Conference "Comics, power and politics".

While the links between the arts and politics no longer need to be demonstrated, the relationship of comics (an umbrella term covering a diversity of expressions) to / to politics has only been very rarely examined. Apart from Pascal Ory's analyses in the magazines Lire and l'Histoire and a few books, the politicist study of comics is still lacking. This situation is all the more paradoxical because, if this deficiency could long be explained by a prohibition of any explicitly political character (notably manifested in France by the 1949 law on publications for young people) or the qualification of a minor genre not worthy of scientific interest, comics have ended up being quite clearly freed from censorship and considered as an art in their own right. From then on, it is with this in mind that the Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-France (Valenciennes) and the University of Mons have decided to organize the colloquium " Comic(s), Comics, Power and Politics ", on  13 and 14 October 2022, on both sites.

Abordering various heroes and authors, styles and genres, bringing together 18 communicants and 17 papers, mixing political science, history, sociology and other disciplines, these two days will thus explore several themes. Comics and comic books, political objects; Comics, a vector of political criticism; Representing power and its evolution; Comics, a support for a critical approach to society; Comics, a vector of political demands; Comics, a reflection of international politics, will be addressed. These topics are likely to be of interest to all those who, students, scientists, and the general public, see comics as something more than just entertainment.