Fictive Images and the Feminist Democratic Imagination
Open Access
- Author:
- Chatterjee, Sushmita
- Graduate Program:
- Political Science
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 26, 2008
- Committee Members:
- Prof Nancy Love, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Professor Nancy Love, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Joan Landes, Committee Member
Susan Merrill Squier, Committee Member
John Philip Christman, Committee Member
Professor Mrinalini Sinha, Committee Member
Professor P J Brendese, Committee Member - Keywords:
- visual politics
cartoon
transnational feminism
democratic imagination
art spiegelman
9/11 - Abstract:
- My dissertation titled “Fictive Images and the Feminist Democratic Imagination,” examines post-9/11 identity politics through Art Spiegelman’s craft of cartooning. Using Spiegelman’s work on 9/11, In The Shadow Of No Towers (2004), I study both his style of image making (cartoons) and his images (cartoon figures of animals and ghosts) to reflect on new possibilities for feminist democratic theory and politics. I use the term “fictive images” to describe the cartoon images that work beyond categorical oppositions of the fictional and non-fictional. Fictive images constitute a mode of visualization which in its blurring of the identity categories of the human and real, deftly illuminates the construction of these categories themselves. Wedded to deconstructive ways of knowing, fictive images are a mode of visualizing (im)possibilities that have been rendered unintelligible by dominant ways of perceiving the world. By focusing on 9/11 my dissertation situates these reflections as a response to working through the trauma of the event. It is the ethic of possibility that fuels my project, an attempt to unwrap the emancipatory potentials of feminist democratic politics in speaking to the needs of our times. What kind of feminist politics can speak to 9/11 without being trapped in its vicious circle of violence? How do we move beyond simply mirroring the present conditions where we are unwittingly legitimating the very divisions we seek to contest? Fictive images dare to dream beyond codings, and provide a prism to visualize democratic politics after 9/11. In my dissertation I explore how the apparently simple form of cartooning illuminates complex reality with breathtaking dexterity. Through their deceptive simplicity, cartoons demonstrate the freedom to play with ideas, to reveal contradictions which necessitate thinking beyond prescriptions. By playing with normal pictures, Spiegelman’s cartoons undo a singular mode of seeing or doing. Animal cartoon images are used by Spiegelman to problematize identity constructions and emphasize stereotypes. They provide a means to work through issues of accurate representation by playing on the category of “human” itself. While Aristotle and other political theorists use the “animal” to affirm man’s political identity, Spiegelman uses animals as a means of “undoing identity.” These animals exhibit the active tension in a politics that creates boundaries (of form, territory, and ideology). The animals haunt our notion of human differences. The cartooned ghost images work alongside the animal images. Spiegelman’s ghost image in In The Shadow Of No Towers is a picture of the North Tower glowing with fire. The “haunting” is a means for Spiegelman to work through the trauma of the past and the present. This directs our attention to a “politics” throbbing with “life” in its very engagement with its “ghosts.” I propose specter-cular democracy as counter politics to the present. Premised on a deconstructive and utopian ethos, specter-cular democracy would be in constant conversation with otherness and alterity. Blurring boundaries and boundedness, specter-cular democracy is transformative and regenerative in inspiring mobile becomings fueled by the democratic energy of incessant yearnings. I theorize on future-oriented feminist democratic politics through the prism of specter-cular democracy. This mode of doing politics would provide an antidote to the politics of binaries which encapsulate the “other.” It would showcase the tenuousness of our social constructions, their investments. Irreverent of the “real,” a future oriented feminist democratic politics would be border-crossing, borders of conventions, identities, nations, and bodies. I argue for a democratic image (ination) vibrantly alive and ebullient, conscious of its processual quality, and tuned to a constant process of becoming. My project theorizes about transformative politics through visual images. I emphasize that image (de)building can astutely showcase our world building, an indispensable analytical motivation. Living at all times with/in images, I argue that by playing with images, re-imagining them, we can re-envision democratic prospects and possibilities.