Sounding the Occupation: Joe Sacco’s Palestine and the Uses of Graphic Narrative for (Post)Colonial Critique

Abstract

Working at the intersection of postcolonial literary studies and comics narratology, this paper argues that Joe Sacco’s graphic narrative Palestine contributes a spatial and sonic record of territorial occupation to the Palestinian national narrative. Sacco utilizes the comics form to represent the complex of physical borders and spatial narratives he encounters in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at the end of the first Intifada . Further, he renders graphically the epiphenomenal sonic regime resulting from spatial management. Rather than an absence or gap in the Palestinian narrative, Sacco understands spatialized sound as a presence or marker of materiality. Ultimately, Palestine suggests the rich potential of the comics form for postcolonial literary studies. Sacco’s graphic narrative reinvigorates the field’s engagement with literary representations of Israel-Palestine by demonstrating the continued utility of the (post)colonial paradigm and by challenging the fields’ scholars to forge new interdisciplinary links to comics studies.

Occupying new sound worlds

“…In this regard, Chute has argued that graphic narratives 'require a rethinking of the dominant tropes of unspeakability, invisibility and inaudibility ' (2008: 93). This approach is also taken up by Brister (2014) in her discussion of audibility as it pertains to Sacco's interpretation of the sounds of occupation represented in comics relating to the Intifada in Palestine. Just as Palestine has been the subject of oppressive physical occupation that has led to 'discursive erasure and silencing in order to gain access to and control territory' (Wolfe 2006: 388), so 'Sacco's mapping of Israeli-Palestinian spaces and recording of the sonic regime of the territories are attempts to disrupt the logic of elimination and to construct an anti-colonial narrative that records occupation' (Brister 2014: 113).…”

Sonic Histories of Occupation

“…In this regard, Chute has argued that graphic narratives 'require a rethinking of the dominant tropes of unspeakability, invisibility and inaudibility ' (2008: 93). This approach is also taken up by Brister (2014) in her discussion of audibility as it pertains to Sacco's interpretation of the sounds of occupation represented in comics relating to the Intifada in Palestine. Just as Palestine has been the subject of oppressive physical occupation that has led to 'discursive erasure and silencing in order to gain access to and control territory' (Wolfe 2006: 388), so 'Sacco's mapping of Israeli-Palestinian spaces and recording of the sonic regime of the territories are attempts to disrupt the logic of elimination and to construct an anti-colonial narrative that records occupation' (Brister 2014: 113).…”