Novela gráfica y posmemoria

• Published in: Cahiers d'études romanes (Aix-en-Provence) Vol. 41; pp. 119 - 158
• Main Author: Dunia Gras
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Université d'Aix-Marseille 01-12-2020
• Subjects: Dirty War; Graphic Novel; Peru; Postmemory; Rupay; Shining Path
• ISSN: 0180-684X; 2271-1465
• DOI: 10.4000/etudesromanes.10938

This paper focuses on a Peruvian graphic novel, Rupay: Historias de la violencia política en el Perú (1980–1984), by Luis Rossell, Alfredo Villar, and Jesús Cossío, published in Lima in 2008. The paper analyzes the discourse of the novel and how it reflects on the so-called post-memory. First, we briefly discuss the problem of classifying the graphic novel itself as narrative genre, given that the visual turn is essential. In this sense, some fundamental antecedents are mentioned, such as Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco, from the perspective of post-memory and non-fiction, respectively. Both cases propose themselves as truthful images of the real facts and as denounce documents. Second, the chapter deals with the discourse analysis of Rupay, as a polyphonic archive, gathering multiple testimonies and dialoguing with other texts –and illustrations– to the extent of incorporating pictures to create a “real effect” in the reader. Doing so, it contributes to preventing the forclusion of the traumatic political past. Words and images create a hybrid corpus that shows the violation of the body of the Peruvian nation, understood as one and only, from an authoritarian and monolithic vision, during the terrible period of the internal armed conflict and the Dirty War in Peru.