More than words: Comics als narratives Medium für Mehr-als-menschliche Geographien

Abstract

Abstract. Human-animal relations are often experienced viscerally. These corporeal, affective, sensual and emotional realities cannot easily be put into words and adequately expressed through linear and textual forms. For this reason, this paper investigates the potential of comics in more-than-human geographies. It identifies three different ways of how geographers approach this field of research and communication: (1) comic analysis, (2) comic semiotics and (3) comic practice. In their comic drawings geographers try to make specific viewpoints, moments, emotions and relations visible that have been underexposed either socio-politically or in terms of scientific practice. The article then discusses more-than-human qualities of comics, arguing that graphic narratives emerge as productive tools to reveal „the in_between“ of humans and nonhumans. It further describes an exemplary approach to a collaborative comic and how visceral or nonverbal aspects in human-animal relations can be expressed and experienced, using the empirical study of returning wolves to Switzerland.