The horror of the Holocaust lies not only in its brutality but in its scale and logistics; it depended upon the machinery and logic of a rational, industrialised, and empirically organised modern society. The central thesis of this book is that Art Spiegelman’s comics all identify deeply-rooted madness in post-Enlightenment society. Spiegelman maintains, in other words, that the Holocaust was not an aberration, but an inevitable consequence of modernisation. In service of this argument, Smith offers a reading of Spiegelman’s comics, with a particular focus on his three main collections: Breakdowns (1977 and 2008), Maus (1980 and 1991), and In the Shadow of No Towers (2004). He draws upon a taxonomy of terms from comic book scholarship, attempts to theorize madness (including literary portrayals of trauma), and critical works on Holocaust literature.
| ISBN: | 9781138956766 |
| Publication date: | 10th December 2015 |
| Author: | Philip (Loughborough University, UK) Smith |
| Publisher: | Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis Ltd |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 160 pages |
| Series: | Routledge Advances in Comics Studies |
| Genres: |
Media studies American / British style comic books and graphic novels The Holocaust Comic book and cartoon artwork The Holocaust Second World War Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 |