ABSTRACT
The Indian graphic novel has been seen as marking a new turn in the tradition of Indian graphic fiction. Upturning the narrative and thematic conventions of graphic narratives like the Amar Chitra Katha, it uses a variety of expressive resources from popular culture, art and literature to create a heteroglossia of words and images. The unconventionality of the medium often enables the reader to approach the text in new, unconventional ways. Moving away from the concerns of national identity (in ACK), to exploring complex issues of identity in a globalized urban setting, Indian graphic fiction has come a long way. Within the framework of postmodernity, a heteroglossic text reveals fissures in its ideological configuration where ontological binaries such as male-female/queer, man/woman, human/machine and belonging/estrangement are not only disrupted but also challenged. This chapter analyses the visual and verbal strategies that Patil's graphic novel, Kari, employs to represent identity and gender not as unitary concepts but as fluid ones. It focuses on the subversion of hegemonic capitalist and patriarchal frameworks for gender and identity that are represented in the text through the commodified and fetishized images of masculinity, femininity and queerness that saturate Kari's world, and, through the representation of her home/house in the “smog-city” of Bombay.
