The graphic narrative and affront/ier aesthetics : Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers

Pramod K. Nayar

doi:10.5817/BSE2023-2-6

The graphic narrative and affront/ier aesthetics : Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers

Vol.49,No.2(2023)

Pramod K. Nayar

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2023-2-6

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.79907

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Abstract

This essay argues that Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers explores the making of an aesthetics of the affront/ier. Affront/ier aesthetics in Spiegelman has three components, each addressing one aspect of the events of 9/11 and subsequent events: the mediated morphing of tragedy into travesty, the trauma aesthetic that frames the artistic self and finally the shifts between the monumentality and kitsch. The first section of the paper demonstrates how Spiegelman represents what he terms the travesty of a tragedy in the form of, first, the media-driven travesty of national symbols and icons and, secondly, the pareidoliac and parodic conflation of the Towers with human faces. The second section addresses Spiegelman's trauma-aesthetic where the artistic self is under pressure and whose paranoiac body is embedded within the jingoistic fervour of the moment. In the final section, I turn to Spiegelman's sublime where the monumental and mundane seem to intersect. With each of these modes, the paper demonstrates, an affront is made visible and a frontier breached.

Keywords:
Spiegelman; In the Shadow of No Towers; trauma; affront/ier; monumentality; tragedy; sublimity

Pages:
123–143

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