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The graphic narrative and affront/ier aesthetics : Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers

Brno Studies in English , 2023

Brno Studies in English Volume 49, No.

2, 2023 ISSN 0524-6881 | e-ISSN 1805-0867 more Brno Studies in English
Volume 49, No. 2, 2023
ISSN 0524-6881 | e-ISSN 1805-0867
This essay argues that Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers explores the making of an aesthetics of the affront/ier.

Affront/ier aesthetics in Spiegelman has three components, each addressing one aspect of the events of 9/11 and subsequent events: the mediated morphing of tragedy into travesty, the trauma aesthetic that frames the artistic self and finally the shifts be- tween the monumentality and kitsch.

The first section of the paper demonstrates how Spiegel- man represents what he terms the travesty of a tragedy in the form of, first, the media-driven travesty of national symbols and icons and, secondly, the pareidoliac and parodic conflation of the Towers with