Transculturation in French Comics

Abstract

ABSTRACT  French bande dessinée [comics] provide an excellent area of analysis for developing the concept of transculturation, originally proposed by Fernando Ortiz, and more recently suggested by Alec G. Hargreaves as a useful term for moving beyond the “French”/“Francophone” opposition. The medium has long been transcultural and transnational, and contemporary French comics production and its colonial heritage include visual and textual elements from (post-)colonial and immigrant cultures. Cartoonists position their comics in relationship to different artistic and cultural agenda that are sometimes diametrically opposed to each other along the colonial affrontier.

Keywords:

• Affrontier
• Anticulturation
• Bande Dessinée
• Comics
• Reculturation
• Retortion
• Transculturation

Notes

Notes

1 My use of the term “reculturation” is inspired by an article by Fernando Ainsa (1982). He nowhere uses this term, but describes the imagined or real return of the descendants of immigrants to the land and culture of their forbears. I prefer “reculturation” to the term “neo-orientalism,” proposed by Michel Laronde (1993, 183–185), which carries negative connotations after Edward Said's critique of orientalism (1994) and risks confusing two different phenomena. Reculturation also has a much broader potential purview. The term “reculturation” is also used by André Adam (1975), for example.

2 “Cultural retortion” is borrowed from an article by Pierre-André Taguieff (1984, 131–3), who uses the term “rétorsion” to analyze the activity of the French far right beginning in the 1970s, which reworks the terms of its adversaries—such as “le droit à la différence” [the right to difference]—to better combat them. Taguieff borrows the term “rétorsion” from Marc Angenot (1982, 219), whom Taguieff (1984, 131, note 28) quotes: “Dans le cas de la rétorsion, le polémiste se place, pour conduire son ‘attaque,’ sur le terrain même de l’adversaire. Il combat contre lui en lui ‘arrachant’ ses propres armes” [In the case of retortion, the polemicist places himself, to carry out his “attack,” on the very terrain of the adversary. He fights him by “seizing” his own weapons]. For Taguieff (1984, 131), “Ce retournement est caractéristique de l’entreprise de démarginalisation conduite par les courants d’extrême-droite depuis le début des années 1970” [This flipping over is characteristic of the demarginalizing enterprise undertaken by far-right currents since the beginning of the 1970s].

3 As opposed to far-right editorial cartoons in widely distributed publications such as Minute, Présent, and Rivarol, which are sold at many regular newstands all across France.

4 This is not the Serguei whose cartoons appear in Le Monde.

5 This phrase does not appear in the far-right comic; instead, I have adapted it from the Astérix series.

6 The group was composed of Joe Cool (a.k.a. Laurent Ganem), Lewis Primo, and Bo Geste (see the colonial novel Beau Geste and film adaptations thereof, but perhaps also Bo Diddly). Ganem is a family name of Jewish North African origin.

7 Hergé (1974, 62; 1979, 265). First serialized 1934–1935 and published in album form in 1936.

8 The soldiers are under Nicolas Sarkozy's fictional orders in the second edition (Baru 2009b, 20–29).

9 Baru (2009, 57) later dropped the direct textual reference to Spirou, but Mo is still dressed like the famous comics character.

10 From Benjamin's “Theses on the philosophy of history.”

11 Originally published in 1985, and republished in 2004 (31, panel 1).