ABSTRACT
This essay interrogates the question of reading graphic novels from South Asia by proposing the analysis of Drawing from the City, the visual autobiography of Teju Behan, a contemporary artist from Rajasthan. The essay introduces the text and the author, who belongs to Jogi, a group classified as one of the ‘other backward classes’ in contemporary India. Instead of treating the book as ethnographic document or simple social testimony, this essay argues that Teju’s narrative needs to be understood in its aesthetic dimension. Teju Behan is hence shown as an artist concerned with the passage from casteised labour to artistic work, and the possibility of linking individual experience to the formation of a collective. Indeed, a striking element of Teju’s visuals is the use of artistic expression to envisage a multitude. From this point of view, the graphics are affiliated to the concept of art as ‘liberated labour’ necessary to the making of the multitude proposed by Italian philosopher Antonio Negri. In conclusion, this reading interprets Drawing from the City as an intense meditation on art and the possibilities of resistance to marginality.
