Professors Joanna Page and Edward King Discuss the Book Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America

Though the academic study of comic books and graphic novels is exploding in popularity, a growing concern is that so much of this research centers on content from North America, Western Europe, and Japan. With so many brilliant and beautiful comics/graphic novels being produced all over the world, it is clear that academics have only analyzed a fraction of the sequential narratives that have been published.

Filling this void are Dr. Joanna Page (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Edward King (University of Bristol). Driving by their shared interests in Latin American cultures and comic books, Page and King have co-authored Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America. This manuscript uses Latin American graphic novels to explore how people from this region are using this art form to explore their culture and the pressing issues of their lives. Wanting to learn more about this project, I was able to interview King and Edward.

To learn more about the authors, you can check Dr. Page’s faculty page, Dr. King’s faculty page here and you can follow him on twitter @edcrking.

Nicholas Yanes: Growing up, what were your first encounters with graphic novels and comic books? Are there any series that you are still a fan of?

Joanna Page: Actually I read very few comics when I was a child! My interest in graphic fiction (like my interest in science fiction) came much later.

Edward King: I came to comics quite late in life. I remember discovering a comic book store in Nottingham when I was doing my undergraduate degree and spending all my money on The Sandman comics and Alan Moore books, both of which I still love.

Yanes: When in your academic careers did you both decide to start analyzing graphic novels? Did you encounter any resistance?

Page: For me it has only been in the last 3-4 years or so. I haven’t encountered any resistance at all, but that may be because I am fortunate to be working in an academic environment (Cambridge) that is very open to the analysis of new kinds of texts and cultural material, and to a wide range of new theories and approaches.

King: I started to write about comic books during my PhD, when I was researching the politics of science fiction narratives in Argentina and Brazil during the last decades of the 20^th century. A friend of mine from Argentina recommended that I take a look at the comic book series Cybersix by Carlos Meglia and Carlos Trillo, which was first published in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s. I spent months trying to track it down and eventually found it in a comic book shop in Valencia, Spain. I wrote a chapter on representations of technology and power in Cybersix as part of my PhD. When it came to turning the thesis into a book I added a chapter on the theme of technologized memory in the work of Brazilian comic book artist Lourenço Mutarelli, whose work I’m still a massive fan of.

Yanes: In your opinions, what is the state of comic book/graphic novel studies in the United Kingdom?

Page: It is still a new field, but some interesting studies are starting to appear. Across the UK, Europe and the US, there has been a lot of recent work on graphic fiction in relation to the representation of the city, and to journalism and (auto)biography. That leaves a lot of room for studies with a different focus, and there is a huge potential for growth. I have no doubt that it is a field that is set to grow in the UK and elsewhere over the next few years. I have been teaching some graphic fiction on our MPhil course at Cambridge, and students have been extremely interested in the topic. What is interesting is that they find it more challenging than they thought they would: both in terms of knowing how to read and understand the narratives (which often require non-linear methods of reading), and also in thinking about how the texts and images interact. This challenge means that a number of students and researchers are going to find it a very rich and rewarding area of study.

King: Comic book and graphic novel studies in the UK is in a really exciting phase. As objects of study they are becoming more and more legitimate, with courses springing up all over the place and more and more interesting studies emerging. However, the field still hasn’t consolidated into a discipline, leaving it open to an extraordinary range of methodologies and approaches. The field still retains the methodological openness that attracted me to it in the first place. I think in the next few years we are going to see more and more theoretically-rigorous studies that balance data-driven approaches of projects such as ‘What Were Comics?’ by Bart Beaty, Nick Sousanis and Benjamin Woo, with considerations of how these texts shape or intervene into systems of power.

Yanes: On this note, what is comics studies like in other European nations? Are there some nations with scholars more open to the study of graphic novels than others?

Page: I think it is starting to emerge in a number of countries across Europe. Some (like Italy and France) have a stronger tradition of comics studies, probably because they have had a more developed publishing tradition in this area, but until recently these were largely confined to historical accounts and surveys rather than the detailed analysis of graphic fiction as a unique form and mode of representation.

King: In many ways, the field in the UK is still playing catch-up with those of neighbouring European nations, especially France. But, that said, comic book and graphic novel studies is currently in an exciting transnational phase with more and more dialogue and exchange between students of different regional traditions.

Yanes: Now to focus on your manuscript, what was the inspiration behind developing Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America?

Page: We had both started working on some graphic fiction from Latin America, and I think we both became aware of the wealth of new graphic novels coming out that were of superb quality, and really deserved to be discussed and disseminated beyond their countries of production. We had both previously done research on themes connected with science fiction and had a growing interest in theories of the posthuman. So it seemed a natural step to take. By working together on the book, we realised we could cover a much broader set of texts, contexts and theories, and that we would learn a lot from shaping the overall argument together.

King: I think the project was partly a response to the recent boom of independent comics and graphic novels in many parts of Latin America. There is so much complex and interesting material being produced in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere that is only just starting to receive critical attention. Since a lot of the material lends itself to the critical approaches and interests that we were both developing, a collaborative project seemed like an obvious step. Since the study of comics and graphic fiction in Latin America is growing and growing, there seemed to be a compelling opportunity to shape critical debates.

Yanes: When conducting research for Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America, was there any new information that stood out to you the most?

Page: Apart from the wonderful graphic novels we were working with, I really enjoyed reading recent studies of graphic fiction by researchers like Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey, Jared Gardner, Jörn Enns and Ian Hague. And then there were whole areas of analysis and theory that were new to me and very interesting and relevant, like steampunk studies, or Eduardo Kohn’s anthropology beyond the human. It was really a fantastic intellectual adventure to come into contact with so many new ideas.

King: When we started looking into the topic, there was an interesting overlap between the critical approaches to ‘haptic’ qualities of comic books and graphic novels (how they appeal to the full range of senses, rather than just the visual) and posthuman, assemblage and affect theories that are thinking of subjectivity in terms of entanglements between the human and the nonhuman. This appealed to us as an interesting theoretical point of departure for studying the formally self-conscious comics and graphic novels being produced in Latin America at the moment.

Yanes: In your opinions, what are some of the key graphic novels people interested in Latin America should read?

Page: The ones we discuss in the book! It would be hard to choose between them, and what is also valuable about them is their amazing diversity. Some of the ones I found most surprising and innovative were E-Dem by Cristián Montes Lynch, Informe Tunguska by Claudio Romo and Alexis Figueroa (both from Chile), and the work of Edgar Clement (Mexico). But there are many others I could add.

Yanes: Though Latin America is a widely used term, it overlooks the vast cultural diversity in the Caribbean, Central and South America. How do you both think this diversity is reflected in the depiction of posthumanism in graphic novels?

Page: These graphic novels are extremely cosmopolitan in their orientation – they are borrowing and reworking codes of representation from Europe and the US as well as sources closer to home. Because many of the texts we were exploring would fit more or less comfortably into the science fiction genre, they tend to be very international in their systems of reference. But in many graphic novels there is also a real interest in the shared Latin American history of colonization, slavery, dictatorship and continued forms of economic and political subjugation. And questions of exclusion and marginalization are often key to the narratives.

Yanes: When people finish reading Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America, what do you hope that they take away from it?

Page: An interest in reading more graphic novels from Latin America, certainly! But also hopefully a sense of the different ways in which they can be approached from an academic perspective, and how they operate as distinctive forms, which are often intermedial. In the book we also work through (and sometimes question) a number of theories of posthumanism which should be of interest to contemporary readers, as they touch directly on questions that are relevant both in Latin America and elsewhere, such as ecology, modernity, capitalism, postcolonialism, the media, and embodiment in the context of virtual technologies.

Yanes: Finally, what are projects you are working on that people can look forward to?

Page: I am working on a new project that explores imaginaries of science in contemporary art and literature from Latin America. I’m particularly interested in the work of artists working at the intersections of art, engineering, architecture and environmental science, and in collaborative and transdisplinary projects generate new thinking about, and experiences of, life in common – new frameworks for understanding the relationships between the human and the non-human, and how we might live differently in the future. So there are some connections with the themes we explored in the Posthumanism book, but this project is going to lead me towards a range of different media and artforms, such as installation art and scientific illustration, as well as cinema and literature.

Remember, you can learn more about the authors by checking out Dr. Page’s faculty page, Dr. King’s faculty page here and following him on twitter @edcrking.

And remember to follow me on twitter @NicholasYanes, and to follow Sequart on twitter @Sequart and on facebook.