Signs of Disintegration: Subversive Visual Expressions of Processes of Social Transformation and Ideological Clashes in a Czech Graphic Novel Series about Political History
By: Martin Foret
| ARTICLE INFO: Volume: 07 Issue: 02:2021 ISSN: 2459-2943 DOI: 10.18680/hss.2021.0020 Pages: 123-149 Lic.: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
KEYWORDS: Code of comics Semiotic resources Non-representational ideas Czech graphic novels Political history |
ABSTRACT
The article deals with comics’ (re)presentation of conceptual – political and ideological – content and how the semiotic potentials of non-representational ideas associated with social upheaval and political crises are expressed. After considering comics’ potential to express abstract (non-depictive) concepts, we examine three Czech graphic novels, which concern crucial moments in Czech political history: the Austrian-Hungarian Empire’s collapse and the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918; the disintegration of Czechoslovakia after the Nazi occupation in 1938; and the reformists’ defeat by the invading Warsaw pact armies in the Prague Spring of 1968. In each case, we investigate the semiotic resources chosen by the individual artists to present these events. Finally, we describe how the selected historiographical graphic novels reflect the ideology of a transforming nation and express a sense of non-self-evidentness for the nation as an independent state.
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