Videos by Michelle Bumatay
This presentation for the Winthrop-King Institute conference entitled, "Postcolonial Realms of Me... more This presentation for the Winthrop-King Institute conference entitled, "Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in the Modern Francosphere," explores how the comics series "Petite histoire des colonies françaises," by Jarry Grégory and Otto T., challenges existing historiography in France through satire along the lines of Hara-Kiri and Charlie Hebdo. In this five-volume series, the authors posit French colonial history as the history of modern France. 122 views
Papers by Michelle Bumatay
Research in African Literatures, 2019
Francosphères (Print), Jun 1, 2021
Drawing on previous research about the ubiquity of the Banania logo, this article considers the r... more Drawing on previous research about the ubiquity of the Banania logo, this article considers the recent trend of commemorating the tirailleurs sénégalais via bandes dessinées through a chronological comparison of bandes dessinées produced in France and Senegal since 2003 about the tirailleurs sénégalais and World War I. As an important part of popular visual culture in France and Belgium, bandes dessinées have long been vehicles for teaching and disseminating mainstream values and dominant ideology, thus the choice of medium for recounting the tirailleurs’ history works against colonial-era caricatures. Though each of the bandes dessinées attempts to engender empathy in the reader while educating them about the tirailleurs, critical engagement with their legacy varies as a function of who produced the text. State-sponsored accounts avoid critiques of colonialism and its attendant violence in favour of honouring the tirailleurs’ courage and loyalty, which bolsters the continuity of republican values. Conversely, texts produced as a result of personal connections to the tirailleurs foreground their participation in colonial violence and demonstrate the psychological complexity of their experiences.
Routledge eBooks, Feb 17, 2021
Contemporary French civilization, Jul 1, 2017
Alternative Francophone, Jan 26, 2015
European Comic Art, Dec 1, 2012
This article explores the strategies Gabonese cartoonist Pahé deploys to disrupt media-driven ima... more This article explores the strategies Gabonese cartoonist Pahé deploys to disrupt media-driven images of Africa in both his autobiographical series La vie de Pahé ['The Life of Pahé'] and the fictional series Dipoula, co-created with French cartoonist Sti. It focuses on the role of humor as a way to mock Western hegemony while exposing how sustained colonial logic informs Western representations of Africa. Using humor that thrives on misrecognition, Pahé thwarts readers' expectations and facilitates new possibilities for thinking through the relationship between Europe and Africa, while also drawing attention to the attendant relationship between Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées and other Francophone comics.
Peace Review, Jul 1, 2012
In 2000, Belgian artist Jean-Philippe Stassen published Déogratias, a Frenchlanguage bande dessin... more In 2000, Belgian artist Jean-Philippe Stassen published Déogratias, a Frenchlanguage bande dessinée or graphic novel, about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. This award-winning bande dessinée centers on the eponymous main character, a teenage boy, before, during, and after the genocide. In a similar vein, he later published Pawa: Chroniques des monts de la lune (Pawa: The Mountains of the Moon Chronicles) in 2002 and Les enfants (The Children) in 2004. In 2010, after two trips to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to conduct research, “L’Étoile d’Arnold” (“Arnold’s Star”), Stassen’s bande dessinée about an ex–child soldier was published in the French journal XXI. In what follows, we focus specifically on Déogratias and “L’Étoile d’Arnold” to analyze how Stassen uses bandes dessinées to actively engage readers—mainly Western, French-speaking readers—on a personal level with the fates of young people in central Africa today. In analyzing these works, we will take into account Stassen’s representations of violence in three different capacities: linguistic violence, symbolic violence, and graphic violence. We argue that Stassen’s innovative and experimental approach to bandes dessinées not only aligns readers with his characters, but also challenges the violence of the international media that reduces issues in Africa to sensationalized stories. Thinking critically about the way we represent violence is an especially pertinent topic considering the recent attention given to the Kony 2012 campaign. With a mini-documentary viewed by millions of people in a small window of time, we can begin to see how different ways of showing violence can have profoundly different effects on an audience, particularly when addressing the subject of child soldiers. For his part, Stassen rejects simplistic and reductionist explanations, opting instead for the continued construction of meaning that, like its subject matter, is multifaceted, fraught with tension, and requires critical thinking.
Research in African Literatures, 2019
Former French President Charles de Gaulle's famous claim that Belgian bande dessinée characte... more Former French President Charles de Gaulle's famous claim that Belgian bande dessinée character Tintin was his only international rival speaks to the ubiquity of bandes dessinées in the francophone world while underlining their participation in imperial cultural hegemony. Similarly, in Peau noire, Masques blancs, Frantz Fanon also highlights the popularity of European bandes dessinées in the francophone world and observes the negative psychological impact of such texts on non-European readers who identify with Western explorer characters rather than with the racialized stereotypical images of non-European characters. One major factor for this is that the emergence and development of French and Belgian bandes dessinées took place during the height of European colonialism; bandes dessinées subsequently drew from and participated in a visual culture--such as travel postcards, brochures and keepsakes from colonial expositions, and in particular advertisements for exotic goods such as...
Alternative Francophone, 2015
En 2006, le bedeiste belge Jean-Philippe Stassen publia de nouvelles editions de deux livres de l... more En 2006, le bedeiste belge Jean-Philippe Stassen publia de nouvelles editions de deux livres de l’ere du colonialisme europeen—Cœur des tenebres de Joseph Conrad et Nous avons tue le Chien Tiegneux de Luis Bernardo Honwana—pour lesquels il fournit des illustrations et, dans le cas de Cœur des tenebres, d’autres materiaux qui contextualisent le roman. Faisant partie d’une tendance plus large dans laquelle les artistes illustrent la litterature classique, ces deux nouvelles publications invitent les lecteurs a retourner aux originaux pour explorer la notion de silence et la facon dont elle fonctionne differemment chez les deux auteurs differents. Cet article considere les pratiques variees du paratexte de Stassen afin d’examiner comment, grâce aux interjections a travers le temps et l’espace, Stassen interrompt, augmente, conteste et accompagne les textes originaux. Pour Cœur des tenebres, le cadrage devient une strategie polyvalente qui montre les ecarts et les defauts dans l’ecritur...
Francosphères, 2021
Drawing on previous research about the ubiquity of the Banania logo, this article considers the r... more Drawing on previous research about the ubiquity of the Banania logo, this article considers the recent trend of commemorating the tirailleurs sénégalais via bandes dessinées through a chronological comparison of bandes dessinées produced in France and Senegal since 2003 about the tirailleurs sénégalais and World War I. As an important part of popular visual culture in France and Belgium, bandes dessinées have long been vehicles for teaching and disseminating mainstream values and dominant ideology, thus the choice of medium for recounting the tirailleurs’ history works against colonial-era caricatures. Though each of the bandes dessinées attempts to engender empathy in the reader while educating them about the tirailleurs, critical engagement with their legacy varies as a function of who produced the text. State-sponsored accounts avoid critiques of colonialism and its attendant violence in favour of honouring the tirailleurs’ courage and loyalty, which bolsters the continuity of re...
Author(s): Bumatay, Michelle | Advisor(s): Thomas, Dominic | Abstract: Former French President Ch... more Author(s): Bumatay, Michelle | Advisor(s): Thomas, Dominic | Abstract: Former French President Charles de Gaulle's famous claim that Belgian bande dessinee character Tintin was his only international rival speaks to the ubiquity of bandes dessinees in the francophone world while underlining their participation in imperial cultural hegemony. Similarly, in Peau noire, Masques blancs, Frantz Fanon also highlights the popularity of European bandes dessinees in the francophone world and observes the negative psychological impact of such texts on non-European readers who identify with Western explorer characters rather than with the racialized stereotypical images of non-European characters. One major factor for this is that the emergence and development of French and Belgian bandes dessinees took place during the height of European colonialism; bandes dessinees subsequently drew from and participated in a visual culture--such as travel postcards, brochures and keepsakes from colonial...
La collaboration a distance : Entretien avec Alain Mabanckou Michelle Bumatay University of Calif... more La collaboration a distance : Entretien avec Alain Mabanckou Michelle Bumatay University of California, Los Angeles Introduction J’ai l’honneur de travailler sous la direction d’Alain Mabanckou depuis qu’il occupe son poste de Professeur en Etudes francaises et francophones et en Litterature comparee a l’Universite de Californie, Los Angeles (UCLA). En enseignant les textes des ecrivains noirs de l’Afrique, de la Diaspora et des Etats-Unis, Mabanckou transmet a ses etudiants sa passion pour les ecrits de ses propres mentors, tels qu’Aime Cesaire et Leopold Sedar Senghor. Alain Mabanckou entretient un double rapport au dialogue dans sa pratique litteraire, aussi, a travers l’intertextualite qui relie ses ecrits a ceux des generations precedentes, ainsi que ses amities avec de nombreux auteurs contemporains. Le 16 mars 2007, Le Monde publie « Pour une ‘litterature-monde’ en francais » signe par Alain Mabanckou et par quarante-trois autres ecrivains celebres. Le « Manifeste des 44 » a ...
ALTERNATIVE FRANCOPHONE
En 2006, le bédéiste belge Jean-Philippe Stassen publia de nouvelles éditions de deux livres de l... more En 2006, le bédéiste belge Jean-Philippe Stassen publia de nouvelles éditions de deux livres de l’ère du colonialisme européen—Cœur des ténèbres de Joseph Conrad et Nous avons tué le Chien Tiegneux de Luìs Bernardo Honwana—pour lesquels il fournit des illustrations et, dans le cas de Cœur des ténèbres, d’autres matériaux qui contextualisent le roman. Faisant partie d’une tendance plus large dans laquelle les artistes illustrent la littérature classique, ces deux nouvelles publications invitent les lecteurs à retourner aux originaux pour explorer la notion de silence et la facon dont elle fonctionne différemment chez les deux auteurs différents. Cet article considère les pratiques variées du paratexte de Stassen afin d’examiner comment, grâce aux interjections à travers le temps et l’espace, Stassen interrompt, augmente, conteste et accompagne les textes originaux. Pour Cœur des ténèbres, le cadrage devient une stratégie polyvalente qui montre les écarts et les défauts dans l’écritur...
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Videos by Michelle Bumatay
Papers by Michelle Bumatay
Drawing (in) the Feminine celebrates and examines the richness of contemporary women’s production in French and Francophone comics art and considers the history of representations made by both dominant and marginalized creators. Bridging historical and contemporary comics output, these essays illuminate the interfaces among genre, gender, and cultural history. Contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, and across a variety of methodologies and disciplinary orientations, challenge prevailing claims about the absence of women creators, characters, and readers in bande dessinée, arguing that women have always been part of its history. While still far from achieving parity with their male counterparts, female creators are occupying an increasingly significant portion of the French-language comics publishing industry, and creators of all genders are putting forth stories that reflect on the diversity and richness of women’s and gender-nonconforming people’s experiences. In the essays collected here, contributors push back against the ways in which the marginalization of women within bande dessinée history has overshadowed their significant contributions, extending avenues for further exploring the true diversity of a flourishing contemporary production.
Contributors: Armelle Blin-Rolland, Véronique Bragard, Michelle Bumatay, Benoît Crucifix, Isabelle Delorme, Jacques Dürrenmatt, Margaret C. Flinn, Alexandra Gueydan-Turek, Jennifer Howell, Jessica Kohn, Sylvain Lesage, Catriona MacLeod, Mark McKinney