Spatio-topia, Space and Sensation in Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza
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Abstract
The present paper explores the potency of the spatio-topical system of Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza in (re)tracing the historical events that happened and still happen in the war zone of Gaza without being reductive to the importance of the testimonial culture that is based on listening to and engaging with the different recounts of the Gazan survivors from the 1956 Khan Younis and Rafah killings and the present horrible moments of destruction, dispersion and oppression. For this purpose, this paper embraces Thierry Groensteen’s concept of ‘spatio-topia’ that denotes the systematic distribution of the space on the graphic page in order to give the graphic aesthetic, the driving force of reading. Therefore, graphic spatio-topia configures the conceptual form of the story world that allows the reader to participate spatially and sensationally in Sacco’s journalistic investigations through its different tools like the panel and its frame with their spatio-topical parameters of the form, the seize and its site. The systematic operativity of the graphic spatio-topical elements of Footnotes in Gaza promotes a flexible and a meaningful flow of the graphic narrative and transports the reader to the graphic space where he develops a spatialized history and a dense web of sensations like belief and pain.
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