A/effective Bodies: A review of Ester Szép’s Comics and The Body: Drawing, Reading, and Vulnerability (2020)

Abstract

This review offers a criticaloverview of Ester Szép’s  Comics and The Body:Drawing, Reading, and Vulnerability (2020)a text that formulates a model ofembodied interpretation and creation that establishes a dialogue between readerand artist based on their shared vulnerability. In this review I explore Szép’sutilisation of the line and the materiality of the comic as an expression of andengagement with the body and vulnerability across comics dealing with trauma,illness, and war. I highlight Szép’s innovative consideration of the body ofthe reader as an interpretive tool, a theory that starts from her own embodiedreactions to these comics. In the second half of this review, I consider theimplications of Szép’s approach to vulnerability and the body with regards theCovid-19 pandemic, disability, and Graphic Medicine, drawing from the recentdiscourse of vulnerability by disabled people, the social model of disabilityand its limitations, and critical work on the field of Graphic Medicine byThomas Cousser. Rather than seeing this as a limitation of the text I askwhether Szép’ methodology could be adopted to answer these and similarquestions and point to work she already appears to be doing is such adirection.