L’INAFFERRABILE MEDIUM Una cartografia delle teorie del fumetto dagli Anni Venti a oggi

Abstract

This research aims to map comic studies from the 1920s to today to understand how the perception of the medium has changed over time and how analytical tools have evolved, scientific methodologies and theoretical-cultural models. All the scholars who confronted the comic studies had to face the difficulty of defining a stratified medium in continuous evolution, whose uncertain genealogy and unstable boundaries put a strain on the efforts of those who would like to classify the comic strip in a definitive taxonomy The exploration and periodization of this theoretical field has allowed to identify cognitive models and examination methodologies that have succeeded in breaking down that resistant preconception of alphabetic culture that refuses to seriously estimate the great contribution of audio-visual culture and in particular comic strip; but despite the remarkable results achieved, there is a clear lack of a unified and shared theory in the face of a plurality of methodologies and disciplines that seek to circumscribe the field and that rarely dialogue with each other. The aim of this work is also to offer a tool that can give greater awareness of the limits and achievements of this field of study, and that facilitates a dialogue between the various sectors and mutual recognition that will at last make it possible to go beyond one’s own disciplinary boundaries. Continuing to know how to interrogate the comic, means knowing how to interrogate ourselves, our history and our future, because in this body always able to regenerate and surprise us, we can find the fragments of a collective imaginary, nostalgia for past and lost times, and springboards for unpredictable, exciting or terrifying futures. [edited by Author]