Towards new (graphic) narratives of Europe

The cultural policy of the European Union (EU) has become more important than before as economic crisis threatens to undermine the EU’s nascent political identity. This paper offers graphic narrative (or comics) as a medium particularly suited to the task. This suitability results from several features: (1) the text/image hybridity of comics, which eases translation into multiple languages; (2) the topological aspect of graphic narrative, in which panels compose a spatial network of relations of various intensities that is isomorphic with the theorization of European space offered by a key EU think tank; and (3) the potential for comics of the ‘everyday’ to narrate a plural, non-didactic identity with which both Europeans and others can identify. It is hoped that a policy such as this could have a more positive influence on the more territorial, exclusive notions of the EU.