Comics e identità marginali. Il fumetto transfemminista = Comics and marginal identities. The transfeminist comic

Abstract

Through the many shapes on which they take and via the many channels hosting their passage, narratives have a strong impact on the perception, interpretation and – even – production of the social reality. This research aims to observe the queer and transfeminist comic as an example of the actualization of two specular dynamics: the politicization of narrations and the narrativization of politics. These comics, indeed, become spaces where narration rises to militancy, growing into a political tool, and the resistance offers itself to the storytelling, inaugurating a communicative virtuous circle. In so doing, even if they are coming from the standpoint of the marginal and the dominated ones, such comics thrive to be one of the most influent driving forces of the overcoming of heteronormative discourse. This process will be observed through the reading of two specific case studies: Bitch Planet, a graphic novel published in 2017 by the American Image Comics, and the online-offline activity of the Italian Josephine Yole Signorelli, also known as Fumettibrutti.The chosen works will enable the observation of comics' political vocation, by means of the multilayer lens of a typically mediological approach. The focus, then, will be both on the thematic-poetic element and on the formal and distributive one. In order to frame the representation of alternative socio-sexual identities in comics, the observation of the case history will be preceded by an overview of the social and political implication of artistic and creative practices and, more specifically, of comics' disposition for teaming up with marginal voices and liminal spots in the social sphere.