Hermeneutic flashbacks: building the narrative space in Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde

ABSTRACT

The present paper attempts to read the hermeneutic play into the structural matrix of Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde through the idea of ‘spatial excess’ that the paper proposes by theoretically conflating Gadamer’s concept of ‘Fusion of Horizon’ with Groensteen’s idea of ‘hyperframe’ and ‘margin’. The paper reads the flashback episodes which it identifies as hermeneutic by disposition and which drives home the idea of historical consciousness by redefining the ideas of authorship which here qualifies not only the role of Sacco, the comics journalist but also the natives of Gorazde who narrate their own testimonies of the war. The flashback episodes in the text are embedded in black borders to categorically segregate them from the present-day narrative. These black borders apart from being a stylised trope become a potent hermeneutic schema that offers a spatial excess within which they accommodate the victims’ point of view as well as situate the readers into the textual space and thus change the epistemic practices of perceiving the past.

KEYWORDS:

• Spatial excess
• fusion of horizon
• hyperframe
• margin
• hermeneutics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ‘Remediated’ is the concept developed by Bolter and Grusain in their book Remediation: Understanding New Media (Bolter and Richard 2000). It is defined as the ‘formal logic by which new media refashion prior media forms.’ (273). Nina Mickwitz also realigns the new non-fiction graphic narratives with the documentary form and asserts ‘these comics remediate … a documentary mode of address usually associated with certain other media.’ (2016, 7)

2. The other two categories of image functions that Duncan describes in her essay are sensory diegetic images that project the physical reality of the story world; non-sensory diegetic images which reveal the internal reality of the characters.

3. Sontag (2004) talks about the ‘shame’ and ‘shock’ in looking at the photographs of gruesome horror. She asserts that the incapacity to ‘alleviate’ the suffering of the people photographed turns us into ‘voyeurs.’ We use the words voyager in relation as well as in contradistinction to Sontag’s idea. In all his comics journalistic works we see him walking through the streets in the areas of his visit. That is why he may be seen as a ‘voyager.’

4. Mickwitz, in Documentary Comics (2016) attempts to tap on the recent non-fiction graphic narratives that aim to ‘mediate actual events and the real world’ (2). She juxtaposes these non-fiction graphic narratives with the ‘moving image documentary form’ (2) in order to evaluate the project of visualising the past in a truthful and effective manner. However, she refrains from dealing with the technicalities of comics as a medium.

5. The discussion about the act of witnessing being central to the process of documentation and historiography has been initiated by Nina Mickwitz in Documentary Comics: Graphic Truth-Telling in a Sceptical Age (2016). For further reference see John Ellis’ Seeing Things (2002), Michael Chanan’s Politics of Documentary (2008).

6. See Visible Cities, Global Comics: Urban Images and Spatial Form (2019) by Benjamin Fraser. Pp 173.

7. The first level is being a first-hand witness, the second is standing witness in the experiences of other, and lastly, ‘being a witness to the process of witnessing itself.’ (Laub 61).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Purba Chakraborty

Purba Chakraborty is currently doing her Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, in Non-fiction Graphic Narratives in Areas of Conflict. She has completed her M.A. in English Literature from the Department of English and Culture Studies, University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India. She has also completed her M.Phil Degree on American Counterculture and Underground Comix Movement from the same department. She has more than 2 years of teaching experience in various colleges under The University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India and also taught the Advance English Course to the undergraduate students at IIT Roorkee. Her areas of interest comprise American Counterculture, Underground Comix, Comics Journalism, and Non-fictional Graphic Narratives. She has also recently won the Best Presenter Award at NIT Meghalaya at the COIN 2019 international conference.

Rashmi Gaur

Rashmi Gaur is a Professor of English, she teaches courses in Communication, Culture, Gender Studies and Media (Film and Literature) at IIT Roorkee. In her career, spanning three decades, she has guided about 12 Ph.D. theses. She has published four books, also to her credit there are more than ninety research papers in national and international journals. Besides, she has travelled extensively and has participated in many conferences in India and abroad. She also runs consultancy projects in related areas. She has worked across disciplines and cultures in different research and cultural milieus and formed strong intercultural networks through international collaborations. She is also a member of several academic bodies. At present, she is working in the area of Media, Digital Humanities and Professional Communication.