ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of humour in the representation of traumatic memory in Persepolis (2003/4) by Marjane Satrapi. The chapter identifies the political role of humour in creating communities of feeling, particularly under oppressive or totalitarian regimes, and explores its subversive representation in the text. In this context, the discussion turns to the notion of post-memorial witnessing as part of Satrapi’s engagement with her personal history and experience. The chapter examines Satrapi’s use of white-space in Persepolis, and its signification of loss, trauma and ‘anxieties of deletion’, but also as a strategy of abstraction that enhances the affective impact of traumatic memory and bearing witness. The chapter emphasises these forms of remembrance understood within the context of women’s life writing and comics productions.
