(Un)drawing Belgium's colonial monuments: Comics' engagement with decolonial debates. (December 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bragard, Véronique; Lambert, Alicia
• Other Names: Olick Jeffrey K. guest-editor.; Teichler Hanna guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Memory studies. Volume 14:Number 6(2021)
• Page Start: 1185
• Page End: 1207
• Publication Date: 2021-12
• Subjects: decolonization -- graphic novels -- memory -- monument -- postcolonialism -- statues; Memory -- Periodicals; Memory -- Periodicals; 153.1205
• DOI: 10.1177/17506980211054292
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1750-6980

Abstract

As a response to the debates around colonial statues and glorifying forms of memorialization, comics provide one with plurivocal possibilities to decolonize monuments and epistemologies. This article analyzes a number of recent comics/panels (Charles & Bihel, Stassen, Kannemeyer, Baruti, Lambé, a.o.) that de-center perspectives so as to visibilize the violence of the Belgian colonial system that public monuments invisibilize. This analysis focuses on the medium-specific features that depetrify (in)famous statues, draw back to iconic figures like the Leopard-Man, and redraw iconic sites with multilayered temporalities and geographies to enable viewers to move away from one-sided perspectives and consider present forms of discriminations as legacies of colonialism.