Hello Readers!

This week in our ASTU class, we further delved into Satrapi’s Persepolis through the exploration of Chute’s scholarly article, The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. As a collective, we focused on her contention that “the complex visualizations that many graphic narrative works undertake require a rethinking of the dominant tropes of unspeakability, invisibility, and inaudibility that have tended to characterize recent trauma theory…” (Chute, 93). In this memoir, Satrapi utilizes a monochromatic style in the hopes of illustrating the traumatic events she faced during the Revolution and Iran-Iraq war. Our past discussions on her medium has also driven me to ponder about the extent to which her testimony, or first-hand experience, is favoured as a contribution to cultural memory.

Thoughts on this investigation is consistent amongst my classmates’ blogs as they too, question the personal narrative Satrapi expresses. Evident in Kendall’s reflection is the question of authority. Did Satrapi have any right to tell her story, controversial to the fact that Iran wasn’t (and still isn’t) supportive of her memoir (Chute, 106), my peer asks. She argues that the author does have the jurisdiction to recount her experiences as it is an exclusive account of her own perceptions. Kendall reinforces this with examples in the memoir, stating that “the fact that Satrapi acknowledges the flaws in her authority, and the limits of her own view, leads readers to trust in her authority more.” Likewise, Sam briefly emphasizes her authorization as he contrasts Persepolis with Spiegelman’s second-hand retainment; “It is as if he is in the place of the reader if he were reading Satrapi’s Persepolis.” It is in examples like these that fortify the potential Satrapi possesses in influencing how history is remembered.

The power that the minimalistic nature of the author’s art brings should not be forgotten either, as it is vital to understanding how Satrapi is able to convey her testimony so effectively. Raphael relays that “the separation between the author Satrapi, the child Marji, and the adult Marjane, lends itself to what Chute calls the “child’s-eye rendition” (99) of not only traumatic events but generally the entire novel. Diego expands on this idea with a single example, in which “she illustrates the human as something that resembles lego” (on Marji imagining a cut-up human being). Satrapi intentionally created her comic literary work in a “child’s understanding” in part because it did occur when she herself was a child, but also because as Chute argues, the abstraction allows us to pull in outside sources and our own imagination to fully comprehend the petrifying events that occurred.

However, on the other hand, does the story being told from a child-like perspective then undermine the possibility that it is a reliable source to contribute to cultural memory? The fact that these recollections may be hazy ideas that adult Satrapi gathers from her childhood makes one wonder, are first-hand sources credible if they are being told years later? Though Kihan supports the effectiveness of the medium alike with the majority of my classmates, she touches on the probability that “a critic could claim that the use of abstraction in {both Fugitive Pieces and} Persepolis overly romanticizes the historical events that these works attempt to represent.” But what becomes of the memoir if abstraction isn’t used? My classmate sums up our collective thoughts with, “Satrapi avoids glorifying the trauma in Persepolis not despite but in fact because of her abstraction of it.”

Why does this matter though? Cultural memory is, as I’ve acquainted myself with Sturken’s article, “a field {shaped by} cultural negotiation through which different stories vie for a place in history.” Reading through all of these amazing blogs, it’s easily achieved that our class has gained a greater understanding of this Revolution and war through her medium. Since I believe, none of us have stories of Iran’s history passed down to us by fellow friends or family, Satrapi’s memoir is the cultural memory we use to shape our understanding of history. The extent to which her art transpires to cultural memory, is seen to be at least relevant in the context of our ASTU class. If it doesn’t do any justice to anyone else, for example, Iran once again, who’s to say it doesn’t impact another group of individuals? Like what we have discussed in class and as Kendall has wrapped up her blog post, “{Satrapi is} just putting her story out there for someone to receive the message.”

I hope you had a great week and make the upcoming one another good one,

Kristen Ylo