Seeing, saying and drawing

about the visibility and enunciation regimes in the constitution of the mangaká subject in Zoo no Inverno (2021) and Vida à Deriva (2021)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the constitution of the mangaká subject using the Foucauldian archeological perspective, in dialogue with the reading proposed by Gilles Deleuze about the historical formations as heterogeneous articulation between the visible and the enunciable. The research investigates how some historical conditions of manga production, circulation and legitimation make possible the emergence of the mangaká as subject position. The corpus analysis is composed of Zoo no Inverno (2021) by Jiro Taniguchi, and Vida à Deriva (2021), by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. These mangas are comprehended as surfaces of emergence where we can find visibility regimes connected to the artistic work and enunciative series related to the precariousness and the editorial discipline. The analysis shows that the mangaká subject does not precede the work, but actually is produced by the relations between discursive and non-discursive practices which organize the manga field. The subjectification of the author results from a historical process where images, editorial dispositives and discourses about creation work together, highlighting the impossibility of reducing the artistic knowledge to the individual experience of the creator.