ArabLit’s ongoing series on Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation continues with a discussion with Michal Raizen, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Ohio Wesleyan University and also a classically trained cellist. Here, Raizen discusses her genre-crossing course “Graphic and Experimental Novels of the Contemporary Middle East”:
When did you start to develop the idea of a graphic (and experimental) novel (and non-novel) course? Around which books, images, ideas? What discussions did you particularly want to get at?
Michal Raizen: I would like to start with the question of graffiti because I can trace my interest in graphic literature directly to my experience at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in Cairo. During my 2011-2012 fellowship, I watched as the iconic graffiti in and around Tahrir Square came to life: the Mohammed Mahmoud Wall of Martyrs, the Sheikh Rehan Street optical illusion, the hydra-headed Mubarak-Tantawi-Morsi monster (Omar Fathy’s “The one who delegates doesn’t die”), the chess board with the deposed king (Al-Taneen’s “The King is Down,” pictured). My first and forever impressions of Cairo are in fact tied to the visual poetics that I saw emerging during that turbulent and artistically effervescent time. My CASA experience was also shaped by my literature courses, most notably Palestinian Literature with Nadia Harb and The Arabic Novel with Sihem Badawi. I remember reading Radwa Ashour’s The Woman from Tantoura and being captivated by the scene in which Ashour’s protagonist, Ruqqaya, meets Naji Al-Ali in the refugee camp. In a later extended passage, Ruqqaya’s daughter beautifully details her affinity for Handala. She attributes Handala’s familiarity to his recurring visual presence, and even more importantly, she sees herself in Handala. I understood that I was dealing with a type of intertextuality that I had not considered before, and I was definitely drawing connections between my readings for class and the visual poetics that were taking shape in the street. I started to ask myself the following questions: How might iconic images circulate between the page and other public contexts such as graffiti, calligraffiti, and the iconography of protest and resistance? What is the role of leitmotifs and repetition at the intersection of text and image? What about the idea that someone might see herself in Handala (to give a classic example) or in the montage of Wonder Woman, the brutalized protester in the blue bra, and the slogan “The revolution continues” (to give an example from a famous Cairo street stencil)? How might these intersemiotic moments be understood on multiple levels and by multiple interpretive communities? How might the ephemerality of street art find a more stable form of expression when it circulates back into the pages of graphic literature?
There are certainly different levels of ephemerality with visual narratives, from of the single or multi-panel cartoons posted on social media (Andeel, Islam Gawish, Mazen Kerbaj, many others) and work in graphic-novel magazines (TokTok, Lab619, Samandal, Garage, Skefkef vs. the solidity of a book with an ISBN and an official presence (Magdy al-Shafie’s Metro, Lena Merhej’s Jam and Yoghurt). With different sorts of experimentation and boundary-pushing possible in more ephemeral texts.
To what extent do you think it’s important for someone to grasp the visual context of a book like Tantoureya? Certainly, a reader could access the narrative without ever seeing Handala with his back turned to the viewer—how does it change the reading to bring in this visual signpost?
Also about context: Would it make sense to bring in the visual culture of internet memes? For what sort(s) of text? I remember the first time I brought comix into the classroom, my students often had a richer vocabulary to describe the interplay between the visual and the narrative aspects, and what was innovative (or not innovative) about the visuals, and their intertexts (or intervisuals?).
MR: I absolutely bring in the visual culture of internet memes because I think that students these days are generally well-versed in this realm of expression, and it helps them to access more challenging concepts. My favorite example comes into play when we explore the concept of signifiers. I bring in Scott McCloud’s chapter, “The Vocabulary of Comics,” in which he presents the example of René Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images” also known as “This is Not a Pipe.” We then look at a riff on Magritte’s pipe featuring Trump’s head and the caption, “This is Not a President.” The internet meme really gives students a solid understanding of the significatory processes through which a term such as “president” or “leader” accrues meaning. We then consider the creative potential of graphic narratives and the difficulty of dislodging weighty signifiers. Students carry this lesson with them all semester when looking at Marwan Shahin’s Guy Fawkes mask/Anonymous/pharaoh Cairo street stencil, Marjane Satrapi’s depiction of the Shah in Persepolis, representations of Pan-Arab leaders in Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future, the “Parable of the King” in Magdy al-Shafee’s Metro, and the list goes on.
Once you bring in visual context, how do you situate that context?
I see you’re starting with Scott McCloud (which I haven’t read but have heard a great deal about) and Khallina. How do you use the Khallina module? Are some of the students Arabic language learners? How much of an understanding of at least the basics of Arabic letters & visual culture around the Arabic language is important for a graphic-novel course? Is there a value to having students “read” comix in languages that they don’t read? What is the balance between exploration and frustration?
Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics is a treasure, so accessible and at the same time, a profound philosophical meditation on genre and technique. I use Understanding Comics as a reader and pair each chapter with a literary selection. For example, I pair McCloud’s chapter “A Word About Color” with our first color selection of the semester, Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future. McCloud introduces students to the concept of “primary world” or the idea that the color itself can take on iconic properties when dealing with the world of superheroes. This primary world situates us in the realm of the mythological, in contrast to a psychologically-oriented color palette characterized by shades and tones (yellow ochre, midnight blue). With these concepts in mind, students are able to understand the subversive potential of Sattouf’s use of “primary world.” The Pan-Arab “superheroes” of The Arab of the Future are rendered in washed-out primary colors perhaps pointing to the breakdown of their mythological status. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is significant for its use of what I have termed a “psychological” color palette. The film and graphic novel adaptation use the repetition of color as a narrative cue. For example, the repeated sequence of flares in the night sky and the ultimate entry into the Shatila refugee camp in the aftermath of the massacre are rendered in a yellow ochre and signify a psychic and moral distress. Interestingly, the use of “primary world” is reserved in Waltz with Bashir for the depiction of Ariel Sharon and signals complicity rather than superhero status. McCloud’s theorization of color gives students the analytical tools to reflect on the narrative techniques used by our respective authors, artists, and filmmakers. I also draw heavily on McCloud’s discussion of gutters (the space between comics panels) as a means of creating closure. In terms of narrative and composition, the idea of closure is very significant when dealing with a text like Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi which features a mix of traditional panels and gutters and images that bleed off the page (a significant example being the map of Palestine or the chess board that doubles as both a keffiyeh and a theater of war). Once we get to experimental novels like Ahmed Naji’s Using Life and Hilal Chouman’s Limbo Beirut, gutters are entirely absent.
Are genre borders different among Arab comix vs. among Western, the way Western genre classifications sometimes make no sense when applied to Arabic literature?
MR: Yes and no because comics/comix are a global phenomenon, but each literary tradition has its own antecedents. Scott McCloud gives a very useful comparative breakdown in his chapter on gutters. Western comics tend to feature more action-to-action and scene-to-scene transitions between panels whereas comics from Japan, to give one example from Asia, feature predominantly aspect-to aspect transitions. Each literary tradition has its own sense of time, space, and place. Generally-speaking, aspect-to-aspect transitions create a more holistic visual space and a more expansive sense of time. I wonder too, if we need to consider the colonial encounter when we speak of Arab comics and to question the designation “Arab” given the wealth of Arab comics composed in French. In Arab Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging Mass Culture, Douglas and Douglas expand on these considerations. Arab comic strips of the 1950s and 60s drew inspiration from French and Belgian comics, but they also featured distinctly local elements and anti-colonial messages. If we take Scott McCloud’s definition of comics as “juxtaposed sequential visual art,” comics go all the way back to Pharaonic tableaux! McCloud actually discusses Pharaonic art and how it differs from contemporary comics because of its temporal and spatial layout. My interest in graffiti certainly has something to do with the question of genre. Some of the famous murals from the Mohammed Mahmoud wall, such as Alaa Awad’s funerary ladder, feature Pharaonic motifs. I do think that this art encapsulates some of the aspect-to-aspect orientation that was lost in comic strips that emulated European models. And perhaps I see these elements making their way back into the graphic novel with the manipulation of panels or lack thereof. When Arab comix start getting spelled with an “x,” we are seeing a global manifestation of youth counterculture and iconoclasm.
Sometimes comix feel to me like a shaabi form, like colloquial poetry—more local than “literary” poetry or novels. And yet certainly they can and do travel quite well into other linguistic contexts.
I assume broadening to a wider cultural sphere is roadblocked somewhat by the limited number of translations? I don’t think any Amazigh comix or graphic-novel works have been translated, nor most (any) of the regular anthologies (Lab619, TokTok, Skefkef, etc.). Or if any Libyan work has been translated, I don’t know of it.
MR: Yes, this is admittedly a challenge in terms of broadening the content of the course. One way to mitigate this issue is to Skype in working artists/authors from less represented countries and languages. I Skyped in Algerian political cartoonist Amine Dahman, and we had a very rich discussion about the Algerian context. Dahman did a beautiful presentation on the history of political cartooning in Algeria. Students were able to identify some points of comparison in terms of the visual lexicon at his disposal and to relate this information back to our course content. Of course, a Skype conversation does not replace the reading of a graphic novel or anthology, but it is a great way to fill in some missing pieces. I would be interested myself in learning more about Amazigh comix!!
Yes, learning Amazigh is definitely one of my next big projects, and the reward will be buying myself so many comix.
How does grounding students in a visual language enrich their understanding of the world of the book? Has putting together a graphic-novel course changed how you think about using comix or graphic-novel works in and around other courses? Some of Lena Merhej’s non-verbal stories—I have no idea how to classify them (nor why I am insisting upon classification).
MR: I am still struggling with the title of this course and specifically with the “Contours of the Middle East” idea. Most students come to this course with little or no background knowledge of the region, and that leaves me with the enormous task of filling in historical and political context for a vast and varied body of literature. At the moment, most of my texts come from Egypt, Palestine, and Lebanon. At this juncture, I could either embrace that concentration and dig deeper into the Levantine circulation of text and image, or I could expand the selection toward a broader regional framework. Muqtatafat is a valuable resource and excellent introductory sampling of both variations in illustrative style and some of the major themes that recur throughout the semester. Lena Merhej’s “Manal and Alaa: A Love Story” introduces students to the potential of “cartoony” illustration to deliver a poignant political message, often under the radar of state censorship. Nidal Al-Khairy’s “Liberty Gone Wild” features a rich concentration of visual iconography, and students can easily relate the montage to their immediate political context. Mahdi Fleifel and Basel Nasr’s “Filsteezy” does a brilliant job setting up the relationship between identity, language, and diasporic communities. I feel that each example from Muqtatafat provides a snapshot and allows students to piece together the parameters of the kind of textuality that we are examining in the class. Muqtatafat provides a launch pad for considering caricature, iconography, intertextuality, line and movement, temporality, synesthesia, and other building blocks of our critical vocabulary. Lena Merhej’s introduction to the anthology does an excellent job of contextualizing Arab comics vis-à-vis global developments in comics and graphic literature. In his preface, co-editor A. David Lewis playfully refers to Muqtatafat as a “scattershot regional portfolio” that serves as both “appetizer and feast.” I absolutely love this metaphor because I do use Muqtatafat to get students started, to whet the appetite so to speak. At the same time, the building blocks that they take away resonate throughout the semester as students are faced with larger tasks.
Near the end come Using Life & Limbo Beirut. Do the students read all of Limbo in order to see how each of the artists “translated” their section? Why Limbo? (I’m sure you’ve seen Hilal say he saw the visual predecessor more as the Naguib Mahfouz novels with pictures in them vs. graphic novels.) How do the discussions shift around Using Life and Limbo? What is Walid Taher’s Bit of Air in English-language terms?
I love the genre marker “graphic poetry collection,” even though whenever I append “graphic” to something I’m worried about the reader who’ll think I mean NSFW. I have also called Apartment at Bab El Louk (Donia Maher, Ganzeer, Ahmed Nady) a “noir poem.”
Ellipses can also, perhaps, mean a dribble of pee . . .
What do you get by ending on Using Life and Limbo Beirut, the latter of which is largely textual?
MR: Students do read all of Limbo Beirut, and this brings them full-circle round to Muqtatafat. At least two of the artists featured in Muqtatafat make a return in Limbo Beirut. Again, the juxtaposition between visuals with sparse text and text with sparse visuals is very illuminating. In fact, the Muqtatafat excerpt by Barrack Rima has no English translation, so students are left reading only the visuals and the single translated introductory phrase: “The events of this story took place in a dream I had while having a nap one day (and a dream expresses one’s interior through a symbolic language).” In Limbo Beirut, Rima’s distinctive illustrations are connected to a vivid storyline. Another fascinating interplay between text and visual intertext is the mention of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince in the first section of Limbo Beirut. The character of Walid is about to graffiti a wall when he encounters a militiaman, and in the same narrative thread, he mentions The Little Prince literally flying off a bookshelf, commanding his attention. I bring in the image of the Little Prince sitting on a wall as he is about to get bitten by the snake, and we circle our discussion back to walls as canvases, the writing on the wall, walls as physical and conceptual barriers. As you can see, by the end of this course, the concept of textuality is very fluid. It gets back to my interest in how we read. I love the idea of The Apartment in Bab El Louk as a noir poem. I think that there is so much more to say about genre and the type of literature emerging from the confluence of word and image. In his introduction to Using Life, translator Ben Koerber gives a fantastic account of these emerging voices in Arabic graphic literature. Despite the idiosyncratic and experimental nature of Using Life, students seem to embrace the label “novel,” perhaps owing to the popularity of dystopian fiction. We talk about Using Life as a piece of ecocriticism, and students find a great deal of meaning in #FreeNaji.
Works Cited
Abdelrazaq, Leila. Baddawi. Charlottesville: Just World Books, 2015.
Ashour, Radwa. The Woman from Tantoura: A Palestinian Novel. Trans. Kay Heikkinen. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014.
Beran, Paul, A. David Lewis, and Anna Mudd, Eds. Muqtatafat: A Comics Anthology Featuring Artists from the Middle East Region. Cambridge. Ninth Art Press, 2015.
Chouman, Hilal. Limbo Beirut. Trans. Anna Ziajka Stanton. Austin: Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, 2016.
Douglas, Allen and Fedwa Malti-Douglas Arab Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging Mass Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Folman, Ari and David Polonsky. Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.
Naguib, Saphinaz-Amal. “Engaged Ephemeral Art: Street Art and the Egyptian Arab Spring.” Transcultural Studies 2016 (2): 53-88.
Naji, Ahmed. Using Life: A Novel. Trans. Benjamin Koerber. Austin: Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, 2017.
Sattouf, Riad. The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015.
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2004.
Al-Shafee, Magdy. Metro: A Story of Cairo. Trans. Chip Rossetti. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012.
Taher, Walid. A Bit of Air. Trans. Anita Husen. Austin: Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, 2012.