The article investigates the epistemological potential of documentary comics as a language of sociological research, taking as a case study the bande dessinée Vous avez détruit la beauté du monde, which stems from a long socio-historical inquiry based on more than 20,000 coroner’s files concerning suicides in Québec (1763–1986). Adopting a purposive sampling strategy, the work is treated as a paradigmatic case within a broader set of documentary comics that engage with traumatic archives and collective memories. Drawing on the framework of graphic social sciences, the article shows how the visual–verbal sequentiality of comics makes it possible to articulate in a novel way the triad archives–bodies–memories, translating the bureaucratic seriality of the files into a constellation of embodied and situated scenes. The analysis of the work’s formal strategies highlights how the passage from dossier to panel reshapes the status of the document, redistributing testimonial authority among researchers, artist and represented subjects.
Documentary Comics and Visual Sociology: Archives, Bodies, and Memories in Vous avez détruit la beauté du monde
edmondo grassi
2025-01-01
Abstract
The article investigates the epistemological potential of documentary comics as a language of sociological research, taking as a case study the bande dessinée Vous avez détruit la beauté du monde, which stems from a long socio-historical inquiry based on more than 20,000 coroner’s files concerning suicides in Québec (1763–1986). Adopting a purposive sampling strategy, the work is treated as a paradigmatic case within a broader set of documentary comics that engage with traumatic archives and collective memories. Drawing on the framework of graphic social sciences, the article shows how the visual–verbal sequentiality of comics makes it possible to articulate in a novel way the triad archives–bodies–memories, translating the bureaucratic seriality of the files into a constellation of embodied and situated scenes. The analysis of the work’s formal strategies highlights how the passage from dossier to panel reshapes the status of the document, redistributing testimonial authority among researchers, artist and represented subjects.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
