L’archive (re)dessinée : documents et souvenirs dans les bandes dessinées d’Alison Bechdel

Abstract

Within her autobiographical work, Bechdel uses many written documents, from family letters to dictionary extracts. These documents are all copied out, meaning they are integrated to the panel as images and not simply inserted or reproduced. Furthermore, Bechdel works almost exclusively from visual archives, whether they are photographs of her parents or pictures she takes herself to work on a visual detail. Therefore, I want to analyze this double relation to the archive, underlining the particularity of comics on this matter, especially the hybridity of its language, between text and image. The language of comics could have allowed for a simple reproduction of the archive, but Bechdel chooses to rewrite it, and reveal in this way a clear desire of construction her story, and the way she tells it, in relation with herself.

Keywords

• comics
• autobiography
• photography
• typography