Abstract
Tahmassian convincingly argues that graphic narratives are a formidable ground for the recuperation of historical memory in Spain. Focusing on Miguel Francisco’s Espacios en blanco, Tahmassian explores the tension between melancholy’s destructive and creative potentials. She explains that graphic narratives productively render the problem of transmission of memory legible, as a hybrid practice between writing about the past and conveying why there are parts of the past that resist inscription, as well as the circumstances under which they erupt into the present. As such, the intertwining of history, memory, trauma, and self-fashioning in Espacios en blanco leads to a fruitful encounter with the past.
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Notes
- 1.
I am referring to the proliferation of cultural production in the form of cinema, literature, art, and other material objects, but also legislation, court cases, and literal exhumations that have dealt with recuperating the memory of the losing side of the Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship under Francisco Franco.
- 2.
I will refer to Miguel as the narrator and Francisco as the author, though the autobiographical pact as well as the meta-textual dimension of the graphic novel allows for necessary slippage between the two.
- 3.
An occult deity embodying various binaries such as male/female, human/animal, and good/evil, which also bears the dualistic inscription of “solve”/“coagula.” The symbol has been associated with Satanism, resistance to all forms of social oppression, and is prevalent in gaming and popular culture.
- 4.
Salvador Puig Antich was a Catalan anarchist and political prisoner charged summarily for the alleged murder of a state security officer. His internationally publicized and highly unpopular execution in 1974 was one of the last two carried out by the Franco regime.
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Tahmassian, L. (2020). Espacios en blanco: Historical Memory, Defeat, and the Comics Imaginary. In: McKinney, C., Richter, D.F. (eds) Spanish Graphic Narratives. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56820-7_2
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