In line with the work of Philippe Lejeune, a collective work studies the practice of “ gender » autobiographical in comics. This reflection offers a dive into the complexity and particularities of the ninth art.
The Autobio-graphismes collective, which appears in the beautiful collection “ The Equinox » by Georg Éditeur, demonstrates that, if “ I am another ”, it is because a game – as we speak of “ game » between two mechanical parts – exists between the one who thinks and the other who discusses it. It is by following the thread of the articles, ordered into two unequal parts, that we can appreciate the terminological uncertainty that crowns major conferences. We seem to hear the same murmur: what autobiography are we talking about? in comics ? From Fabrice Neaud to Jean-Christophe Menu, including authors as diverse as Harvey Pekar, Keiji Nakazawa, Marjane Satrapi and Art Spiegelman – to take only a handful of authors –, Autobio-graphics announces the color of a worried and fractured thought.
Open a map
Discussing autobiography in comics requires paying homage to “ autobiographical pact » proposed forty years ago by Philippe Lejeune (The Autobiographical PactParis, Seuil, coll. “ Poetic », 1975) to whom the work is dedicated. Beyond its definition, which delimits autobiography to an identity shared between the author, the narrator and the character, Alary, Corrado and Mitaine interfere from the introduction in a complementary proposition of Lejeune, strictly visual, which note :
“ Combining writing, drawing and painting to tell your life story: there is an immense field of possibility (which we could callauto-biography) » (p. 13).
Therefore, they propose to take head-on the graphic part of comics as a means of renewing autobiography. By announcing that the following articles are a “ cartography » (p. 21), they open the voice to perspectives as diverse as the analysis “ aesthetic, narrative, social, historical and editorial » (p. 20).
By recalling that criticism recognizes the birth of the autobiography drawn in 1972 – at the same time as Lejeune’s work was taking shape – the authors underline an essential aspect of the history of the medium: its uninterrupted quest for legitimacy. The rise of “ I » in comics is pronounced at the same time as the recognition of the author (p. 16).
In the first part, entitled “ Reflections on the autobiographical genre », the authors open up original avenues. L. Gerbier returns to a debate that began in 2007, about the rise of “ gender » autobiographical and its standardization ; in other words, its economic and aesthetic absorption. This “ sociobiography » (or even the “ local autobio “) is recontextualized by L. Gerbier in a historiographical perspective. From the first pages, he addresses the problems of naming, publishing and reception of these works.
B. Berthou’s text on the editorial phenomenon provides an excellent counterpoint. If, “ by representing himself with his characters, the designer claims a form of authorship ” (according to Groensteen’s formula, p. 49), we can cast doubt on self-representation by demonstrating that many comic book characters go from “ hand in hand » (p. 72) ; in other words, they are not always there brand of their authors. By proposing the idea of a “ non-identity » as a complement to the tripartite identity put forward by Lejeune, and by evoking the drawn autobiographies which are concerned with their modes of publication, B. Berthou recognizes this “ specificity of the medium » (p. 21) invoked in the introduction.
Range of terminology
The second part of the work, entitled “ Contours of an expanding genre », draws a range of terminology through case studies. By multiplying the entries and works, the authors demonstrate that comics resist a restrictive definition of autobiography. What is at stake is the irremissible proximity between the representation of oneself through drawing and its textual narrative.
From then on, Harry Morgan proposed the term “ autography » for certain comics underground of the 1960s, which established the freedom of line and form as the essence of the author’s representation (p. 127). Alfredo Guzmán Tinajero, in a fascinating article on Harvey Pekar, puts forward the term “ autocomic » to define stories where the character is, at the same time, the author (p. 155). THE “ me graphic ” of which he speaks is not far from the “ autofictional writing » put forward by Philippe Marion in his analysis of David B.
By focusing attention on the graphic practices of the author and his theoretical and artistic outcomes, Philippe Marion allows us to engage in a mixed analysis between the autobiographical question inasmuch as literary concept and graphic part inasmuch as identity component of comics. In the chapter which closes the work, Jacques Samson offers a final entry: that of the “ ecobiography “, that’s to say “ non-egocentric self-expression », a graphic representation of the elements and things that make up the portrait of a character (p. 272).
The gesture of the designer
This terminological dance, while it demonstrates the richness of the work, nonetheless denounces its limits. We will first of all regret the absence of a general conclusion, which would have made it possible to put the numerous proposals into perspective and which would undoubtedly have better outlined the contours of a collective reflection, while pruning debates already known as the classic opposition between memory and testimony, memoir and autobiography, etc.
Finally, if the work attempts to balance between autobiography and its graphic form, the question of drawing remains too peripheral in most of the articles. Indeed, one of the challenges of autobiography in comics does not stop at “ me graphic “, At “ me diffracted » (Groensteen), nor to the “ archeology of the line » (Laxtague). It is also at the level of the designer’s gesture. However, the question of knowing what this implies draw oneself is not truly posed.
It would perhaps have removed the overly significant patronage of Lejeune and that of the Rimbaldian formula. Another clue was possible in the interstice of a quote from Imre Kertész: “ “I”: a fiction of which we can at most be co-authors “. What if autobiography in comics posed itself at the level of a disruption of authorship, in a subjective and graphic doubling ? The author pledges both his person and the gesture which gives birth to him as a character. A “ I » co-author is he not a « I » which is said and a “ I » which is taking shape ?