The pedagogy of the image text: Nakazawa, Sebald and Spiegelman recount social traumas

Abstract

The paper discusses the pedagogy of the image text, a term that encompasses the graphic novels of Nakazawa and Spiegelman and the heavily illustrated novels of Sebald. Increasingly, artist-authors have turned to the image-text medium to represent catastrophic social events, and these three authors’ works are discussed as seminal documents of cataclysmic societal events, such as the bombing of Hiroshima or the Holocaust. All have provided a narrative visual framework that attempts to inform us of the lived experience of these traumatic moments, insofar as their medium will permit, and these methods are discussed and compared. The pedagogic impulse – the desire to inform a contemporary audience of such major historical events – is evident in all three selected authors’ works. Their diverse yet comparable visual methods, and the ways in which they seem to imbue us with authentic vicarious experiences arguably constitute a visual pedagogy of social crises.

Notes

1. This was preceded by Nakazawa's much shorter, and more factually autobiographical manga, known as Ore wa Mita [I Saw It] (1972).

2. Barefoot Gen usually comprises four novel-length parts in the English translations, although Last Gasp intends to publish a further six volumes.

3. J. Butler, Guest lecture at Senate House, University of London, 29 September 2005.

4. In the translated version of Sebald's The Emigrants (2002a), for instance, 14 of the c.74 images fall into this category, and comprise diagrams, prints (engravings, etchings, lithographs), and six reproductions of text (diaries, newspapers, calling card and ticket).