Reading footnotes: Joe Sacco and the graphic human rights narrative

Abstract

This article presents Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza (2009) as a graphic human rights narrative. It argues that the text draws on established conventions in historiography and investigative journalism to present Palestinians as human subjects in international media discourse. To do so, Sacco experiments with different strategies of documentary writing and recording and critiques the ways in which received frames of representation determine who is considered, in Judith Butler’s terms, a “grievable” life in a conflict zone. Thus while Sacco plays with fragments and footnotes, eyewitness accounts and human rights reports, he is ultimately concerned with constructing alternative “frames” for viewing, reading and recognizing lives. Footnotes in Gaza, as such, serves as an example of how the comics form can be used to enhance human rights narrative.

Keywords:

• Palestine
• graphic novel
• Joe Sacco
• human rights
• frame
• history

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the British Academy. It has benefitted from the questions and comments of various audiences: in particular, the encouragement of the “Islam and the West” seminar series hosted by the History Department at Queen Mary University of London (2014) and the “Writing for Liberty” conference at the University of Lancaster (2015). I would also like to thank Angus Brown, whose feedback on early drafts was invaluable, and the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) and the Oxford Scatcherd European Scholarship (2009–12), whose funding made some of the early research possible.

Notes

1. Sacco is citing a report from Tom Segev’s (1986) book The First Israelis which predicted that “the most adaptable and best survivors would manage by a process of natural selection, and the others will waste away. Some will die but most will turn into human debris and social outcasts and probably join the poorest classes in the Arab countries” (36).

2. See also Guha (2002).

3. Rocco Versaci argues that the “cartoonish style” (2007, 119) Sacco draws himself in suggests an alienation from his surroundings; Wendy Kozol (2012, 167) sees his blank glasses as indicative of his status as an avatar; Sacco himself tells Rachel Cooke in an interview that “some people have told me that hiding my eyes makes it easier for them to put themselves in my shoes, so I’ve kind of stuck with it. I’m a nondescript figure; on some level, I’m a cipher” (Cooke 2009, n.p.).