With our focus on an “ethno‐graphic novel” on the Sri Lankan civil war and the forcible displacement and migration of Tamil survivors, we make two main propositions while reflecting on the “graphic narrative turn” that has emerged in anthropology in recent years. First, we inscribe drawing into the “writing of cultures” where words have held a superior status in ethnographic representations. Rather than seeing drawings as perceptive tools for recording scenes in fieldwork alone, we extend them to a representational practice where they can have a deep, intricate, and equivalent entanglement with words to create synchronous affective intensities among a larger audience. Our second proposal follows Jean Rouch on cinéma vérité to interrogate assumptions about truth and fiction as portrayed by film representations. We propose a theory and practice for graphic novel production that we have termed vérités graphiques (literally, graphic realities). This describes the collaborative and interactive engagement with people's contributions and views, and their distillation and fictionalization through the ethno‐graphic form. We diverge from cinéma vérité, however, by highlighting a truth‐fiction spectrum that further challenges the presumed objectivity of what is seen, experienced, co‐created, and revealed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.