Skip to content
1981
Volume 14, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 2040-3232
  • E-ISSN: 2040-3240

Abstract

Read through the concept of the multiframe (understood as a database of separable units), this article argues that comics are not a distinct cultural form, but an expression of archive. The principle of the archive orders and animates modern culture in general, infusing it with the unavoidable violence inherent in establishing structure and meaning. If comics are archival, the principles of comics reading can be applied to other archival forms. This article thus also examines the common law (an exemplary modern archive that has wide social and political significance and well-rehearsed connections with violence) as a ‘legal multiframe’ that is nested within the continuum with other frames in the potentially infinite multiframe of material culture. What is seen overall is both the unavoidable nature of the violence of framing in meaningful encounters with the world, and the continuity or interconnectedness of all cultural and meaningful forms. This understanding is enabled by an encounter with the multiframe that is not blinkered to its violent qualities, and does not seek to arbitrarily delineate ‘comics’ from other multiframed structures.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/stic_00110_1
2024-08-28
2025-01-18
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Ahmed, M. and Crucifix, B. (2018), ‘Introduction: Untaming comics memory’, in M. Ahmed and B. Crucifix (eds), Comics Memory: Archives and Styles, Berlin: Springer, pp. 112.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Bateman, J. A. and Wildfeuer, J. (2014), ‘Defining units of analysis for the systematic analysis of comics: A discourse-based approach’, Studies in Comics, 5:2, pp. 373403, https://doi.org/10.1386/stic.5.2.373_1.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Bell, J. (2018), ‘Sources of law’, The Cambridge Law Journal, 77:1, pp. 4071.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Bruner, J. (2002), Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life, Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bukatman, S. (2014), ‘Sculpture, stasis, the comics, and hellboy’, Critical Inquiry, 40, pp. 10417.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Chute, H. (2011), ‘Comics form and narrating lives’, Profession, pp. 10717.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Cohn, N. (2014), ‘Building a better “comic theory”: Shortcomings of theoretical research on comics and how to overcome them’, Studies in Comics, 5:1, pp. 5775.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Cover, R. M. (1983), ‘Foreword: Nomos and narrative’, Harvard Law Review, 97:1, pp. 168.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Davies, P. F. (2018), ‘Goffman’s frame analysis, modality and comics’, Studies in Comics, 9:2, pp. 27995, https://doi.org/10.1386/stic.9.2.279_1.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Davies, P. F. (2020), ‘The nested text’, in T. Giddens (ed.), Critical Directions in Comics Studies, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 21519.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Derrida, J. (1974), Of Grammatology, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Derrida, J. (1990), ‘Force of law: The “mystical foundation of authority”’, Cardozo Law Review, 11:5–6, pp. 9201045.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Derrida, J. and Eric, P. (1995), ‘Archive fever: A Freudian impression’, Diacritics, 25:2, p. 9, https://doi.org/10.2307/465144.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Dorsett, S. (2002), ‘“Since time immemorial”: A story of common law jurisdiction, native title and the case of tanistry’, Melbourne University Law Review, 26, pp. 3259.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Gardner, J. (2012), Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Gavaler, C. (2017), ‘Refining the comics form’, European Comic Art, 10:2, pp. 123, https://doi.org/10.3167/eca.2017.100202.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Gibson, H. (2018), ‘Reopening the archive: From hypomnesis to the ontology of law’, in T. Zartaloudis (ed.), Law and Philosophical Theory: Critical Intersections, London: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 6380.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Giddens, T. (2018), On Comics and Legal Aesthetics: Multimodality and the Haunted Mask of Knowing, Abingdon: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Giddens, T. (2020), ‘Institution and abyss’, Law, Technology and Humans, 2:2, pp. 15071, https://doi.org/10.5204/lthj.1646.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Giddens, T. (2022), Judgment: New Trajectories in Law, Abingdon: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Giddens, T. (2024), ‘Scribbling on the moon: The melancholia of luna nullius’, in K. Crawley, T. Giddens and T. D. Peters (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Legal Studies, Abingdon: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Goodrich, P. (2018), ‘Heretical archives: Heterotopic institutions and fictive records’, Law Text Culture, 22, pp. 5366.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Gray, M. (2020), ‘The freedom of the press: Comics, labor, and value in the Birmingham Arts Lab’, in T. Giddens (ed.), Critical Directions in Comics Studies, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 10733.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Groensteen, T. (2007), The System of Comics, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Kress, G. (2000), ‘Multimodality: Challenges to thinking about language’, TESOL Quarterly, 34:2, p. 337, https://doi.org/10.2307/3587959.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Kress, G. (2010), Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication, Abingdon: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Kress, G. (2015), ‘Semiotic work: Applied linguistics and a social semiotic account of multimodality’, AILA Review, 28:1, pp. 4971, https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.28.03kre.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Legendre, P. (2019), God in the Mirror: A Study of the Institution of Images (Lessons III) (trans. P. G. Young), Abingdon: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Lyotard, J.-F. (2010), Discourse, Figure, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (Book, Whole).
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Martel, J. (2018), ‘Why does the state keep coming back? Neoliberalism, the state and the archeon’, Law and Critique, 29:3, pp. 35975.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Mawani, R. (2012), ‘Law’s archive’, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 8:1, pp. 33765.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Miodrag, H. (2013), Comics and Language: Reimagining Critical Discourse on the Form, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Mitchell, W. J. T. (1986), Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Nancy, J.-L. (2008), Corpus (trans. R. A. Rand), New York: Fordham University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Nancy, J.-L. (2013), The Pleasure in Drawing (trans. P. Armstrong), New York: Fordham University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. (2013), ‘The world without outside’, Angelaki, 18:4, pp. 16577.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Pizzino, C. (2020), ‘On violation: Comic books, delinquency, phenomenology’, in T. Giddens (ed.), Critical Directions in Comics Studies, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 1334.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Steedman, C. (2001), Dust, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Vismann, C. (1996), ‘Cancels: On the making of law in chanceries’, Law and Critique, 7:2, pp. 13151.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Wyatt, C. S. and DeVoss, D. N. (eds) (2018), Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms, Anderson, SC: Parlour Press.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/stic_00110_1
Loading
  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): archive; comics form; inscription; Jacques Derrida; law; sovereignty; violence
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test