Hauntology, classical myth and Gothic aesthetics: monstrous women in comics

Some ideas refuse to die, re-surfacing in new ways but where core narratives and associations remain. Traumatic female experience and the attribution of blame has often, since classical myth, been represented as monstrous: gorgons, sirens, harpies, one-eyed prophetic hags, the witch. Hauntology offers a way of exploring the continuation of such core ideas, the stubborn resonance of the past within the present echoed, in these cases, through graphic narrative loops. The co-presence of time in comics is well-established, and this can be true of both sequenced images as well as the single frame, allowing panel, page and text to be considered haunted, especially those adopting a darker, Gothic aesthetic to tell these women’s stories.
This workshop will be divided into two primary parts. The first will explore these issues in relation to examples within and beyond both contributors’ practices. The practice element encourages participants to explore some of these revenant stories and consider how they can be communicated graphically in ways that weaves the past into the present, demonstrating their residual power and resonance.