Damaging Goods? Francophone Children's Books in a Postcolonial World

That he [Tshibumba] aligns me with Tin tin is not a gentle jibe." -FABIAN, Remembering the Present, 1996 Colonial imagery could be sadistic. Sadism can produce laughter. Not only the European viewer finds such mocking funny. The colonized, especially the middle figure enmeshed in mimetic predicaments (and confronted by the "corporeal quandary ... faced by the [colonial] subject when obliged to identify with an image which provides neither idealization nor pleasure"), 1 laughs at minstrelsy-inspired caricatures, too. The abjectness of these blackface rubrics basic to imperial popular culture produces unease in us, their contemporary viewers. 2 It is through such encumbrances that we can begin to fathom the ambivalent semiotics of colonial comics and their parodic disruptions. 3

Politics, 2013

Tintin is a cultural icon whose popularity has led to critical assessments accusing the comic of perpetuating orientalist and racist images. This article presents a different reading of Tintin by asking a more fundamental question: what understanding of the political is manifested in Tintin's Adventures? I argue that Tintin creates a political sphere that fosters an image of peace which does not eradicate conflicts, but facilitates them. Bildung, spatio-temporal conditionality of knowledge, spheres of elasticity, and power ensure that they do not turn into violence. All these are characteristics of the comic and create a powerful visualisation of the human condition of politics.

2018

Comics are a medium primarily meant for entertainment. However, there are some comics that have become controversial for their content. One such album is Herge’s Tintin in the Congo which has attracted criticisms for being racist and proimperialist, so much so that it has been banned from the children’s sections in bookstores in Britain and in the USA it is yet to be published. There are reasons for this discontent among the post-colonial readers, for the book abounds in imagery and language demeaning to the Africans and their culture. At the same time we should keep in mind that each artistic output is a product of its time and reflects contemporary mindset. Written in 1930-31 in the heydays of European colonialism, Tintin in the Congo is similarly influenced by the popular opinions of the time and deserves to be treated in its socio-political and historical context as well.

Strong Bonds: Child-animal Relationships in Comics, 2020

My chapter, "The Maternal Arf!: Raising Canines in the Roaring Twenties in Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie," looks at the shifts in childhood/girlhood in the 1920s through Annie's relationship with Sandy. While Annie gains agency to critique adult standards and sensibilities, Sandy domesticates Annie to a degree so that she can fit within those standards. Editor Maaheen Ahmed has made this anthology open source, and the entire collection is uploaded here. Enjoy!

Implicit Religion, 2016

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Literature Compass

"Labor travels, Art Forms" offers a fresh approach to the ways that migrating laborers (forced and voluntary) and their labor movements have shaped world politics and culture through their art. Issue features essays on laborers in all hemispheres and across centuries.

Rainbow : Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Culture Studies

Describing a race through the verbal and visual description of physical appearance is often used to create binary opposition between ‘Us’ and ‘Other’, so it does in The Adventures of Tintin comic books by Hergé. In The Adventures of Tintin TV series adaptation (1991-2) by Stéphane Bernasconi, ‘Other’s verbal and visual physical depictions that are portrayed in the comic books undergo transformations that occur on non-White characters. These transformations－changes, additions, and omissions－ can be clearly seen in the Tintin TV series entitled The Blue Lotus, Cigars of the Pharaoh, and The Broken Ear that are adapted from the comic books of the same titles. The theory of adaptation by Linda Hutcheon and Orientalism by Edward Said are used to reveal and explain the adapter’s strategies to make the skin colours, costume, and deformity moderation and negotiation in order that the TV series can be accepted by the audience around the world today.

International Journal of Francophone Studies, 2012