When Representations Are Not Enough: Gendered And Sexual Violence, Pain, And Trauma In Graphic Narratives

Using the intersecting threads of visual theory, the connections of gender and nation, theory surrounding trauma and pain, the connection between witnessing and representing, and the politics of textual circulation, this project works to answer the following questions: what does it mean to try and interact with the pain of another? How can we represent or recognize the pain of others? Can we intimately and ethically engage with the experiences of those who have routinely been pushed into spaces of silence and “otherness?” With these questions in mind, this project uses Safe Area Goražde by Joe Sacco (2000), Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000-2003), and Grass by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (2019) as literary case studies to interrogate the politics of representations, especially the politics of representing gendered and sexual violence. Ultimately, even as the texts are the focus, what also comes to light are essential ideas about silence in testimony, ethical readership, and the effects of circulation on texts in the global market.