SLAVE MEMORY WITHOUT WORDS IN KYLE BAKER'S "NAT TURNER"

The cover of Kyle Baker's Nat Turner is a study in visual diachrony. Fusing two distinct styles of representation, it emblematizes a primary objective of the book to bridge chasms of history and memory, fact and inference. The cartoonish is what seems most alive, while such correlates of photor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Callaloo 2013-04, Vol.36 (2), p.279-297
Main Author:	Chaney, Michael A.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	1800?-1831 2000-2099 African American literature American literature Authors Baker, Kyle Butler, Octavia E Cartoonists Cartoons Collective Memory Comic books, strips, etc English Literature graphic novel Graphic novels History and criticism Inference Literary criticism Memory Nat Turner novel Semiotics silence Slavery Southampton Insurrection, 1831 Turner, Nat Twenty-First Century Visual Narrative
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Summary:	The cover of Kyle Baker's Nat Turner is a study in visual diachrony. Fusing two distinct styles of representation, it emblematizes a primary objective of the book to bridge chasms of history and memory, fact and inference. The cartoonish is what seems most alive, while such correlates of photorealism as the material evidence of the past are left to appear coldly instrumental. Baker sets himself up in the preface as one who has traveled over the chasm of silenced history, newly returned to transmit the present visual tale as an eyewitness, and the very same historical fluidity enjoyed by the author in the preface imbues his text as well. Here, Chaney investigates several of the book's panels which resist and render anew those principles of semiotic order that govern the text.
ISSN:	0161-2492 1080-6512 1080-6512