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Abstract
The Sign-Maker is a work of “graphic docufiction” that demonstrates how languages and signs reproduce conflict, colonial relations, and segregation. In addition, it foregrounds the function of spaces and monuments as “national topobiographies,” underscoring similarities between three different (post-)colonial areas. By highlighting maps and colonial uses of passports and passbooks, it also demonstrates its fictional characters’ diasporic fluidity and unrootedness.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 359. In personal communication, Hoplaros has confirmed that all of the characters are fictional.
2 With the term national topobiographies, I refer to the potential of spaces and monuments to function as biographical texts of the nations in which they exist. For a definition of the term topobiography, see Karjalainen, “Topobiography.”
3 Mickwitz, Documentary Comics, 2.
4 Mickwitz, Documentary Comics, 2.
5 Chute, Disaster Drawn, 16.
6 Chute, Disaster Drawn, 16.
7 Chute, Disaster Drawn, 157. When Maus was listed in the New York Times best-seller list of fictional books, Spiegelman wrote a letter to the editor explaining that “the borderland between fiction and nonfiction has been fertile territory for some of the most potent contemporary writing.” Acknowledging the “problems of taxonomy” he raised with his book, he proposed the creation of “a special ‘nonfiction/mice’ category.” See Spiegelman, “A Problem of Taxonomy.”
8 Mickwitz, Documentary Comics, 1.
9 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
10 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 359.
11 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 359.
12 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 360.
13 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 360.
14 Mickwitz, Documentary Comics, 7.
15 Rhodes and Springer, “Introduction,” 4.
16 Rhodes and Springer, “Introduction,” 4.
17 Rhodes and Springer, “Introduction,” 4.
18 For discussions on the Green Line in Cyprus, see Papadakis, Echoes, 45–137 and Bakshi, Topographies of Memories, 3–42.
19 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 359.
20 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 359.
21 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 359.
22 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
23 Zesimou, “Seeing Beyond the Walls,” 258.
24 Zesimou, “Seeing Beyond the Walls,” 281.
25 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
26 For discussions on colonial uses of language and linguistic imperialism, see Phillipson, “Linguistic Imperialism.”
27 Hulme, Colonial Encounters, 2. See also Tiffin and Lawson, “Introduction.”
28 Mehta and Mukherji, “Introduction,” 2.
29 Davies, Urban Comics, 11.
30 Davies, Urban Comics, 3.
31 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 360.
32 Chute, Disaster Drawn, 4.
33 Zesimou, “Seeing Beyond the Walls,” 267.
34 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
35 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
36 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
37 French, Fighting EOKA, 106–194.
38 Rayner, “Forgotten Soldiers.”
39 For more details on the EOKA guerrilla war against British colonial rule, the desire for union with Greece, Makarios’s proposed constitutional changes, the inter-communal violence of 1963 (which led to the formation of enclaves in Nicosia, where Turkish Cypriots were forced to live), the coup against Makarios, and the Turkish military intervention of 1974, see Loizidou, “On the Liberty Monument”; Peristianis and Mavris, “The ‘Green Line’”; Bryant, “Partitions of Memory”; and Papadakis, “Greek Cypriot Narratives,” 152.
40 Azgin et al., Words that Matter, xxii.
41 McCall, EU Borderscapes, 20. See also Lisle, “Encounters with Partition,” 99–106.
42 Loizidou, “On the Liberty Monument,” 92; emphasis added.
43 Loizidou, “On the Liberty Monument,” 93.
44 Loizidou, “On the Liberty Monument,” 98.
45 Loizidou, “On the Liberty Monument,” 98.
46 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
47 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 360.
48 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
49 McCall, EU Borderscapes, 5. See also Berezin, “Territory, Emotion and Identity.”
50 Osborne, “Landscapes,” 3.
51 Karjalainen, “Topobiography,” 31.
52 Karjalainen, “Topobiography,” 32.
53 Coombes and Brah, “Introduction,” 1.
54 Mitchell, “Different Diasporas,” 533.
55 Mitchell, “Different Diasporas,” 257, 260.
56 Frey and Noys, “Editorial,” 536.
57 Denson, Meyer, and Stein, “Introducing Transnational Perspectives,” 18.
58 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
59 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag. The Sign-Maker constitutes an example of “minor literature”—that is, literature “which a minority constructs within a major language” that becomes deterritorialized. Achebe points to the potential of the hybridization of English through its use by African nations. See Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka, 16 and Achebe, Morning, 91–103.
60 For an analysis of Cypriot “otherness” during British colonial rule on the island, which lasted from 1878 when Cyprus was passed onto British authorities by the Ottoman Empire, as well as a discussion related to British attempts to combat Greek Cypriots’ desire for union with Greece, see Given, “Inventing the Eteocypriots.”
61 O’Byrne, “On Passports,” 399.
62 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
63 Saint, “Reading Subjects,” 117.
64 Mehta and Mukherji, “Introduction,” 2.
65 Mehta and Mukherji, “Introduction,” 2.
66 Hoplaros, “The Sign-Maker,” 360.
67 Hoplaros and Alphas, The Sign-Maker, n. pag.
68 Mehta and Mukherji, “Introduction,” 4. On the need for more scholarly work on graphic narratives beyond the mainstream comics production centers, see also Denson, Meyer, and Stein, “Introducing Transnational Perspectives”; and Meneses, “Reconsidering International Comics.”