Canonical literary autobiographies such as those of Rousseau, Gide or Sartre, provide an individualised and ambiguous introspective that points to intricate universal traits. Nothing could seem further from the stock third-person baffooneries that are often seen as the hallmark of the early bande dessinée: M. Pencil, Bécassine, Mickey, Pif le Chien… This paper will examine the possibility of a lesser-known counter-trend in the works that saw the development of the BD from the nineteenth century to the immediate post-war period. We will consider early BD autobiography on three levels: ‘true’ (or pseudo-true) autobiography in which the author tells of his own experiences; projected autobiography whereby a first-person narrative creates the effect of autobiography; finally, self-referential creations in which the BD as a form can be seen as manufacturing its own autobiography. The overall aim of the paper is to put such findings in the context of the specificity of the BD’s development and ask what they tell us (including what a lack of findings might tell us) about the intrinsic nature of this text/image form.

Les mises en abyme et l’autoreprésentation sont présentes en bande dessinée dès l’émergence du médium à la fin du 19ième siècle. Néanmoins, elles se développent surtout chez les auteurs postmodernes, qui délaissent les récits d’aventures pour se consacrer à l’exploration du médium et à l’investigation de soi et du quotidien. L’autoreprésentation en bande dessinée est fascinante pour le théoricien, parce que ce procédé instaure bien souvent, à l’intérieur du récit, une réflexion sur le médium lui-même. Par conséquent, ma communication aura pour but d’étudier ce processus réflexif dans l’oeuvre d’Edmond Baudoin, car cet auteur français exploite l’autoreprésentation sous toutes les formes, que ce soit au niveau de l’énoncé, de l’énonciation ou des codes propres à la bande dessinée. Au cours de mon exposé, j’aborderai les deux questions suivantes:

(1) Comment Baudoin ultilise-t-il l’autoreprésentation dans son oeuvre ?

(2) Qu’est-ce que l’étude de ce procédé apporte à la compréhension de l’oeuvre de Baudoin?

Ainsi, ma communication se divisera en deux sections. La première partie consistera, grâce à des exemples pertinents, à observer les différents procédés de l’autoreprésentation présents dans l’oeuvre de Baudoin. Nous verrons, par exemple, comment et pourquoi l’auteur crée une mise en abyme dans Le voyage à l’aide d’un spectacle de marionnette, et pourquoi il met constamment en scène, à l’intérieur même du récit, des personnages en train de dessiner.

La seconde partie portera ensuite sur une oeuvre précise (Abbé Pierre, Le portrait ou Éloge de la poussière). J’y démontrerai comment l’étude des procédés réflexifs éclaire le récit et l’enrichit.

Ainsi, au-delà de l’établissement d’une typologie des mises en abyme, j’observerai comment fonctionnent les processus réflexifs à l’intérieur de la narration et de la diégèse d’un texte singulier. En d’autres mots, ce qui m’intéresse, c’est de voir ce que la mise en abyme apporte au récit et comment on peut interpréter une oeuvre à la lumière de ses procédés réflexifs.

Since the nineties, independent houses (Atrabile, L’Association, Ego comme X…) have grown alongside the mainstream production of comic books and opened new doors to the literary adaptations or autobiographical work of artists such as Boilet, Baudoin, David B., Francis Neaud… Seminal in this nouvelle bande dessinée are the exploration of innovative stylistic and narrative features – for instance, the unusual publication format and the choice of monochrome (which will affect the aesthetics) or themes set in a contemporaneous context including the everyday life, appealing to a public who would read a bande dessinée as they would enjoy a novel or a film. Amongst the cross-cultural influences in the comics’ field, Japanese manga have had some bearings on the nouvelle bande dessinée. It is perhaps no coincidence that, as everyday life-based narratives are a central locus in manga and as the exploration of new styles continues to take place, some artists have chosen to adopt a manga-style bande dessinée. Featured recently in the press as ‘new manga’, the latter combine specific features of manga and of bande dessinée… with a reminiscence of French cinema for the Japanese readers. We propose to look at the specific stylistic and narrative features of ‘new manga’ through Boilet’s autobiographical key work ‘L’Epinard de Yukiko’ (Ego comme X, 2001) which was published simultaneously in Japan and in France and has helped shape the ‘new manga’, as an example of a very French and very manga-type nouvelle bande dessinée.

Dans ma réflexion sur la dimension autobiographique de la bande dessinée contemporaine, j’aimerais aborder un certain nombre de questions générales, à commencer par les suivantes:

– est-ce que le tournant autobiographique de la bande dessinée constitue
une plus-value pour le genre? doit-on considérer que l’authenticité représente un atout artistique? ou encore (puisque ma réponse ne tendra à être exclusivement positive): est-ce que la bande dessinée à intérêt à passer, comme tant d’autres pratiques, à l’autobiographie?

– est-ce que la dimension de l’autobiographique se confond avec le domaine dudit “pacte autobiographique”, ou est-il possible de concevoir d’autres modalités, et si oui (car j’ai tendance à penser que la réponse est plutôt oui) lesquelles?

– que faut-il penser de l’apport de la “médiagénie”, c’est-à-dire de toutes les questions relatives à la notion de spécificité médiologique? (je tenterai ici de montrer que la bande dessinée n’accueille pas l’autobiographie de manière indifférenciée, mais qu’elle la “spécifie” d’une manière ou d’une autre)

– de quelle manière la parole autobiographique est-elle compatible avec les exigences de l’écriture (comme système réglé, voire comme système de contraintes)?

Les exemples seront empruntés à la production franco-belge contemporaine.

Murray Pratt, Institute for International Studies, University of Technology Sydney

The Diary of Neaud’s Body, Approaching the Subject of Heteronormativity

Fabrice Neaud has now published four volumes to date of an ongoing autobiographical project in a visually innovative ‘Bande dessinée’ format. This paper draws on the first three of these, together with some material published separately in the publishers’ review. Appearing with ‘ego comme x’, the award-winning Journal (I) février 1992 — septembre 1993, Journal (II) septembre 1993 — décembre 1993, and Journal (III) décembre 1993 — août 1995 his work extends the possibilities of both autobiography and ‘Bande dessinée’, while opening out into a full and challenging commentary on everyday sufferings and cruelties inherent in being (a body) in contemporary Western society and sexuality. In particular, the three volumes explore the isolations, separations and segregations which produce and constrict the orderings and disorderings of a gayed male body in social space(s), in his case, inhabiting the closed circle of apartment, studio, bar and park shaping the itineraries he takes within the small provincial town where he lives, with the temporary fugue, carnival or othering afforded by train journeys to elsewhere in Europe. Neaud’s ongoing practices and theorisation of the social politics of self and other could be associated with many seams of French thought, however the focus of this paper is on his enquiry into the incivilities of private life, in particular the trope of the insult. Drawing on Didier Eribon’s work on the insult as constitutive of gay identity, it considers the homophobic insult in particular as a formative moment for the Journaux, and examines Neaud’s autobiocomic approach – in style, structure and content – as a reformulation, or queering, of its power to offend and injure.

Note The material covered in this paper is available in published form, in Lucille Cairns (ed), Gay Cultures in France, Peter Lang, 2002.

In her autobiographical albums, the Québecoise bande dessinée artist Julie Doucet refuses the disembodied speaking voice that has often characterised male autobiographies, rarely employing récitatif, or narrative voiceover, in favour of a direct transcription of her thoughts and emotions through speech balloons, and emphasising the graphic portrayal of her own body, which appears in almost every frame. The coincidence of enunciating subject and subject of the enunciation would seem to defy Lacan’s assertion of the inevitable division of the post-Oedipal subject : Doucet seems to occupy the terrain which Kristeva has called the ‘abject’. Kristeva contends that the process of breaking free from the mother’s body and becoming a fully constuituted subject involves the separation of the clean body from the abject body: this is a boundary which Doucet comprehensively transgresses through her exuberant portrayal of bodily fluids. The fixity of subject positioning seems to dissolve still further, as Julie happily occupies the same plane of reality as the clutter in her flat.

In contrast, Jean-Christiphe Menu seems to resist narrative embodiment, making copious use of voiceover and distancing the body of his diegetic self from the rationality of the narrative ‘I’ through his disguise as a cartoon character, while the body of his wife is repeatedly represented. The end of the album offers, however, a dramatic figuration of fragmentation and splitting as he reaches the crisis of his thirtieth birthday, a crisis which is seemingly resolved through the intervention of a bande dessinée father figure … (A suivre ..)

Intimate partnerships of writer and artist are common in comics, but I know of no team in the medium that compares to the ‘two-brained’ yet singular voice of Dupuy and Berberian, two complete writer-artists who work together seamlessly on the same page, even on the same panel. In their book ‘Journal d’un Album’ and their exhibition ‘Bicéphale’, they have playfully presented their working methods and motivations, jointly and individually, creating comics about creating comics. Both an autobiography and a behind-the-scenes
‘Making Of’ exposé, ‘Journal d’un Album’ offers rare insights into their creative process and their struggles to persist and survive as creators of personal, meaningful ‘bande dessinées’ in a culture that still reduces the medium to a handful of popular ‘B.D.’ heroes sold in supermarkets. Elements of autobiography can also be found in their Alph-Art-winning Monsie ur Jean series, reflecting their own experiences and those of their friends. By examining their albums and the exhibition, my paper will consider their unique approach to crafting comics and the question many comics creators ask themselves when they face another blank page – why am I doing this?

On assiste depuis quelques années à l’émergence de formes autobiographiques en bande dessinée, domaine traditionnellement associé à l’imaginaire. Il s’agira ici de se demander si ce phénomène se réduit à l’appropriation d’un nouveau médium par l’autobiographie, ou si les spécificités de la bande dessinée ne rétroagissent pas sur cette dernière. Ses dualités constitutives – pensons au rapport linguistique/iconique – semblent se prêter au jeu du Je qui se narre, qui se déploie sur la planche. Sertie par la bande dessinée, l’autobiographie enchâsse deux systèmes de signes portant la double aspiration du récitdont, comme l’annonçait Philippe Lejeune, « l’exactitude concerne l’information, la fidélité la signification» (Le pacte autobiographique, 1975, p. 37).

Un cas patent d’intégration du médium et du genre est celui de Persepolis, écrit et dessiné par Marjane Satrapi. Elle prend le parti, d’une part, de contrer l’oubli par la relation de faits historiques, familiaux, personnels, et ce, par le biais d’une mise en mots simple et efficace et d’une recherche visuelle rhétorique. D’autre part, la mise en case glisse régulièrement dans un imaginaire qui relève de l’interprétation des faits, d’un regard qui ne s’efface plus, qui se rend présent, voire envahissant. Une tension s’instaure d’emblée entre un visuel qui veut tantôt servir le récit, signifier, tantôt la narration, informer.

Je propose donc une lecture des alternances entre les deux ambitions de ce témoignage qui génèrent des zones de flou poétique, des micro révolutions texto-visuelles. Enfin, nous réaliserons qu’à l’instar des multiples révolutions qui animent son pays, Satrapi tisse son récit de multiples boucles dont les jonctions sont assurées par l’itération de motifs féconds et par l’occupation tabulaire qui mise sur une stratégie du retour. Les manœuvres linguistiques et iconiques mises de l’avant par Satrapi élèvent cette bande dessinée d’un simple miroir à un réel symbole de ce moment charnière aussi bien de la vie de Marji, que de l’histoire de l’Iran.

Throughout a career that covers a variety of narrative forms, Chantal Montellier’s focus remains the same. Many of her albums bear the marks of personal suffering from social violence inflicted upon the poor, the weak and the mentally ill. This paper proposes to look at how Montellier strives to make this suffering understood by presenting violence from the victim’s point of view, in the victim’s language. Her unique mode of expression (self-quotation, iconic statement, colors, plate layout) is not readily accessible but rewards the informed reader with layers of meaning and subtle sensibility.

Much has been written about the way in which narrative sequences operate in BD, not least by Eisner, and McCloud. Such approaches, despite their subtleties, presuppose a model of narrative in which actions or events are foregrounded as ‘figures’ against a background setting, enabling the reader to create a hierarchy of elements in the visual and written fields of the BD. In this model, the reader is then in a position to track principle features of the action, while having the freedom to linger over elements of the background.

This paper considers the possibility that the figure/ground distinction, like that between narrative and description, while it is a useful normative principle which the reader can bring to his or her processing of the text, requires re-examination in light of certain BD texts. It explores how the reader tracks and identifies meaningful sequences, looking in particular at Trondheim and Duffour’s Gare Centrale (1994) and Schelle’s La Théorie du chaos (2001).

This paper explores the representation of illness and disease in the famous Herge adventure, Les 7 Boules de cristal and Le Temple du soleil. Unlike in Herge’s earlier work, say Tintin au Congo, here we find a more sophisticated but sometimes equally disturbing outlook on race and colonialism. In my paper I will argue that these central works from the Tintin cannon demonstrate a strange combination of fascination and repulsion with Imperialism. And, while the sinister tone of Les 7 Boules de cristal has been often interpreted as reflecting its author’s fears at the time of the Liberation of Belgium, I will show that the two books in fact rely on fardeeper European myths and fears of retro-colonialization that date from the late nineteenth century.]

In her book on relations between Persians and Greeks Miller writes of four ways in which cultures react to the activities of other cultures.The first phase is imitation, secondly adaptation, third comesderivation and finally there is appropriation This model of varyingdegrees of sensitivity to the stories told in other cultures givevaluable insights into the likely phases of development in a given society and can show how a culture establishes itself, then how itdefines itself, and later how it portrays itself to other cultures.

From the earliest origins of French literature the French have been interested in the influence ancient Rome had in shaping French cultural identity, but the nature of this influence has developed along withFrench society itself. In the Renaissance it was common for texts torely on stories from the Ancient World which had been modified to suittheir audience, for example the playwright Corneille wrote plays set in the Ancient World (or that of its myths) which were written according to the customs of life at court. By the 20th Century French authors were engaging with ancient texts in a proactive way, characterised byYourcenar’s Mémoires d’Hadrien which explored the life of the Emperor Hadrian while providing insights into the author’s desire to rejectaspects of modern society in favour of principles drawn from theAncient World. A consideration of this process of development is of particular relevance for analysing the Asterix books by Goscinny andUderzo.

My paper explores the process of appropriation in cultural-historicalterms, showing how issues of cultural imperialism (both in the ancientand modern world), perceived characteristics of peoples, and representation of gender in French society have framed Goscinny andUderzo’s responses to ancient subject-matter.

This paper traces the development of the French bande dessinée humorist Marcel Gotlib (b.1934). It discusses his strips Gai-Luron and Rubrique à brac, as well as some of his work with Fluide glacial. It also draws upon an interview Gotlib gave me in November 2001.

Gotlib makes fun of the entire business of growing up in a French-speaking country. Gai-Luron is playful and innocent, with humour arising from simple jokes about schooldays, French nursery rhymes, stories and comics easily recognised by children. In Rubrique-à-brac, an experience of the wider world is needed. Humour relies less on simple mimicry ; there are parodies of French history, films and literary classics, which younger readers would not necessarily recognise; beneath Gotlib’s indefatigable spoofing there lurks an awareness that youth is slipping away, a nostalgia for lost innocence, and a growing concern for national and international problems. Gotlib’s often scabrous social, historical and literary parodies in Fluide Glacial, which some may find offensive, are aimed squarely at the adult market.

Gotlib pokes fun at everything that shaped his educational background and his cultural identity : his jokes hinge on references to French history, plays, poems, novels, films, BDs and songs. Throughout Gotlib’s work, repeated references to French history and culture foster a strong sense of complicity between the humorist and his public. The result is akin to an in-joke : readers come to Gotlib’s strips knowing the culture and history which he describes. The influence of a specifically French-speaking historical and cultural heritage over Gotlib is particularly apparent when we compare him to contemporary American comic strip humorists, notably to Mad magazine and the Underground.

Animation and comic art have long been a source of inspiration for pop-music videos both in the Anglophone and Francophone tradition. This paper initially examines some recent examples of this tradition in the UK, France and the States suggesting possible motivations underlying the choice of comic art to illustrate recent videos by the likes of Shakira, Madonna or Mylène Farmer. Some comments are then made about the traditions of French music, French TV and the relationship between these two media. After this the paper turns its attention towards the more recent phenomenon of the international success of French electronic music (such as Daft Punk, Air, David Guetta). This paper looks at the BD as a source of inspiration for video clips or CD covers for these and similar artists. Comparisons are made between the status and the ambitions of the media of the video clip, the electronic music itself and BD/comic art. The recurring themes of French electronic music video clips are examined as well as the relationship between the music and the videos’ images. The paper concludes that the new found ‘coolness’/international critical acclaim of the French electro scene is very much both inspired and paralleled by the success of the new, alternatively published BD, which have been growing in strength and number since the 1990s.

Bonelliano in Italy; comic book in USA; album in France; tankobon in Japan… Comics are published all over the world in different formats, which peculiarly characterize each national production. Translating a comic, then, means to cope with cultural aspects: how can a French album, that is a giant-sized hardcover book in full colour, be translated and published in Italy, where readers are used to the pocket-sized, black-and-white bonelliani? What is the attitude of readers towards translated French comics?

Altering the size of pages, the colours, the disposition of panels in a comic story in order to adapt it to a different format, means to destroy all those equilibriums which its original author set in order to achieve particular effects. Therefore, in translating a comic the modification of formats is incompatible with the respect for the original work. This seems to confirm Antoine Berman’s theories about “l’épreuve de l’étranger”: a translated comic cannot hide its foreign origin. Italian readers, then, perceive all the “alterity” of foreign comics published in Italy, which can be easily recognized by their different formats.

David B.’s L’Ascension du Haut Mal, however, is in some respect an “anomalous” bande dessinée: a superb autobiographical work, where the story of the author interweaves with the History of France, it is published by L’Association in black-and-white softcover volumes, while nearly all French comic production is in full-colour hardcover books. Must this “difference”, which is evident for the French reader, be reproduced even in foreign editions of this work? This contribution analyses the Italian edition of David B.’s bande dessinée, spotlighting its characteristics and weak points.

This discussion focuses attention on a brief period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s in France when sexually themed subject matter first began to be featured in bande dessinée periodicals. The paper explains how a fundamental evolution in the cultural and political identity of the medium’s core readership of ‘lycéens’ and students created enthusiasm for a transgressive genre of bande dessinée, characterised primarily by explicit sexual content.

The paper also interrogates the meaning of sexual liberation in France over the same period. It examines a tradition of misogynistic representation in the French radical press and looks at the extent to which pornographic topoi in bande dessinée of the early 1970s can be interpreted as a ‘political’ response to the increasing visibility of the French feminist movement.