Dwelling with traumatic memory through embodied drawing in the structure of graphic novels

Autobiographical graphic novels dealing with personal trauma have gained widespread popularity and critical recognition over the past ten years. The depiction of traumatic memory in graphic narrative has been characterized by writers such as Harriet Earle in terms of recurrence and non-integration. In this paper I will examine the difficulties of representing memories that occupy a space between forgetting and re-experience, and how these difficulties have led graphic novelists to foreground the materiality of the comics form and rethink elements of its formal structure. I will consider the representation of traumatic memory in two graphic novels, Lighter than my Shadow by Katie Green (2013), and Becoming Unbecoming by Una (2015), which tell stories of recovery from trauma related to eating disorders and sexual abuse. I will examine such representations through a discussion of the materials and processes used in the production of these works and argue that these works utilize a convergence of haptic visuality and embodied drawing to appeal to the reader’s embodied experience of memory through indexicality. Through a discussion of braided visual relationships, grounded in theory developed by Thierry Groensteen, I will argue that haptic forms of mark-making, which include soaking, scribbling, and folding, generate recurring networks of haptically charged engagement, allowing the reader to dwell with the trauma of the protagonist in spaces outside of the temporal logic of the main narrative. The central argument of this paper is that such networks are structurally embedded in the narrative of these works and constitute an overlooked modality through which unintegrated and unspeakable elements of traumatic experience can be expressed.