"Phoenix fire, lightning bolts, and mnemonic prodigies : a mutational archive of trauma" / Justin Kalinay.
This paper will apply trauma theory, specifically the creation and interpretation of an archive of trauma, to Marvel Entertainments X-men comics. My goal for this paper is to situate comics as an important medium for identity relation and construction, and the habituation of personal and cultural tr...
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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Boston, Massachusetts :
Simmons College,
2016.
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| Summary: | This paper will apply trauma theory, specifically the creation and interpretation of an archive of trauma, to Marvel Entertainments X-men comics. My goal for this paper is to situate comics as an important medium for identity relation and construction, and the habituation of personal and cultural trauma relating to minority status(es). I believe that X-men comics in particular offer a rich site for the examination of how representatives of 2queer affect,3 those who challenge 2the norm3 through their difference, their partial intelligibility, can create power and community in their abjectness. Concurrently, I will point out how when viewed as an archive X-men comics can create a timeline, a genealogy, of (mis)understanding adversity and oppression and the myriad ways in which affective behavior and the recognition of trauma can be applied to its resistance. The medium of comics is particularly important due to its unique visual/verbal narrative. 2Closing the gutter3 (McCloud) between comic book panels, while simultaneously processing both images and text draws the reader into the comic, allowing a deeper resonance with plot and characters as well as an active interpretation of the process, meaning, and impact of events (critical consciousness). Specific iterations of oppression are filtered through the lens of being mutant, making mutant status the master category of oppression. The X-men, Marvels primary mutant group/family/community, actively fight against such adversity by uniting various minority identities in the name of mutant intelligibility. I call for the need of more blatantly intersectional characters with fully realized and connecting identities of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and class; but I also posit that this mutational archive of trauma offers semiotic resistance to hegemonic norms by creating alternate futurities and communities in which these norms are challenged and inverted through the fantastic setting(s) of the superhero genre. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 PDF (73 pages) : color illustrations |
| Bibliography: | Bibliography: pages 56-58. |