A Visual Dialogue: Practising Hospitality through the reading of Graphic Narratives

Abstract

ABSTRACT The ability of graphic narratives to ensure reader-participation creates a visual dialogue between the narrative and the readers and makes them hospitable to the story at hand. The readers become active participants, which brings in the question of ethics, as the passive gaze is converted into empathy and identification. Such a reading encourages a reassessment of the perceived differences between the ‘I’ and the ‘other’ and aims to reduce such a gap. This paper, therefore, discusses the idea of empathy and ethics vis-à-vis the strategies and techniques employed in the graphic narratives to encourage reader-participation and make them sensitive to the sufferings of the ‘others’. The texts under analysis include Clément Baloup’s Vietnamese Memories: Leaving Saigon and Vietnamese Memories: Little Saigon, representing the migrant stories. Such experiences require a hospitable audience and the graphic practices of the texts play a crucial role in making the readers empathic to the life narratives of the ‘others’.