Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

Nostalgia for the defeated: images of pre‐Columbian America in French‐Belgian comics

Résumé

At the intersection of the three notions, proposed by this academic meeting, memory, affect and space, our communication considers the mechanisms and resources used by the French-Belgian comics (bande dessinée - BD) to narrate from graphic literature and the rewriting of history the memory of the pre-Columbian "civilizations" (Aztec, Maya and Inca). We explore, in particular, the topics of Haunted Spaces in literary, cinematographic, artistic or visual representations, of Affection and Memory: the predicament of representation and of Historical Perspectives on affect, space and memory in literature and visual arts. From the illustrations of Alain de Saint-Ogan in the 1920s, through Hergé and The adventures of Tintin, to more recent productions such as those of Duchazeau (2007) or Ayroles and Guarnido (2019), the representations of pre-Columbian civilizations in the French-Belgian comics have mobilized thoughts on the American territory, the memory of the native populations and some affects for a splendid past. This is a case study of an artistic, visual and literary work that brings together aesthetically the relations between these notions, not only in theory but also in practice. This communication is proposed from the field of Cultural Studies, therefore from a transdiciplinary approach that seeks to generate connections between diverse authors and systems of thought, through the analysis of representations, dispositions and discursive complexes. Thus, literary and visual studies, cultural and connected history, cultural anthropology and the sociology of art support our position. The graphic representations have made of the pre-Columbian American space a place of memory; however, because of the acculturation experienced by American ancient societies, their memory has been dissipated. So, the very fact of naming such societies under the Western terms of "civilization" or "empire" - and of drawing them under these codes - would respond to a strategy of domination that seeks to enlarge the defeated enemy in order to enhance the virtues of the conqueror. Hence the title proposed for this communication. The reconstruction by the French-Belgian comics of the pre-Columbian spaces and the affects aroused by the indigenous populations has been based on various sources (archaeological objects, testimonies or experiences); that is, on agents of memory, and creators of some "exonostalgie". The genealogy of these representations could extend over five centuries of history, to be finally chronicled in the bande dessinée. This has generated a circulation of knowledge and a reproduction of imaginaries, which has predisposed the authors - with their affections, ideologies and dispositions - to draw and write the memory of a collective tragedy, which has left its mark on a process of conquest, domination and resistance, and on a postcolonial situation of cultural hybridization. This circulation and reproduction has also left in the reader of these comics an image of what would have been pre-Columbian America; that is, a memorial implantation resulting from the reading reception. However, far from the myth and mystery that such societies have provoked in authors and in their Western heroes, other more recent bandes dessinées bet on a change of perspective and give a place in the graphic narratives to the relations between emotional memory and resistance. In this sense, we are also interested in memory as an invention, as a dimension where imagination, as a social factor, lends itself to thinking about an identity in the future, to deconstruct pre-existing representations and to generate imaginaries.

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Dates et versions

hal-04886889 , version 1 (14-01-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04886889 , version 1

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Flavio Paredes Cruz. Nostalgia for the defeated: images of pre‐Columbian America in French‐Belgian comics. Space, Affect, Memory: Performances and Representations, Hermes Consortium for Literary & Cultural Studies; Research Group – Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, PhD Programme in Literary and Cultural Studies. University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Jun 2021, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. ⟨hal-04886889⟩
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