ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how narrative strategies of ambiguity and ambiguous sign constellations are used in feminist and queer comics, which are currently gaining worldwide recognition, to question the binary concept of gender. Using four German-language examples in which non-binary signs play a central role, the article shows the specific aesthetic possibilities that comics offer for queer and feminist gender representations. Two strategies were identified: The first category – narrative figures or figures that “can be identified as queer subjects” (Lanser 2018: 926) – leads to a diversification of the sexes. The second type – narrative strategies that “undermine the conventions of gender, sex or sexuality” (Lanser 2018, p. 926) – tends to lead to a deconstruction of gender. Article shows that comics have a wide range of possibilities to question conservative, rigid concepts of gender, and to develop new queer ways of interpreting it.
