The Weeping Woman in the Graphic Memoir: A Derridean Inquiry into the Traces/Trait(s) of “Self”
The Weeping Woman in the Graphic Memoir: A Derridean Inquiry into the Traces/Trait(s) of “Self”

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I examine how women graphic memoirists – Marjane Satrapi, Alison Bechdel, and Roz Chast in particular – attempt to draw that which remains fleeting, absent, and abyssal: the so-called “self.” I thus extend Jacques Derrida’s critique of what he has called the “metaphysics of presence” in philosophy to autobiographical comics, a popular medium that is heavily prefigured by his analysis of the self-portrait as a ruin. I believe this endeavor will help fill the gap in studies about the gendered aspects of Derrida’s work Memoirs of the Blind, as well as the potential of autobiographical comics to illuminate philosophical issues concerning the self. Finally, through my analysis of women’s graphic narratives, I hope to point to the possibility of a larger project, that of a feminist Derridean critique of sequential art.

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