Global South Comics and the Question of Method

One of the challenges of working in Global South comics is the question of method. Beyond debates about what exactly constitutes the Global South (not a minor question) by scholars such as Alfred J. Lopez and Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo Full reference in Zotero Library, how to enact Global South methods of reading and analysing comics remains largely unresolved. In my project at EXC 2020 ‘Circulatory Considerations: Global South Comics and Afropolitanism’ and in the conference that I organised together with cluster member Jasmin Wrobel, ‘Lateral Solidarities: Visualizing Global South Comics’, my interlocutors and I considered what it means to establish a concrete yet flexible method of Global South comic reading and analysis.  

In the rest of this response, then, I will articulate some of the tenets of that method and gesture to unresolved considerations that require further work. The first, and perhaps, the most obvious element of Global South comic analysis is lateral comparison. Because one of the central notions of the Global South paradigm is to foster South-South relationships, or “lateral solidarities” as we called them in our conference, comparisons that circumvent, bracket, or simply ignore the Global North are crucial Full reference in Zotero Library. For example, one might analyse Thai comics and their contexts of production to Egyptian ones without using the Euro-American comic sphere for reference. Such a manoeuvre does not deny the existence and influence of Euro-American comics but seeks to decentre them in conversations about Global South comics.

The difficulty of this part of the method is that few scholars possess the relevant area expertise to enact fruitful South-South comparisons. While there are many experts on individual areas of Global South comics, scholars on Middle Eastern comics, for example, are rarely also experts on other areas of the Global South, such as South American or Chinese comics. In other words, the traditional disciplines in which academics are trained often inhibit them from being able to compare different Global South comic traditions meaningfully. Within literary studies, comparative literature fosters such reading, though usually on North-North axes or North-South ones, but comic studies as a fairly marginalised field largely lacks formal disciplinary mechanisms to train scholars in South-South comic reading. There are some scholars who attempt this manoeuvre, such as Andrea Aramburú Villavisencio and Janek Scholz (and I count myself among them), who are mainly autodidacts; but until our disciplinary boundaries shift, this kind of direct comparison, while ideal and ideologically straightforward, will remain rare. For my part, I can orientate my work to offer such lateral strategies and join with other scholars to create larger institutional and ultimately disciplinary structures geared towards these goals.  

Another constitutive element of Global South comic scholarship centres on the notion of how we read and analyse comics from the Global South rather than on reading across regions or comparison.  The fundamental question is “How do we read texts within singular traditions in a Global South manner?” Beyond obviously choosing texts from the Global South to analyse, how do we enact a Global South method without comparison? There are many ways to imagine such a method and I will offer a few starting points. One way is to recognise that what links much of the Global South is an asymmetrical experience of colonialism in previous centuries and its offspring globalisation today. The bonds with postcolonialism are clear but instead of doggedly dismantling the West’s misrepresentations of the world (an important task), Global South methods generally seek to build meaning more than to redress or disabuse. In other words, more than defining the Global South by what it refuses, such as colonialism, globalisation, patriarchy, etc., the promise of the Global South is generative—to create new meaning. Focussing newness opens space for future comparison when analysing one comic tradition and attends to cultural specificity often lacking in traditional approaches to non-western comics.

The future application and development of such a method is still in process and malleable, having many unrealised elements, such as the two mentioned above. Another is simply to what degree we must utilise theoretic frameworks from outside the Global North—and even what that means. For example, I draw on the theories of Tina Campt Full reference in Zotero Library and Kara Walker Full reference in Zotero Library to think about blackness and the black gaze to analyse African comics. As African-Americans who consider blackness, both women are part of the Global South, but their work is also deeply entrenched and produced in North American academia and the Euro-American high-end art scene (as is my own). Ultimately, building Global South methods and theories is not simply a matter of pretending that the North does not exist, but of creating space for the South and the insights that can be gained when the North is no longer a centre or conduit for our thinking. Comics have a particular challenge in bracketing the North due to the fixation on the bande dessinée, American superhero comics and Western underground comics in comics studies, but when decentred each can become simply one of many elements for comic analysis alongside Global South peers.