Riad Sattouf

The graphic memoir by the Franco-Syrian artist Riad Sattouf, "The Arab of the Future," raises difficult questions about the future of the Middle East and Europe at a time of heightened conflict between nation states and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. A morose treatment of a multicultural childhood in Libya, Syria, and France, The Arab of the Future is the first of a projected four-volume series, which has just been translated into English as well as fourteen other languages. By portraying the dark moments of his upbringing, Sattouf has started new conversations about Arab identity in France as well as across the Arab region.

This article takes Deleuze and Guattari's ideas on art's inventive function as a point of departure to analyse two graphic narratives that undermine ideas about truthfulness: Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Riad Sattouf's The Arab of the Future. It is argued that these allegedly autobiographical memoirs undermine genre conventions to create an implied readership who co-witnesses Satrapi's and Sattouf's experiences of oppression, racism, and war during their respective childhoods. It is shown how Satrapi and Sattouf undermine the autobiographical pact through graphic narrative's 'figures of thought', a term introduced to capture the formal, thematic, and narrative possibilities of comics and graphic literature to make readers come into contact with unforeseen visions-and to possibly think anew. Specific attention is paid to the narrative voice, which in Satrapi's and Sattouf's works often goes beyond the personal perspective to account for collective experiences, as well as to the use of colour and line work that add critical layers to the stories told. In line with Deleuze and Guattari's arguments, the poetic, which is the productive function of art, is shown to go beyond questions of truthfulness and falseness, allowing for new ways of thinking and for the creation of new worlds.

Through the analysis of the graphic novel L'Arabe du future 1. Une jeunesse au Moyen-Orient (1978-1985) by the Franco-Syrian cartoonist Riad Sattouf, this contribution aims to investigate the construction of hegemonic masculinity in Gaddafi's post-colonial Libya and Hafez al Assad's Syria. First, this study intends to track the stages of Riad's journey towards the achievement of hegemonic masculinity. In this context, a special focus will be laid on the construction of the mother's character through that of the father, thereby showing how the female character takes shape from the male perspective. Second and finally, it attempts to analyse how the author implements a deconstruction path of hegemonic masculinity by using certain rhetorical devices, namely irony, stereotype repetition and the adoption of his own perspective as a child.

Maksa, Gyula (2020) Önéletrajzolás, rajzolt riportregény, „expat”-képregény. In Maksa Gy. - Vincze F. : Képregénykultúrák, műfajok, gyakorlatok. Képregénytudomány (4). Szépirodalmi Figyelő Alapítvány, Budapest, pp. 155-178. ISBN 9786158132558