Postcolonial Comics : Texts, Events, Identities

This volume examines new comic book cultures, graphic writing, and bande dessinée texts as they relate to postcolonialism in contemporary Anglophone and Francophone settings. Chapters are framed within a larger enquiry that considers definitive aspects of the postcolonial condition in 21st century (con)texts. Authors demonstrate that the field of comic book production and circulation in various regional histories introduce new postcolonial vocabularies. These scripts employ visual grammars, image-texts, and iconic performances that reconstitute conventional "image-functions" in established social texts and political systems, re-envisioning narratives of resistance, rights, and freedoms.

This collection examines new comic-book cultures, graphic writing, and bande dessinée texts as they relate to postcolonialism in contemporary Anglophone and Francophone settings. The individual chapters are framed within a larger enquiry that considers definitive aspects of the postcolonial condition in twenty-first-century (con)texts.

The authors demonstrate that the fields of comic-book production and circulation in various regional histories introduce new postcolonial vocabularies, reconstitute conventional "image-functions" in established social texts and political systems, and present competing narratives of resistance and rights. In this sense, postcolonial comic cultures are of particular significance in the context of a newly global and politically recomposed landscape.

This volume introduces a timely intervention within current comic-book-area studies that remain firmly situated within the "U.S.-European and Japanese manga paradigms" and their reading publics. It will be of great interest to a wide variety of disciplines including postcolonial studies, comics-area studies, cultural studies, and gender studies.