“Melancholia and Memorial Work: Representing the Congolese Past in Comics”
(2015) Postcolonial Comics: Text, Event, Identities — ISBN: [978-0-415-73813-2], p. 92-110, published
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- Abstract
- This article examines the postcolonial memory discourse that is at work in a number of early 21st century European comics featuring the Congo – be it denunciation of atrocities, silences, disillusions, guilt, nostalgia- unveiling the thorny relations between Belgium and its former colony. The first part analyzes how guilt and the humanitarian ideal emerge at the core of a number of comics that revolve around a Heart of Darkness paradigm thereby engaging with the colonial era associated with Leopold’s ghosts and the atrocious exploitation of Congo natural resources. The second part of this paper confronts yet another period: the experience of Belgians in the Congo between 1945-1960, an experience filled with nostalgia, yet not deprived of guilt. The third part of this paper explores how Congolese intermedial and intercultural approaches to this memory work reveal new hybrid and subversive forms of remembrance.
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Bragard, V. (2015). “Melancholia and Memorial Work: Representing the Congolese Past in Comics”. In Binita Mehta & Pia Mukherji (Ed.) (ed.), Postcolonial Comics: Text, Event, Identities (p. p. 92-110). Routledge. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/190632