Drawing the Invisible

A Study of Urban Space, Informal Migration of Construction Workers, and Precarity in Simon Lamouret’s The Alcazar

Bibliographic Data

ID21747736
AuthorsRitam Sarkar (0000-0001-5440-2126), Somdatta Bhattacharya (0000-0001-8332-7989)
Year2024
Volume31
Issue1
Pages47-60
Publication date2024-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Communication Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1555-1393 • E-ISSN: 1555-1407
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/15551393.2023.2300488
OpenAlexW4390661130
LanguageEN
References cited32

This article, situated at the intersection of urban studies and comics studies, seeks to interrogate the nature of urban migration and the lives of construction workers in Simon Lamouret’s The Alcazar (2022), a comic based on and in the city of Bangalore. The article begins with a paratextual analysis of the comic, followed by a Lefebvrian analysis of the construction site, to argue that cities like Bangalore are evolving fast “beyond the plan” (Benjamin,Citation2015) to meet the accelerating market pressure, resulting in failed urban planning, infrastructure, and urban crisis. It will further explore what Lamouret’s comic does specifically to intervene in the discourse of neoliberal urbanism and challenge that discourse. The article will also analyze the formal specificities of the comics form and the multiple visual tropes Lamouret employed to “visibilize” the migrant workers and to advance their legitimate rights to urban life in the cityscape

Aesthetics · Art · Cityscape · Comics · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Regional science · Situated · Sociology · Urban space · Urbanism · Visual arts · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Computer Science · Law · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior · Spatial and Cultural Studies · Urban Studies · Architecture

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