Top

Published in:

2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

5. Modernism and Historical Accuracy: Anti-Kitsch Strategies

Author : Laurike in ’t Veld

Published in: The Representation of Genocide in Graphic Novels

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

This chapter investigates how graphic novels respond to critical debates around the limits of representing genocide by employing two crucial anti-kitsch strategies as a means to avoid the dangers of kitsch and excess. The first of these strategies is a modernist aesthetic that highlights the failures and crises around (not) witnessing and (not) fully comprehending the events by placing visual and verbal emphasis on the eyes of the victims and the notion of seeing. The second strategy can be found in the paratext, which is used to posit truth claims and straightforwardly anchor knowledge about the genocidal events. In particular, pre- and postfaces are used to comment on the graphic novel’s ability to present an appropriate and truthful representation of the events.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

previous chapter Visualising Mass Violence and Sexual Violence

next chapter Conclusion

Baetens, Jan, and Hugo Frey. 2015. The Graphic Novel: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Balaev, Michelle. 2014. “Literary Trauma Theory Reconsidered.” In Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory, edited by Michelle Balaev, 1–14. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bernard-Donals, Michael, and Richard Glejzer. 2001. Between Witness and Testimony: The Holocaust and the Limits of Representation. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Blaylock, Josh, and Hoyt Silva. 2015. Operation Nemesis: A Story of Genocide and Revenge. Chicago: Devil’s Due Entertainment.

Boswell, Mathew. 2012. Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRef

Bradbury, Malcolm, and James McFarlane, eds. 1976. Modernism, 1890–1930. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Caruth, Cathy, ed. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Casali, Matteo, and Kristian Donaldson. 2011. 99 Days. New York: DC Comics.

Childs, Peter. 2008. Modernism. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.CrossRef

Chute, Hillary. 2006. “‘The Shadow of a Past Time’: History and Graphic Representation in ‘Maus’.” Twentieth Century Literature 52 (2): 199–230.CrossRef

Chute, Hillary. 2016. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Cossi, Paolo. 2007. Medz Yeghern: Il grande male. Milan: Hazard Edizioni.

Craps, Stef. 2013. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Croci, Pascal. 2003. Auschwitz. Translator Unknown. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

Didi-Huberman, Georges. 2008. Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Translated by Shane B. Lillis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Earle, Harriet. 2015. “The Whites of Their Eyes: Implied Violence and Double Frames in Blazing Combat and The ‘Nam.” Comics Forum. 13 May. https://comicsforum.org/2015/05/13/the-whites-of-their-eyes-implied-violence-and-double-frames-in-blazing-combat-and-the-nam-by-harriet-earle/#more-4039.

Earle, Harriet E. H. 2017. Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. 1992. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge.CrossRef

Frey, Hugo. 2004. Louis Malle. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Frey, Hugo. 2008. “Cannes 1956/1979: Riviera Reflections on Nationalism and Cinema.” In Narrating the Nation: Representations in History, Media, and the Arts, edited by Stefan Berger, Linas Eriksonas, and Andrew Mycock, 181–203. New York: Berghahn Books.

Genette, Gerard. 1997. Paratexts: Tresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gonshak, Henry. 2009. “Beyond Maus: Other Holocaust Graphic Novels.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 28 (1): 55–79.

Hansen, Miriam Bratu. 1996. “‘Schindler’s List’ Is Not ‘Shoah’: The Second Commandment, Popular Modernism, and Public Memory.” Critical Inquiry 22 (2): 292–312.CrossRef

Hartman, Geoffrey, ed. 1994. Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hartman, Geoffrey. 1996. The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Higgins, Lynn A. 1989. “If Looks Could Kill: Louis Malle’s Portraits of Collaboration.” In Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture, edited by Richard Golsan, 198–212. Hanover: University Press of New England.

Hirsch, Joshua. 2004. Afterimage: Film, Trauma, and the Holocaust. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Horowitz, Sara R. 1997. Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Huyssen, Andreas. 2000. “Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with Adorno.” New German Critique 81: 65–82.

Kubert, Joe. 2003. Yossel, April 19, 1943. New York: DC Comics.

LaCapra, Dominick. 1994. Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

LaCapra, Dominick. 1998. History and Memory After Auschwitz. New York: Cornell University Press.

Landsberg, Alison. 1997. “America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory: Toward a Radical Politics of Empathy.” New German Critique 71: 63–86.

Lang, Berel. 2000. Holocaust Representation: Art Within the Limits of History and Ethics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lanzmann, Claude, dir. 1985. Shoah. France: BBC.

Levine, Michael G. 2002. “Necessary Stains: Spiegelman’s Maus and the Bleeding of History.” American Imago 59 (3): 317–341.CrossRef

Lindeperg, Sylvie. 2014. “Night and Fog”: A Film in History. Translated by Tom Mes. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Malle, Louis, dir. 1987. Au revoir les enfants. France: Nouvelles Éditions de Films.

McCloud, Scott. 2003. Understanding Comics. New York: HarperCollins.

Metz, Walter C. 2008. “‘Show Me the Shoah!’: Generic Experiences and Spectatorship in Popular Representations of the Holocaust.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 27 (1): 16–35.CrossRef

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 1995. Bodyscape: Art, Modernity, and the Ideal Figure. New York: Routledge.

“On Kitsch.” 2015. Salmagundi: A Quarterly of the Humanities and Social Sciences 187 (Anniversary Issue): 350–433.

Orbán, Katalin. 2007. “Trauma and Visuality: Art Spiegelman’s Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers.” Representations 97 (1): 57–89.CrossRef

Pak, Greg, and Carmine Di Giandomenico. 2014. X-Men: Magneto Testament. Collected edition. New York: Marvel.

Parsons, Deborah. 2007. Theorists of the Modernist Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf. London: Routledge.CrossRef

Pizzino, Christopher. 2016. Arresting Development: Comics at the Boundaries of Literature. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Pollock, Griselda, and Max Silverman, eds. 2011. Concentrationary Cinema: Aesthetics as Political Resistance in Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog. New York: Berghahn Books.

Resnais, Alain, dir. 1955. Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard). France: Argos Films.

Resnais, Alain dir. 1959. Hiroshima mon amour. France: Argos Films.

Sacco, Joe. 2000. Safe Area Goražde. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books.

Silverman, Max. 2013. Palimpsestic Memory: The Holocaust and Colonialism in French and Francophone Fiction and Film. New York: Berghahn Books.

Spiegelman, Art. 1971. “Maus.” Funny Aminals #1.

Spiegelman, Art. 1994. The Complete Maus. CD-ROM. New York: Voyager.

Spiegelman, Art. 2003. The Complete Maus. London: Penguin Books.

Spiegelman, Art. 2008. Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!. New York: Pantheon Books.

Spiegelman, Art. 2011. Metamaus. New York: Pantheon Books.

Vice, Sue. 2000. Holocaust Fiction. London: Routledge.CrossRef

Whitworth, Michael H, ed. 2007. Modernism. Malden: Blackwell.

Witek, Joseph. 1989. Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Title: Modernism and Historical Accuracy: Anti-Kitsch Strategies
Author: Laurike in ’t Veld
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: The Representation of Genocide in Graphic Novels
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03625-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-03626-3

Copyright Year: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03626-3_5