Citéville, Citéruine: Urban Spaces of Tomorrow and the Day after Tomorrow in contemporary Graphic Novels
Abstract
This study analyses the representation of dystopian and post-apocalyptic urban space in Citéville and Citéruine, a graphic novel diptych by Jérôme Dubois that was published simultaneously in 2020 by two different French publishing houses. Although the author denies any temporal sequence between the two works, it is inevitable to read the post-apocalyptic city, emptied and devoid of human presence, as the desolate and posthumous reflection of the dystopian city. The alienation of its inhabitants in the latter foreshadows its end. Adopting an ecocritical and narratological approach, this article aims to demonstrate the potential of visual storytelling to raise awareness of the climate crisis. It focuses in particular on three issues: alienating temporality; the narrative function of space; the compositional mode of doubling and subtraction. These characterise the representation of the city of tomorrow, which is drawing ever closer, and of the day after tomorrow, which functions as a spectre and as “shock therapy” on our present.
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