de la recevabilité d’une fiction. Arguant du fait qu’il y a toujours quelque chose d’invraisemblable dans le sujet d’une fiction – les fictions réussies, à ce sujet, ne sont pas en reste –, l’article avance l’hypothèse qu’une certaine dose d’invraisemblance est consubstantielle à la nature même de la fiction. Cette hypothèse est mise à l’épreuve d’une bande dessinée qui, par son côté imprévisible et transgressif, bat en brèche les paramètres qui sous-tendent l’évaluation de son degré de vraisemblance. Loin d’être l’expression d’un vice de forme poétique, les aspects invraisemblables de cette fiction (Poulet aux prunes de Marjane Satrapi) sont la clé d’une stratégie de mise en cause méthodique et délibérée des paramètres culturels qui façonnent le rapport de la société à l’imaginaire fictionnel. Mimétisme aidant, la portée de cette mise en cause s’étend à toutes les situations de la vie réelle qui ressemblent aux situations représentées dans la fiction. Se renouvelle ainsi la vocation inscrite dans le tournant phylogénétique qui a présidé à la naissance des toutes premières fictions : repenser en termes non-dogmatiques le rapport de l’homme aux croyances, en adoptant à leur égard une attitude mentale plus distancée et critique : le « faire semblant ».

Totalitarianism and the questionable legitimation of conflict through propaganda in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Art Spiegelman’s Maus

Totalitarianism and the questionable legitimation of conflict through propaganda in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Art Spiegelman’s Maus

Unveiling Voices and Empowering Narratives: A Comprehensive Exploration of Islamic Feminism in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

This literature paper delves into the intricate layers of Islamic feminism within Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis. The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of post-revolutionary Iran, providing a nuanced examination of the lives of Iranian women amid political and social transformations. Through a thorough analysis of female characters, with a focus on Marjane's experiences and those of her counterparts, the paper explores instances of resistance and agency as women navigate societal expectations. The concept of Islamic Feminism is introduced and contextualized, tracing its evolution, key principles, and objectives, while highlighting its role in challenging traditional gender norms within Islamic values. The historical and cultural background of Iran during the depicted period, encompassing the Iranian Revolution and its aftermath, sets the stage for feminist discourse.Examining specific scenes and dialogues, the paper identifies and analyses elements in the narrative that reflect Islamic Feminist ideas, illustrating how Satrapi skilfully navigates the intersection of feminism and Islamic culture. Challenges and criticisms surrounding the application of the Islamic Feminism label to Persepolis are addressed, considering perspectives from both proponents and sceptics. The study concludes by discussing the potential impact of Persepolis on readers' understanding of Islamic Feminism and its broader contribution to conversations about feminism within Islamic contexts. Through a comprehensive examination, it highlights the significance of embracing diverse perspectives and employing dynamic approaches to comprehend the complexities of women's experiences within the Islamic context. By integrating ijtihad and pluralist, liberal-rationalist, and contextual approaches, it aims to unveil voices and empower narratives, ultimately fostering gender equality and justice for all. This abstract encapsulates the essence of the findings, offering insights into the multifaceted nature of Islamic feminism as pictured in Persepolis.

An Analysis of Happiness Among the Female Genders in Select Graphic Novels

What is happiness? Is there a definition for happiness or does it connect with gender? Many philosophers give different interpretations to these queries. For one happiness is being at peace with oneself. This may include the society one inhabits, ones’ abilities, ones’ past, ones’ workspace, ones’ limitations, literatures and art etc. Using pictures to tell stories have been a crucial medium in the history of mankind has evolved from drawing on stone and papyrus and onto paper, and digital formats, but the impact of images remains the same. One such diverse coming of age novels has come into the field of graphic novels. In the turn of the century the medium has explored a wide range of themes and motifs to express creatively this newly found genre. Especially the shattering of gender stereotypes through the female characters is stemming out the need to make their voices strongly heard in the contemporary world. This article aims to look at graphic novels and the level of happiness achieved by the female characters under the light of gender theory. The novels selected to the study are Kari by Amruta Patil, Sita’s Ramayana by Samhita Arni, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back a graphic anthology.

Interview with Translator Edward Gauvin

Abstract In this interview, award-winning translator and author Edward Gauvin reflects on his practice as a translator of over four hundred graphic novels, including works by major French comics artists, illustrators, and scriptwriters, such as Gébé, Marjane Satrapi, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Emmanuel Guibert, Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Zeina Abirached, Christophe Blain, Philippe Druillet, Enki Bilal, Blutch, and so on. He discusses how he approaches the theoretical and practical problems he has encountered as a translator—from well-trodden topics like speech balloon fit to his dynamic understanding of genre fiction. He also offers an insider's perspective on translators’ (often precarious) position within the larger the comics industry and talks about his favourite translations, as well as his current and future projects.

Decoding Trauma: A Cultural Ecological Reading of the Graphic Memoir Persepolis

Trauma is an amalgamation of repercussions happened and the effects of socio-cultural conflicts. Graphical novels always combine images and text to decipher the narrative by appealing to all senses. Persepolisis, a graphic memoir is also an autobiographical narrative written by Marjane Satrapi. This memoir covers the societal and cultural aspects through pictorial representation. It delineates Satrapi’s childhood and her adult years in Iran and Austria during the Islamic Revolution. Satrapi resists to accept the new changes happening in the society. Eventually, she forgets her real self who migrates abroad in search of hope but ends up in trauma. This research article sets out to analyse Satrapi’s existential crisis, identity trauma, self- discovery and how the ecology influenced her culture and life.

Persepolis: The Depiction of Childhood and Maturity Journeys Through Visual and Verbal Analysis

Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical series Persepolis is a set of comics written originally in the French language; and it recounts her life journey from childhood to early adulthood in Iran and Austria during and after the Islamic Revolution. The narrative is written in the form of graphic novel which is a sort of comics that combines both words and images. The Islamic Revolution was a critical moment in the history of Iran, overwhelmed every Iranian citizen, and ended up transforming the country from monarchal to Islamic governance. In the light of this upheaval, Marjane Satrapi visualizes her childhood and maturity through her graphic novel Persepolis. She utilizes the story to be her platform to open up about her challenges to break constraints that are imposed upon her as a woman in this newly shaped society and to call for reform and mercy for war victims. The current study aims at studying the figure of Marjane, the heroine of the story, her perceptions of certain events, her reactions in various moments and how she manages to save herself from all the obstacles that surround her . It will analyze the hidden lessons delivered by this narrative in the light of visual and verbal frames. The researcher attempts to answer how one may act in such hostile environment? what are the significance of writing autobiographical novel in the light of historical context? And how the form of graphic novel helps the author to deliver her message?

Trauma to Tyranny: Autobiographical Narrative as Empathetic Design

This paper considers a new form of graphic novel that combines the potentials of print and Virtual Reality [VR] storytelling. The novel ‘Upgraded Gods’, now in its final year of development, uses an autobiographical narrative to consider the nature and impact of malignant and collective narcissism in contemporary Russian society. The thesis asks, ‘How might one employ physical and virtual modes of storytelling to enhance empathetic experience in a narrative that considers the nature and impact of malignant narcissism?’ Goldner-Vukov & Moore (2010) identify malignant narcissism as a severe personality disorder that has “devastating consequences for the family and society” (p. 392), while traumatic childhood experiences are considered foundational to the development of malignant narcissism. Covington (2018) suggests that leaders can only enact a narcissistic abuse of power when they receive the support from a traumatised society that searches for “a charismatic leader who will promise to restore power and status to the group” (p. 255). Employing an autoethnographic methodology activated by heuristic inquiry, the study develops an immersive narrative that follows a protagonist through her childhood in the USSR, through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, into her exile and subsequent analysis of contemporary Russian politics and society. The significance of the research lies in its employment of creative practice to contribute embodied experience to wider theoretical discourses that consider the dynamics of power abuse through social and political aggression. Specifically, the study also examines the manner in which traumatic experiences may affect individuals' wellbeing, and shape social institutions and economics, contributing to the rise of far-right, nationalist, and fundamentalist movements. In the realm of graphic novel design, such analyses may be identified in a emerging trajectory of autobiographical literary works such as "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi, "Gast" by Carol Swain, and “Commute” by Erin Williams.

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

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.

Lost in Transition- Quest for Identity Through Diaspora

The conceptualization of migration in literature which more often than not precipitates tragedy and in turn the dilemma in identity is associated with the literary concept of diaspora. Popularly categorized with the longing for homeland and its poetics, there is a rhetorical attempt to fathom the void caused due to displacement. The dichotomy of two identities, created due to tension between the former self-clinging to roots of origin and the latter trying to configure oneself within the framework of a new identity, contributes to the amalgamation of distinguishable individualities. Primarily, Diaspora literature is characterized by a sense of alienation and loss that envelopes the narrative and it is conditioned by the after-effects of expatriation migration. Generally, it revolves around themes of displacement, attempts to trace back existential roots, nostalgia, and the inescapable association of the dire quest for identity that diaspora and migration literature bring on to. It deals with the equivocacy of plurality and hybridization in the domain of constantly changing identities and transnationalism in the process of migration. The paper attempts to examine the various forms of literature and the way they concretize diaspora, as a result: evoking literary stimuli of longing for homeland due to displacement. It aims to encompass the realms of cultural, economic, social, religious, and political consciousness that change an individual's displacement from one dominion to another. The narrative is shaped into reality with devices of metaphors and zeugma to explain exaggerated realities. This paper specifically closely reads texts of various literary genres like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, a graphic novel, Salman Rushdie's essay Imaginary Homelands Rohinton Mistry's short story Swimming Lessons and Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, Namesake.

Sounds Senses. Edited by yasser elhariry

This richly inventive collective volume begins with a poignantly rhythmed ‘Prelude’ by Raphaël Sigal on the poetry of Ghérasim Luca, whose ‘French is a Silent, Buried, Dead Yiddish’ (p. 10) inspires questions such as the following: ‘Is there a francophone sound? Some sort of francophonics?’ (p. 6). Like an echo to this first piece, the final chapter, by Edwin Hill, is set apart; its vibrant analyses of the ‘diasporic frequencies’ of the tchip — a sound that has become ‘inseparable from French (linguistic) facts of life’ despite attempts to ban it — reveal that this recurring sonic performance has resoundingly been ‘heard and felt in institutional contexts of power’ (pp. 257, 262, 280). Between these two bookends lie stimulating chapters composed by scholars profoundly aware of sound. Edwige Tamalet Talbayev plunges into the work of Moncef Ghachem, the ‘Tunisian fisherman-turned-poet noted for his marine lyric and strong Mediterranean inspiration’, for whom the ‘language to be crafted is one held in suspense, […] ensconced in silence’ (pp. 62, 65). Thomas C. Connolly immerses himself in the ‘secret music’ of the Moroccan poet Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, ‘one of Maghrebi literature’s most (in)famous iconoclasts’, whose work participates in ‘rhythmic reterritorializations’ that may be akin to a scream (p. 80, 87), especially when the poet shouts them, but that also may be likened to flutes, interrupted instruments with much to say if they are not drowned out. Martin Munro evokes sound, space, music, and identity in a convincing exhortation to listen to both nineteenth-century Haitian poetry and ‘broader Caribbean history’ in order ‘to sound some of the forgotten parts, the silences that are no less important to understanding that history’ (p.117). Vlad Dina juxtaposes Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl (1966) and Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973) in an investigation of how voice, both on and off screen, offers characters with ‘hollowed bodies’ a chance at ‘aural “fullness”’ (p. 137), and Maya Boutaghou examines three films set in Algiers at different periods in a comparative cinematic ‘listening back’ to the reverberations of this pulsing city (p. 161), while Jill Jarvis turns to Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu (2014) in an invigorating study of ‘sonic mapping’, an ‘alternative form of place-making’ that underscores the role of the titular location as a ‘center, not a periphery’ wherein ‘French sounds and syllables’ are part of an ‘intricate acoustical ecology’ (p. 158). In ‘Sounds of Palestine’, Olivia C. Harrison eloquently calls for — and enacts — careful analyses of sound, this crucial element that has often been obscured in critiques that focus on ‘textual and visual representation’ (p. 206). Grappling with ‘aural exoticism’ and plumbing performances of ‘sounds and accents’ in Franco-Chinese literature are compelling gestures in Shuangyi Li’s contemplation (pp. 232, 212). They are complemented by Jennifer Solheim’s dynamic delineation of a ‘performance of listening’ in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (p. 239), in a chapter that elucidates a fascinating narrative strategy. In a deeply attuned set of reflections, yasser elhariry provides a ringing Introduction to this impressive collection of texts exploring ‘sounds and senses’ that possesses the potential to resonantly reconfigure ‘our sensorial and critical receptions and perceptions of francophone postcolonial cultures’ (p. 37).

‘With this first cigarette, I kissed childhood goodbye’: girlhood in crisis in Persepolis

ABSTRACT Marjane Satrapi's 2003 graphic memoir Persepolis is a coming-of-age story set in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. 19 years after its publication, at a time when we are witnessing increased cultural displacement across the globe, Persepolis's representation of an adolescence lived across and between cultures feels as insightful and provocative as ever. Satrapi explores Marjane's childhood development as she grows into adolescence and experiments with identities. In Persepolis, Marjane's coming-of-age does not result in her becoming comfortable or fixed in a particular identity (or identities) but represents Marjane's acceptance of her liminal and marginal status in the various cultures she occupies. Marjane is shown to be engaged in an ongoing journey through identity formations that does not end when the memoir does. In this essay, we consider the chapter titled ‘The Cigarette' from Persepolis to explore how Satrapi develops a narrative style and an aesthetic for representing a liminal adolescent experience. Through her use of an episodic structure; simple, graphic repetition; and dialogic and multivocal encounters between the child and adult self and the protagonist and her mother, Satrapi shows the complex negotiations with ‘the self’ that characterise her coming-of-age.

Politics of Location in Persepolis

Abstract This article offers a transnational feminist reading of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis based on the genealogy of politics of location. Articulated by Adrienne Rich in 1984 and criticized and evolved by Karen Caplan, the concept of politics of location provides a framework for rereading the graphic novel that highlights intersectional aspects of identities that appeared in the text. Through this lens this article looks at how Satrapi ties her personal story to the story of other Iranian women and at the nuances of the identities she represents to her Western readers. Notably, the article examines the politics of writing trauma, gender, and race into the text and analyzes the picture of other Iranian women through the mirror of Satrapi’s graphic novel. It argues that in writing Persepolis, Satrapi has made an undeniable contribution to challenging the dominant narratives of nationhood and female citizenship by documenting the trauma of the Iranian Left in the history of the nation. However, because of her specific color-blind politics of race and antireligious politics of gender, her work overlooks some groups of Iranian women’s existence and experiences. Thus this article argues against reading and teaching Persepolis as representative of Iranian women or a universal version of Third World feminism.

“Why Do We Need to Know About This?”: U.S. Imperialism, Persepolis, and Knowledge Production on Iran in the Classroom

Contributing to a growing body of research on acknowledging U.S. imperialism within teacher education, this article explores how knowledge production on Iran—and U.S.-Iran relations more broadly—in secondary education represents a site of what Britzman has called difficult knowledge. Here, the difficulty of classroom engagements with the theme of U.S. imperialism is highlighted in several epistemic stumbling blocks, notably notions of White epistemic authority, neoliberal multiculturalism, and imperial feeling. Drawing upon data collected during a 9-month ethnographic study, the analysis presents classroom scenes from a high school world literature unit on Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, selected by the teacher to explore themes of colonialism, imperialism, and revolution. Despite these intentions, classroom engagements with the text often reproduced Orientalist understandings. These findings inform the concluding argument that mobilizes contrapuntal reading as a generative technique for teacher education research and practice to identify and confront the epistemic bases that normalize systems of oppression.

Female Portrait of Exile and Identity construction: A Case Study of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis

This essay proposes a critical analysis of the film Persepolis (2007) directed by Marjane Satrapi (Iran, 1969-) and Vincent Paronnaud (France, 1970-). Their work is based on Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis (2000-2003) where she narrates, as a witness, the Iranian society, culture and politics during the 1979 revolution, as well as her own experience living in Switzerland and France. The purpose of this study is to bring reflections upon the struggles and obstacles she had to face as an exile in Europe and the traumatic souvenirs of the war and the revolution. This picture will show us a view between Orient and Occident cultures and an identity crisis caused by the war.

Paradigm Shift from Books to Graphic Novels: The Coherence and Aesthetics of Graphic Narratives

This paper focuses on the seemingly important aspects of graphic novels that make them a remarkable genre of literature. The aesthetics and the power of illustration are taken into consideration in detail in the study. Maus by Art Spiegelman and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi are taken as case studies. The radically different style used in Persepolis challenged the popular convictions on storytelling and its success as a graphic novel has profoundly influenced many Middle Eastern writers. To determine the efficacy of graphic novels, a survey is conducted among school students. Analysis is drawn from the survey and demonstrated with the help of graphs and pie charts.

Valzhyna MortMusic for the Dead and Resurrected: Poems

editors, wishy-washy critics, unambitious readers, and authors lacking in talent but greedy for fame.” That quote might be a worthwhile point of departure for reading the book since it clearly establishes a point of view Ugrešić has not only on the world of literature but on a multitude of issues. Written between 2014 and 2018, the essays leave very few people and issues unscathed. Her book deals very much with displacement, exile, and statelessness. In fact, she went into exile from Croatia after being labeled a “witch” for her antinationalistic stance during the Yugoslav Wars. Stylistically, parts of The Age of Skin might remind readers of her novel Lend Me Your Character, especially the segment “Finishing Touches” within the chapter “Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life,” in which Ugrešić segments and/or gives subtitles to the chapters . The subtitled segments within the chapters in The Age of Skin are as diverse as the “Dentures” worn by the Bosnian Serb Ratko Mladić, found guilty of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in “Why We Love Movies about Apes,” to the brilliant chapter “The Scold’s Bridle,” in which Ugrešić revivifies the “law of Telemachus,” which is “identical to the classical model of the absence of women from the public, intellectual, creative, political , and media spheres” (see WLT, Sept. 2016, 36). It would be difficult (if not impossible) to reduce a work of such critical and creative breadth, but Ugrešić is a writer, and one can close by citing a line in which she quotes Zamyatin (in a letter to Stalin), in which the former states that “‘true literature ’ can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madness, hermits, heretics, dreamers , rebels, and skeptics.” And, as it turns out, by Croatian expats. Mark Axelrod-Sokolov Chapman University Alain Mabanckou The Death of Comrade President Trans. Helen Stevenson. New York. New Press. 2020. 256 pages. IN 2015 ALAIN MABANCKOU crafted a modern folktale with Black Moses (see WLT, Nov. 2017, 70). The novel followed the titular child’s odyssey through one of the most violent periods in the Congo’s history. Despite the youthful perspective, Mabanckou’s deep connection with the plight still allowed the severity of Black Moses’s setting to resonate. In retrospect, however, some of the novel’s passages felt a little far removed, offsetting the delicate balance of timely reprieve and a distraction. The Death of Comrade President, Mabanckou ’s latest outing, provides a remedy, leaning less on convention and more on the realism that made pieces like Broken Glass so defining. Comrade President leans heavily into Mabanckou’s backgrounds, serving in part as a welcome expansion to his 2015 memoir , The Lights of Pointe-Noire (see WLT, Sept. 2016, 68). The novel traces Michel, a boy on the cusp of adolescence living with his father, Papa Roger, and one of his father’s wives, Maman Pauline. As the mounting pressure of academia and an education outside of his home rises, so too does the turmoil of the Congolese government . Shortly after the announcement of Comrade President Marien Ngouabi’s assassination, Michel’s family is thrown into turmoil as his family’s safety is compromised . This is further compounded when his dog, Mboua Mabé, runs away in panic. Between interpreting his parents’ tension and investigating the village’s back alleys for his pet, Michel begins to understand the symbols that have perpetuated an almost constant national strife. Mabanckou’s choice to interpret a day of cataclysm demonstrates his concern with connecting the plight of the Congo to an international audience. He does so without diminishing the severity, and his practice of weaving radio transcripts into Michel’s musings provides at least a theory of what forces have led to the discord. This digestion of information feels less akin to Black Moses and more so like a truncated parallel to the early movements of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. The only minor setback for Comrade President is its brevity. The novel proceeds to a fever pitch, with its falling action feeling like mere seconds. This does little to detract from the power of the novel, but...

그래픽 노블을 통한 자서전적 기록과 페미니즘의 발현 -마르잔 사트라피의 <페르세폴리스>를 중심으로-

본 연구의 목적은 코믹스 매체, 그 중에서도 그래픽 노블의 표현적 특성과 자서전적 성격의 텍스트가 결합하여 생성하는 역사적 이슈와 그것의 사회적 파장, 그리고 개인사 기록으로서의 그래픽 노블의 기능을 연구 분석하는 것이다. 연구의 방법으로는 첫째, 자서전적 성격의 그래픽 노블이 가지고 있는 사실의 재구성과 시각적 프레이밍의 특징을 살펴보았다. 둘째, 자서전적 그래픽 노블의 경계와 사회적 기능을 연구하였다. 셋째, 그래픽 노블을 통한 한 여성의 개인적 사회적 자아실현이 페미니즘으로 발현되는 과정을 살펴보았으며, 마지막으로 반복적인 거울이미지를 통한 주인공의 정체성 표현을 연구하였다. 이에 대한 사례연구로 마르잔 사트라피의 그래픽 노블 <페르세폴리스>를 채택하여 분석하였으며 이 작품이 가지고 있는 많은 가치 중에서도 자전적 콘텐츠와 그래픽 노블의 형식이 만들어낸 텍스트에 주목하여 앞으로의 그래픽 노블이 독립된 미디어 콘텐츠로서의 나아갈 방향을 재고하고자 하였다. 연구의 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 자서전적 성격의 그래픽 노블이 가져야 할 가장 중요한 조건은 작가 개인의 사실적 경험을 근거로 한 스토리텔링이다. 둘째, 그래픽 노블 매체는 이미 이러한 개인적 경험을 소재로 역사, 이데올로기, 페미니즘과 같은 사회적 이슈를 발현할 수 있는 충분한 기능을 갖추고 있다. 셋째, 자서전적 그래픽 노블은 코믹스의 형식을 가지고 있는 새로운 문학의 형태로 주목받고 있으며 일반적인 자서전과는 확연히 구분되는 효과로 점점 더 넓은 독자층을 확보할 수 있는 가능성을 가지고 있다.

Figures of Thought in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future

This article takes Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas on art’s inventive function as a point of departure to analyse two graphic narratives that undermine ideas about truthfulness: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future. It is argued that these allegedly autobiographical memoirs undermine genre conventions to create an implied readership who co-witnesses Satrapi’s and Sattouf’s experiences of oppression, racism, and war during their respective childhoods. It is shown how Satrapi and Sattouf undermine the autobiographical pact through graphic narrative’s ‘figures of thought’, a term introduced to capture the formal, thematic, and narrative possibilities of comics and graphic literature to make readers come into contact with unforeseen visions—and to possibly think anew. Specific attention is paid to the narrative voice, which in Satrapi’s and Sattouf’s works often goes beyond the personal perspective to account for collective experiences, as well as to the use of colour and line work that add critical layers to the stories told. In line with Deleuze and Guattari’s arguments, the poetic, which is the productive function of art, is shown to go beyond questions of truthfulness and falseness, allowing for new ways of thinking and for the creation of new worlds.