Narrating the Colony: The Imaginary of the Colony as Seen in Corto Maltese

- Presentation speakers
  - Raimundo Clemente Lima Neto, Institute of Arts, University of Brasilía, Brazil
Abstract:

Since the late 19th century, and becoming a form of mass media during the 20th century, comic books have engaged the imaginary with a hybrid form of narrative that, for many years, has been described as a language for the uneducated, but, nonetheless, ‘has contributed in a decisive manner to shaping of the modern imagination’ (GROENSTEEN, 2009, vii). The fact is that this new language gave words and pictures for many artists to illustrate their dreams, narrate the world around them and their subjectivity. On the other hand, as a technical product designed to be distributed, it opened the possibility to propagate ideological messages wrapped in seductive imagery that could contribute to a specific kind of colonization taking place on the imaginary grounds of whole nations. Taking over the concept of human communication elaborated by the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Villém Flusser, we can see the role of the human being as the benjaminian narrator, not just as a worker in the machine, opening the possibility for an artistic approach that is urgent to the creation of comics. With that said, we intend to evaluate how the Venice born Hugo Pratt weaves the imaginary of the countries depicted on the Corto Maltese books, applying the notion of Apollonian/Dionysian narrative of Michel Mafesolli. For the proposed paper, we will analyze the Brazilian aspects described in the book Under the Capricorn Sign and the role of this imaginary on the myth concept of Gilbert Durant. A imaginary constructed by an European citizen that made a home in many countries that have been a colony in the past. For this endeavor, we will consider comic books as the spatial-topical system elaborated by Thierry Groensteen since it acknowledges the image (frame) as the starting point of the creation of any comic book narrative.