ABSTRACT
The “writing back” paradigm in postcolonial theory postulates that postcolonial literatures establish a set of new and revisionary perspectives on social, cultural, political, and narrative norms underlying much of Western fiction (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2002). Postcolonial authors often rewrite canonical English works to “write back” to and decolonize an imperial center and culture, whose perception of the world is shaped and mirrored in literature primarily through the lens of white and masculine hegemony (Thieme 2001). The method devised in this chapter consists of a brief examination of the various formal properties, narrative dimensions, and socio-cultural aspects entailed in an expanded model of “writing back” as it can be applied to comics. The possible counter-discursive and subversive effects underlying this model are then discussed through a sample of cartoons and short comics produced by South African artist Anton Kannemeyer in the anthologies Pappa in Afrika (2010) and Pappa in Doubt (2015), both of which heavily borrow from Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin in terms of genre, narrative traditions, and aesthetic, while commenting on the colonial imaginary underlying Hergé’s series.
