Title: The graphic narrative and affront/ier aesthetics : Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2023, vol. 49, iss. 2, pp. 123-143
Extent
123-143
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2023-2-6
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.79907
Type: Appendix
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Rights access
open access
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This essay argues that Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers explores the making of an aesthetics of the affront/ier. Affront/ier aesthetics in Spiegelman has three components, each addressing one aspect of the events of 9/11 and subsequent events: the mediated morphing of tragedy into travesty, the trauma aesthetic that frames the artistic self and finally the shifts between the monumentality and kitsch. The first section of the paper demonstrates how Spiegelman represents what he terms the travesty of a tragedy in the form of, first, the media-driven travesty of national symbols and icons and, secondly, the pareidoliac and parodic conflation of the Towers with human faces. The second section addresses Spiegelman's trauma-aesthetic where the artistic self is under pressure and whose paranoiac body is embedded within the jingoistic fervour of the moment. In the final section, I turn to Spiegelman's sublime where the monumental and mundane seem to intersect. With each of these modes, the paper demonstrates, an affront is made visible and a frontier breached.
References
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[33] Tiffany, Daniel (2014) My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press.
[34] Versluys, Kristiaan (2006) Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers: 9-11 and the representation of trauma. Modern Fiction Studies 52 (4), 980–1003. | DOI 10.1353/mfs.2007.0011
[35] Westwell, Guy (2016) Acts of redemption and 'the falling man' photograph in post-9/11 US cinema. In: McSweeney, Terence (ed.) American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11. Edinburgh University Press, 67–88. | DOI 10.1515/9781474413824-007
[2] Alsultany, Evelyn (2012) Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11. New York: New York University Press. | DOI 10.26581/acme.v3i1.127
[3] Brandt, Jenn (2014) Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers and the art of graphic autofiction. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 5 (1), 70–78. | DOI 10.1080/21504857.2013.842180
[4] Bray, Patrick M. (2008) Aesthetics in the shadow of no towers: Reading Virilio in the twenty-first century. Yale French Studies 114, 4–17.
[5] Brottman, Mikita (2004) The fascination of the abomination: the censored images of 9/11. In: Wheeler Winston Dixon, Wheeler Winston (ed.) Film and Television After 9/11. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 163–78.
[6] Carbone, Mauro (2017) Falling Man. Research in Phenomenology 47 (2), 190–203.
[7] Caruth, Cathy (1990) Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
[8] Chute, Hillary (2007) Temporality and seriality in Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers. American Periodicals 17 (2), 28–244.
[9] Chute, Hillary (2016) Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics and Documentary Form. Harvard University Press.
[10] Dentith, Simon (2000) Parody. London and New York: Routledge.
[11] Doherty, Thomas (1996) Art Spiegelman's Maus: Graphic art and the Holocaust. American Literature 68 (1), 69–84.
[12] Espiritu, Karen (2007) 'Putting grief into boxes': Trauma and the crisis of democracy in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers. The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 28 (2), 179–201. | DOI 10.1080/10714410600739905
[13] Feldman, Allen (2004) Memory theaters, virtual witnessing, and the trauma-aesthetic. Biography 27 (1), 163–202.
[14] Ferguson, Lydia (2012) Review. In the Shadow of No Towers. Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: Independents and Underground Classics. Salem Press, 382–385.
[15] Gibson, Chris (2014) Souvenirs, materialities and animal encounters: Following Texas cowboy boots. Tourist Studies 14 (3), 286–301. | DOI 10.1177/1468797614536333
[16] Huyssen, Andreas (2003) Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
[17] Jankov, Sonja (2016) Traumatic sublime: Genealogy of the term and relation to contemporary art and media. ART+MEDIA: Journal of Art and Media Studies 9, 135–143. | DOI 10.25038/am.v0i9.123
[18] Jensen, Meg (2016) The legible face of human rights in autobiographically based fiction. In: McClennen, Sophia A. and Alexandra Schultheis Moore (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights. New York: Routledge, 184–192. | DOI 10.4324/9781315778372-19
[19] Junod, Tom (2003) The falling man: Honoring September 11's unknown soldier. Esquire, 5 September.
[20] Kroes, Rob, Miles Orvell and Alan Nadel (2011) The ascent of the falling man: Establishing a picture's iconicity. Journal of American Studies 45 (4), 1–19.
[21] Kuhlman, Martha (2007) The traumatic temporality of Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers. Journal of Popular Culture 40 (5), 849–866. | DOI 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2007.00458.x
[22] McKinney, Mark (2008) The frontier and the affront/ier: French-language Algerian comics. European Comic Art 1 (2), 175–199.
[23] Miller, J. Hillis (1990) Versions of Pygmalion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[24] Orbán, Katalin (2007) Trauma and visuality: Art Spiegelman's Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers. Representations 97 (1), 57–89. | DOI 10.1525/rep.2007.97.1.57
[25] Orvell, Miles (2021) Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography and the Spectacle of Destruction. New York: Oxford University Press.
[26] Ray, Gene (2005) Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to September 11. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
[27] Segall, Kimberley Wedeven (2005) Pursuing ghosts: the traumatic sublime in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Research in African Literatures 36 (4), 40–54. | DOI 10.1353/ral.2005.0175
[28] Shaw, Philip (2009) The Sublime. London and New York: Routledge.
[29] Simpson, David (2006) 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press.
[30] Smith, Jordan Rendell (2008) 9/11 tragicomix: allegories of national trauma in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers. Shift: Queen's Journal of Visual and Material Culture. Online. http://shiftjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/smith1.pdf. 8 July 2023.
[31] Spiegelman, Art (2004) In the Shadow of No Towers. New York: Pantheon. Print.
[32] Thill, Scott (2004) In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman. The Guardian 10 September 2004. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/10/1. 1 November 2023.
[33] Tiffany, Daniel (2014) My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press.
[34] Versluys, Kristiaan (2006) Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers: 9-11 and the representation of trauma. Modern Fiction Studies 52 (4), 980–1003. | DOI 10.1353/mfs.2007.0011
[35] Westwell, Guy (2016) Acts of redemption and 'the falling man' photograph in post-9/11 US cinema. In: McSweeney, Terence (ed.) American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11. Edinburgh University Press, 67–88. | DOI 10.1515/9781474413824-007