Graphic War - by Laini Kavaloski Paperback

About the Book

"In the current political climate as national boundaries are increasingly militarized or closed, immigrants and refugees are criminalized and incarcerated, and vulnerable lives are often framed as disposable in state rhetoric, graphic texts show the effects of policed boundaries on identities, psyches, and particularly on women's bodies. Contested Spaces: Jewish Women Drawing War argues that graphic narratives illuminate and resist colonial mapping practices through the representations of geopolitical borders and hybrid identities in visual form. Twentieth century Jewish identities have been overwhelmingly influenced and defined by experiences of conflicts, genocide, and war, including the Holocaust, the Soviet occupation, the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, and subsequent and persistent Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Through an archive of contemporary works that grapple with the Jewish identities, Contested Spaces illustrates women's complex relations to nationhood, security, and gender through a materialist feminist lens, arguing that the devices in these texts decolonize and reorient bodies and histories in time and space and are cognizant of the ways that boundaries of nationhood and gender are untenable and often dangerous for those caught in these frames. The comics discussed in this book reveal rhetorical constructs through visual devices and border representations; that is, comic form and devices theorize the ways that political and affective histories, gendered experiences, militarized boundaries, and cultural narratives of war intersect in individual lives"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Employing geographical and political structures to her analyses, Laini Kavaloski argues that spatial forms that represent boundaries such as walls, ghettos, and war zones together with the artistic renderings of emotion, gendered experiences, and cultural narratives make visible the consequences of war on bodies and political futures. Representations of Jewish territorial positions are not only metaphoric but are also active forces in determining the effects of boundaries--political and cultural-- on Jewish lives. Through an archive of contemporary memoirs that grapple with Jewish experiences of war, Graphic War makes visible the consequences of state structures, militarized environments, and nationalisms on the female body and in doing so registers a shift from the persistent Jewish identification with 20th-century oppression toward a narrative of Jewish belonging based in transnational agency and activism in the 21st Century.

Review Quotes

"Anchored by representations of war and violence, Kavaloski offers a deft addition to the study of contemporary Jewish graphic narratives through an analysis of the female experience across gendered and national borders."

--Samantha Baskind "author of Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor"

"Kavaloski constructs a useful framework to read the embodied, gendered experience of war and violence in graphic narratives. She calls it 'neoformalist, ' but what we get are impactful cultural readings at the intersection of feminism theory, in the wake of spatial turn, with an eye on the aesthetic that can be translated beyond the Jewish literary domain."

--Karolina Krasuska "author of Soviet-Born: The Afterlives of Migration in Jewish American Fiction"

"Graphic War is remarkable, arguing that the comic form is exemplary in its engagement with borders, boundaries, and national and cultural identity. Kavaloski argues that comics are an ideal genre for women to contest Jewish national and cultural identity at a time when gender, nation, and belonging have been put seriously in question."--Michael Bernard-Donals "Chaim Perelman Professor of Rhetoric and Culture, University of Wisconsin-Madison"

"Kavaloski's feminist-spatial practice, with her focus on nationalization and bodies, avoids many of the exceptionalist pitfalls to which the standard historicism dominant in Jewish studies is heir. The compelling model of critical intellectuality elaborated here will aid the effort to break down the boundaries of epistemic privilege behind which Jewish studies so often practices its trade."--Benjamin Schreier "author of The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature: Ethnic Studies and the Challenge of Ident"

"Kavaloski's thoughtful readings of Jewish graphic narratives offer new insights into how war and violence affect contemporary Jewish women. This is an important contribution towards understanding the ways that politics, gender, religion, and nationality intersect and the role that visual narratives can play in providing a platform for navigating these complex identities."--Matt Reingold "author of Jewish Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Critical Guide"

About the Author

LAINI KAVALOSKI is an associate professor of English and humanities at the State University of New York in Canton.