Comics and Agency
Written by Vanessa Ossa,Jan-Noël Thon,Lukas R. A. Wilde
312 pages, about 6 hours of reading
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Themes, characters and key ideas in Comics and Agency, written by Chaptra AI.
- about 12 hours
- advanced
- analytical
- scholarly
- critical
''Comics and Agency'' is an interdisciplinary academic volume that delves into the multifaceted concept of agency within the realm of comics and related popular multimodal forms like manga and graphic novels. It aims to foster dialogue among scholars by exploring how agency manifests as medial, mediated, and mediating forces. The book brings together diverse contributions to analyze the intricate relationships between individual, collective, and institutional actors across historical and contemporary comics cultures. It examines agency from the perspectives of production (authorship, institutionalization), reception (appropriation, resistance to hegemonic readings), and circulation (participation, canonization), ultimately linking these aspects to transmedialization and the formation of the public sphere.
“This volume aims to intensify the interdisciplinary dialogue on comics and related popular multimodal forms… by focusing on the concept of medial, mediated, and mediating agency.”
Key themes
- Medial, Mediated, and Mediating Agency
- This is the core theoretical construct of the volume, exploring how agency operates at different levels: inherent in the medium itself (medial), conveyed or influenced by the medium's structure and content (mediated), and actively performed by various actors in the comics ecosystem (mediating). It's a comprehensive framework for understanding power and influence in comics.
- Authorship and Institutionalization
- This theme deconstructs the traditional notion of a singular author in comics, re-framing it as a distributed attribution of agency among writers, artists, colorists, letterers, and editors. It also examines the role of publishing houses and conglomerates as institutional actors that exert significant agency over creation, distribution, and canonization.
- Reception and Appropriation
- This theme explores the active role of the reader, challenging the idea of passive consumption. It focuses on how recipients exercise agency by resisting dominant interpretations (hegemonic readings) and actively reinterpreting or appropriating multimodal texts, leading to new meanings and discursivations.
Worth discussing
How does 'agency' as defined in the volume challenge or expand traditional understandings of authorship in comics?
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