Grown Up Boyz and Girlz. Italian Graphic Novelists’ Trans-European Paths and Gendered Representations

ABSTRACT

Encouraged by a growing tendency towards international training and education as well as by the precarity that dominates artistic production in Italy, Italian comics artists are the protagonists of a diaspora as they emigrate to other European countries. This article investigates the effects of migration and geographical in-betweenness on the work of two Italian graphic novelists, Nicoz Balboa and Alice Socal, whose texts feature explicitly gendered representations. A hybrid methodology is employed, combining textual analysis supported by a nomadic feminist theoretical framework with semi-structured interviews with the authors. The article argues that Balboa and Socal inhabit a ‘diasporic space’ both as artists and individuals. This space is characterised by the constant contestation of socio-cultural boundaries and divisions. Furthermore, the gendered representations delineated by these authors systematically interrogate the inflexible binarisms imposed by the patriarchal socio-cultural order. These interrogations extend beyond gender boundaries, challenging the rigid dichotomy that separates youth from adulthood.

KEYWORDS:

• Comics
• transnational graphic narratives
• Italian diaspora
• Nicoz Balboa
• Alice Socal

In the first two decades of the new millennium, Italy turned, once again, into a country of mass emigration following the impact of the 2008 economic crisis and the consequent national struggles with the issue of youth unemployment.¹ This shift came as a shock for a generation, that of those aged between 18 and 30 years old, who had grown up with the myth of a linear existential and professional career path, the one that had been guaranteed to many of their parents by the long-lasting effects of the Italian economic miracle (1958–1963). The shock rapidly became a new reality, to the point that Valentina Cuzzocrea acutely observed how the crisis became an accepted element of the challenges faced by Italian young people as they navigated the never-ending transition from youth to adulthood.² Cuzzocrea also described mobility as an ‘imperative’ for a generation who had no choice but to adapt to the new model of the ‘flexi-life’.³ Among those who decided to leave the peninsula for other European countries, thus making ‘Italian diasporas one of the most extensive in the world’,⁴ were a plethora of highly skilled young professionals or students to whom Italian society could not offer dignified working conditions, recognition, and stability. These included artists who joined their generational peers in leaving a country that, despite its world famous artistic heritage and propensity to creative endeavours, has often been criticised for not investing significant amounts of its resources in sustaining artistic work and its legitimacy.⁵

Comics artists were no exception, and many creative people who were active in the field of comics production left Italy and moved to European countries such as Belgium, France, Spain, and Germany, but also to the United States, China, Korea, India, and Brazil.⁶ In 2020, years after the economic crises of 2008 that resulted in the intensification of mass emigration from Italy, the phenomenon came under the spotlight of Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale (MAECI), which released a statement on the significant number of Italian comics artists and illustrators living abroad in occasion of the XX Settimana della lingua italiana nel mondo dedicated to graphic narratives and illustrations. Journalists labelled it as a ‘fuga dei pennelli’ – an expression that paraphrases the widely used ‘fuga dei cervelli’ – and framed it as a ‘parte del più ampio fenomeno della partenza dall’Italia delle giovani generazioni’.⁷ In an article on the presence of Italian comics authors abroad, Daniele Comberiati argues that the emigration of fumettisti from the peninsula to a country like France has always been a trend – exemplified, among others, by the cases of Hugo Pratt, Tonino Liberatore, and Filippo Scozzari who emigrated to Paris in the Seventies, in the Eighties, and in the Nineties, respectively.⁸ However, the flow increased in more recent years, to the point that when Comberiati’s article was written, in 2018, there were 70 Italians working in the comics industry in France.⁹

Interestingly enough, the phenomenon coincided with the boom years of the Italian fumetto, which began to gain significant editorial success and recognition at the turn of the new millennium.¹⁰ As scholars have noted, the upward trend of Italian comics in the 2000s has been heavily influenced by the emergence of the graphic novel, a format for long graphic narratives generally included in one (sometimes two) volume(s) and sold in bookshops, which legitimated the comics medium and widened the extent of its circulation.¹¹ María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches have observed how the graphic novel and its widely recognised tendency to privilege non-fictional narratives have increased opportunities for comics authors to delve into the social and existential issue of precarity, as well as into the connected liquefaction of boundaries between youth and adulthood.¹² Examples of this tendency can be easily found in the Italian graphic novel, where precarity is among the most widespread topics for authors who are resident either in Italy or abroad.¹³ Zerocalcare’s Macerie prime (2017),¹⁴ for example, ‘racconta la difficoltà di crescere’, according to the publisher’s description,¹⁵ and is just the most visible and renowned example of this trend, which had already attracted scholarly attention (Vari, 2021). The theme of precarity echoes other Italian graphic novels published in the first twenty years of the millennium, including, among others, Gipi’s LMVDM – La mia vita disegnata male (2008), Niccolò Pellizzon’s Gli amari consigli (2014), Nuke’s Effetto Casimir (2015), Giulia Sagramola’s Incendi estivi (2015), Nova’s Stelle o sparo (2018).¹⁶ Moreover, scholars have investigated precarity and its representation in work by Italian women graphic novelists who have provided readers with specifically gendered reflections on the liminal condition that characterises the sentimental lives of those who need to ‘negotiate between a new model of freedom anchored to the neoliberal dogma of individualism […] and the old patriarchal paradigm of sentimental stability’.¹⁷

This article contributes to current debates on the thematic relevance of diasporic movements and youth/adulthood in-betweenness in contemporary Italian graphic narratives by looking at its specifically gendered manifestations in the works by two authors, Nicoz Balboa and Alice Socal. Living in France and Germany respectively, the two authors are part of the aforementioned diaspora of Italian comics artists who left the country in the 2000s and decided to remain abroad in the years that followed the 2008 economic crisis. Both Balboa and Socal engage in graphic self-narrations where the state of perpetual liminality caused by the highly transnational dimension of the authors’ existences and careers productively intersects with the depiction of a specifically sexed and gendered, as well as always non-conclusive, process of growth or self-discovery. The study employs a hybrid methodology that combines textual analysis supported by theories of diasporic connections and e-connections and nomadic feminist subjectivities with semi-structured interviews with the two authors. It underscores the productive correlation between the encounter with cultural hybridity, which is imposed upon the diasporic artists, and an approach to gender identity that overtly contests the binarisms inherent in patriarchal cultural norms. In other words, the article argues that Balboa and Socal inhabit a ‘diasporic space’ where they (artists, individuals and subjects of their own autofictional representations) constantly challenge socio-cultural boundaries and divisions. Furthermore, the gendered representations delineated by these two authors systematically interrogate the inflexible polarisations imposed by the patriarchal socio-cultural order. These interrogations extend beyond gender boundaries, challenging the dichotomy that rigidly separates youth from adulthood.

Diasporic Connection/Nomadic Ethics

Those who embark on a journey of migration from Italy nowadays, both skilled and non-skilled migrants, deviate from the historical archetype of emigrants carrying cardboard suitcases and being forced to sever ties, whether emotional or imaginary, with their country of origin. In contrast, low-cost flights, as well as information and communication technologies (ICT) facilitate the persistence of a sense of connectedness with the homeland for the majority of Italians who start a migratory process towards another European country. The Internet in particular, has been deemed so powerful that some have argued that it provides a set of ‘growing interconnections […] for transnational migrants, who now arrive at their destination without ever fully leaving the place of origin’.¹⁸ In addition to various programmes and apps like Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that enable migrants to sustain personal connections with family and friends, scholars have emphasised the importance of blogs, groups, and forums. These platforms have proven crucial in establishing virtual communities among Italian expats residing abroad or creating spaces where individuals, particularly researchers, artists, and highly skilled migrants, can continue to exert influence within the public communication sphere of their countries of origin.¹⁹

When it comes to comics artists living outside Italy, the intensification of ICT and, more generally, the improvement of connectivity have resulted in the establishment of closer relationships with the Italian comics industry. In previous years, these tended to lapse as a result of migration and the consequent decision, by creatives, to focus on entering the comics market of the destination country. This phenomenon is particularly clear in the case of France, where the formation of a ‘sottocampo’ of Italian fumettisti, whose interest was mainly that of being recognised in the place where they were working and living, gradually gave way to a new tendency: that of exploiting the recognition gathered abroad in order to re-establish or continue cultivating connections with the Italian comics scene.²⁰ The cases of Nicoz Balboa and Alice Socal that are examined in this article are also quite interesting in this regard: both artists entertain a close relationship with the Italian comics industry, as testified by their presence in major events organised in the peninsula to promote the fumetto and by their ongoing or previous ties with Italian publishing houses. Moreover, the artists’ presence on social media such as Facebook and Instagram, which are nowadays widely exploited by comics artists to promote their work,²¹ is sustained by a significant presence of Italian followers and fans, to the point that Alice Socal recognised that ‘le persone che mi seguono su Instagram sono principalmente italiane’.²² In light of this, the current migration of Italian comics artists abroad should be recognised as characterised by a clear diasporic dimension, which is to say by a propensity to produce ‘groups of migrant origins residing and acting in host countries but maintaining strong sentimental and material links with their countries of origin – their homelands’.²³

If it is true that ‘both the homeland and the host society influence diaspora identity’,²⁴ diasporic phenomena such as those of the fumettisti that we consider in this article produce subjectivities that are strongly characterised by a state of professional and existential in-betweenness, where both creative practices and personal identities are impacted by a process of fluid and constant renegotiation. As Sandra Ponzanesi has argued, diasporic imagination and sensibility are conceptually linked to ideas of ‘transgression and hybridisation’, which distinguishes them from a ‘migrant predicament’ connected to processes of ‘uprooting and resettling’.²⁵ This transgression mostly applies to the ability of the connected diasporic subject to overcome and challenge oppositions. Contemporary migration dynamics, facilitated significantly by ICT, enable migrants to sustain connections with their origins while assuming active roles in a new country. This phenomenon engenders transnationalising forces that frustrate the established conceptual opposition that forms the basis of discourses and understandings surrounding migratory flows.²⁶ In this regard, the geographical and cultural binarism here versus there is the first to collapse,²⁷ followed by numerous others, such as the connected Self versus Other or us versus them,²⁸ on which discriminatory discourses rely.

As Avtar Brah has suggested, diasporic sensibility and its propensity to challenge oppositions is deeply connected to what she calls ‘a theoretical creolisation’,²⁹ that is, a tendency towards the deconstruction of broader dichotomous models that are applied at an intersectional level across different ‘analytical frames capable of multiple, intersecting, axes of differentiation’.³⁰ In this sense, it is not a coincidence that feminist theory has drawn significantly on transnational, diaspora, and border studies in order to formulate ‘political fictions’, which is to say, narratives that serve to advocate for hybridisation and amalgamation as fruitful notions that challenge patriarchal oppositions and hierarchies.³¹ The first of these political fictions is Gloria Anzaldúa’s theorisation of the figure of the ‘mestiza’,³² which famously exploits the image of the borderland with the aim of deconstructing existing symbolic systems of exclusion by means of a feminist interpretation of ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and, obviously, gendered contaminations. However, it is Rosi Braidotti’s famous idea of nomadic ethics that has inspired the most prolific mixture of diasporic sensibility and feminist theory. In her internationally acclaimed and now canonically recognised Nomadic Subjects (1996), the feminist philosopher explained how the dynamics of nomadism – namely, its intrinsic rejection of fixity and oppositionality, as well as its tension towards a situatedness that is always contingent and never dogmatic – could be addressed as a conceptual paradigm on the basis of which feminists should design a new model of subjectivity. This new model of feminist subjectivity relies on the imperative of movement and fluidity, thus challenging the modern and patriarchal notion of the subject as a stable and immutable entity constructed on the premise of an opposition with the Other.³³ Despite its fluidity, this feminist subjectivity remains perfectly functional and accountable.³⁴ Braidotti’s nomadic ethics offers, therefore, a conceptualisation of the Self that questions not only cultural and geographical, but also gendered binarisms – such as the one that rigidly labels women as the radical other of men – without losing contact with the bodily and sexed dimensions of being. Nomadic subjects, according to Braidotti, challenge normativity by repudiating firmness in terms of place, cultural position, and (gendered) identity, but also in relation to time. They are subjects ‘in transit’,³⁵ ‘subjects in becoming’ who rely on the principle of mobility though still cultivating memory, a combination that allows them to be ‘not only in process, but also capable of lasting through sets of discontinuous variations’.³⁶

To summarise, the set of qualities outlined by Braidotti and by the diaspora scholars mentioned so far pertain to subjectivities who manage to find a sense of Self and a voice despite occupying a space between nations and cultures, notwithstanding their eccentric relationship with gender identity or roles and as a result of their ability to recognise growth as a never conclusive process of becoming. This characterisation will be crucial to describe the personal and professional experiences of Nicoz Balboa and Alice Socal, along with their graphic self-narratives. Within these narratives, the continual renegotiation of predetermined gendered categories and belongings, intertwined with a life lived between two countries, initiates an extended phase characterised by openness and possibility that conceptually coincides with that of youth.

Nicoz Balboa. Beyond the Frontier of Fixed Gender Identity

Born in Rome, Nicoz Balboa is a transgender and transfeminist visual artist based in La Rochelle (France), where he works at the tattoo studio project Strangeland.³⁷ During his career, in addition to a transnational training at European Institute of Design (IED) and École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques et d’Architecture (E.S.A.G.), he has experimented with different media and genres pertaining to the broad area of visual art: painting, drawing, pyrography, body art, and comics. As a comics author, he specialised in the genre of graphic journaling, a practice devoted to the rendering of personal daily experiences and emotions through the comics medium. His regular activity as a teacher of online courses of graphic journaling is sustained by a rich production in this area. Balboa started experimenting with graphic journaling in the Nineties when, still in Rome, he was a prolific actor within the Italian capital’s scene of underground comics, to which he contributed with mostly autobiographical and self-published zines such as Catholic Girls, Caccapiscia, Cuoricini, and Pochi intimi.³⁸ Although contemporary critics now acknowledge it as a predominant movement within both Italian and international graphic novel production, self-narration did not constitute a prevailing trend at the time.³⁹ For this reason, Balboa encountered difficulty in embracing this form of self-expression, lacking the confidence to adopt it. Nevertheless, he consistently viewed it as an essential practice for cultivating self-awareness. As he explained in our interview, it is only through the discovery of the Canadian comics artist Julie Doucet and her graphic narrative Dirty Plotte (1991–1998) that Balboa found inner legitimisation for his autobiographical artistic tendency:

Ho sempre avuto bisogno di mettermi sul foglio. […] Ho sempre avuto bisogno di creare delle robe per capire un po’ che vivevo. All’epoca io disegnavo questi fumetti, ma avevo un po’ l’impressione che non fossero veri fumetti perché erano queste cose mie, autobiografiche, che fotocopiavo e con cui facevo delle fanzine. Quando andavo al negozio di fumetti io queste cose non le vedevo. […] Finché un giorno, non mi ricordo in che modalità, qualcuno mi mise tra le mani una copia di Dirty Plotte, di Julie Doucet. E lì fu un po’ una rivelazione. Perché mi sono detto: ‘questa sta pagine e pagine a parlare di lei che c’ha il tampax pieno’. E lì ho detto: ‘allora questa cosa si può fare, non c’è vergogna a usare l’autobiografia. C’è almeno una persona, una donna, che lo fa. Perché poi all’epoca, con tutta la mia dissociazione, la mia disforia, io ero socializzato in quanto donna. […] Quindi ho letto le cose di Julie Doucet in Italia, quando ancora non erano state pubblicate in italiano. Io facevo questa fanzine che si chiamava Catholic Girls, da una canzone di Frank Zappa, e presi i fumetti di Julie Doucet, li fotocopiai, li bianchettai e li tradussi e a un certo punto, non so come, trovai il suo indirizzo e quindi glieli spedii.⁴⁰

In light of this, it is clear how, since the beginning of his creative trajectory, transnational exchanges proved vital in the process towards Balboa’s important self-recognition as a comics artist. Moreover, he further legitimised his own practice of graphic self-narration by translating and reproducing Doucet’s work in his own zine, an act that testifies to the authors’ early ability to create spaces where transnational dialogue could flourish.

After this legitimisation, Balboa continued to draw autobiographical comic strips and vignettes, and in 2004, when he was already living in France, he collected some of them in Nicozrama,⁴¹ his first solo comic book published with the support of the Centro Fumetto Andrea Pazienza. Years later, in 2008, he persists in practicing self-representation, as demonstrated by the publication, by the French publisher Diantre !, of Les larmes de crocodile.⁴² However, it was during the second decade of the 2000s that the author attained recognition among both readers and critics. This success was garnered through the publication of Born to Lose,⁴³ in collaboration with the prominent Italian comics publisher Coconino Press, and notably, through the explicit endorsement by the esteemed comics artist Igort. This work distinctly referenced the practice of graphic journaling, as evidenced by the deliberate choice to include in the book’s layout the typographic lines that often feature in printed journals and diaries. In Born to Lose, Balboa (at the time socialised as a woman) retraced one year of personal vicissitudes by focussing on self-representation while dealing with the rampant precarity of a life divided between artistic work and the lack of financial resources, between the joys of motherhood and the insecurities that come with it, between two countries: Italy and France. With Play with Fire (2020), his next graphic novel (which is now also published in French)⁴⁴ the decision to engage with a less fragmented and more linear approach towards self-narration resulted in the production of an autofictional representation of the process that lead him towards his coming out first as a lesbian and then deciding to assume a non-binary identity. Transformer (2023),⁴⁵ Balboa’s third graphic novel, adopts the same autofictional mode to recount a further step in the author’s gendered life: his hormonal and social transition into a man.

Throughout his artistic trajectory, Balboa has always entertained a close relationship with social media and internet-based platforms, which helped him to share his work at a transnational level. In the first years of his life in France, in the early 2000s, he managed two blogs, a more standard one that allowed him to maintain contact with his Italian followers and a comics-based blog through which he started to navigate the sphere of the French comics industry where, at the time, the BD blog was a trend.⁴⁶ Later, he started using platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Patreon for his project Momeskine. Momeskine is a collection of autobiographical vignettes and strips where Balboa recounts his experiences first as a precarious mother and more recently as a transgender mother. It is published in English, a language that he defines as ‘esperanto’, given its ability to facilitate a transnational communication for both Italian and French followers.⁴⁷

Balboa is an active part of the Italian diaspora of fumettisti who, as seen above, maintain a presence in the Italian comics scene despite living and working abroad. He is appreciated as a comics author in France, where, he affirms, he is benefitting from the system of recognition and help that the country has established to sustain creatives in the field of comics production⁴⁸; he is published in France and he regularly participates in local comics festivals such as that of Angoulême. However, he never cut the ties that link him to Italy, where he frequently travels even for long periods of time, where his graphic novels are first published and where he is often invited to attend events, exhibitions, and festivals. In other words, he works and lives between two cultures and contexts or, as he maintains by referencing the French saying ‘avoir le cul entre deux chaises’, ‘ho il culo tra due sedie’.⁴⁹ When asked how it feels to live while always occupying a median position, Balboa recounts the challenges that this role implies and focuses on the difficulties introduced by the continuous and never linear process of (re)adaptation that necessarily accompanies his frequent travels and transnational exchanges. He discusses the sense of belonging that he generally experiences when landing in Rome, which often disappears rapidly when the idiosyncrasies of the city (mostly, its chronic disorganisation and chaotic social dynamics) emerge, thus impacting the structured and organised mentality that have been shaped by his life in France. However, he also recounts how, following a brief phase of (re)adjustment in Italy, the subsequent departure to France generally coincides with a prolonged moment of longing that, in turn, determines another phase of (re)adaptation to the life in the country of destination.⁵⁰

These dynamics are systematically transposed into the representation that Balboa offers with his graphic narratives. Here, the inner diasporic space ‘where boundaries of belonging and otherness, of “us” and “them”, are contested’, often takes the shape of a symbolic territory that the protagonist painfully traverses in distressing phases of his life.⁵¹ It is precisely the act of crossing this symbolic territory that leads him to question other aspects of his (especially gendered) identity. An example is a scene included in Play with Fire where the protagonist travels to Italy, straight after a vacation in the United States that turns into a prefiguration of his as yet undisclosed homosexuality and transgenderism. While in Ponza at the beach with a friend, Nicoz is torn by a series of contradictory feelings and small experiences. On the one hand are the positive sensations triggered by the smell and colours of the Mediterranean, together with Lucio Dalla’s music, which brings to mind memories and reinforces the connection with the friend. On the other, he experiences undifferentiated negative thoughts and even an episode of intense dysphoria caused by people’s reactions to his eccentric appearance: the persistent visual scrutiny of his body, that is covered in tattoos, and an act of vandalism on the LGBT pride t-shirt that the protagonist was wearing (Figures 1–3). The first of the two feelings is represented, among other things, by a red caption located at the end of the first page dedicated to the Ponza trip (Figure 1).⁵² Like all the other red captions included in Play with Fire, this aims to contextualise or to comment on the rapid flow of events portrayed in the panels. The caption praises Italy for being able to bring back tridimensionality to life and it makes a direct comparison with France, a country that Nicoz admits he does not love. However, the part of the caption that includes this last statement (the fact that Nicoz does not love France) is readable but ‘sous-rature’. The erasure testifies to the protagonist’s conflictual relationship with the country where he lives.⁵³ A similar conflictual link, this time towards the country of origin, is later demonstrated by the subsequent scene, where the magic of being in Italy suddenly evaporates following the LGBT t-shirt incident, where the protagonist finds his t-shirt covered in sand. This results in a dysphoric moment that the author represents, using a pattern that is then reproduced throughout the whole book, by a fire-like halo surrounding the protagonist’s body (Figure 2).⁵⁴ After diving into the sea, Nicoz uses another red caption to convey the sense of uneasiness generated by the close-minded Italian atmosphere that prevents him from being able to fully express himself and fosters a sense of inadequacy (Figure 3).⁵⁵ The significance of this scene is confirmed by the recurring motif of deep-water swimming that is used in the second part of the book as a metaphor for the in-between and fluid process of gender transition.

Figure 1. Nicoz Balboa, Play with Fire, p. 27. © Nicoz Balboa 2020 © Oblomov Edizioni-La Nave di Teseo 2020.

Figure 2. Nicoz Balboa, Play with Fire, p. 28. © Nicoz Balboa 2020 © Oblomov Edizioni-La Nave di Teseo 2020.

Figure 3. Nicoz Balboa, Play with Fire, p. 29. © Nicoz Balboa 2020 © Oblomov Edizioni-La Nave di Teseo 2020.

Taking this into account, the hybridity resulting from the act of occupying a space between cultures is for Balboa a challenging process of continuous negotiation that involves all spheres of life and identity, including gender identity. As such, its connotations are not necessarily negative. On the contrary, as the rest of Play with Fire confirms, it is precisely within this in-between space that the subject evolves and connects with his own desires and identity beyond the categories imposed at a societal level, thus implementing personal and political change. For example, it is during one of the trips to Rome that the protagonist breaks away from heteronormativity and starts his first lesbian relationship, which will continue as a transnational long-distance liaison during which Nicoz will experiment non-canonical gender roles.⁵⁶ From this point of departure, the theme of gender non-conformity and transgenderism becomes explicit and an intensification of private experiments with crossdressing ends up leading to a painful phase of self-discovery that will ultimately result in a personal and ethical endorsement of fluid transgender identity, where binarisms – like those that rigidly divide a national culture from another – are perpetually evoked and contested.

From the moment when Nicoz encounters Laura Jane Grace, the transsexual front woman of the rock band ‘Against me’, he acknowledges the potential of aligning his body with his internal aspirations.⁵⁷ This encounter sparks his quest to present the most authentic depiction of himself. Consequently, Play with Fire evolves into a graphic contemplation on societal norms concerning gender, particularly exploring the physical expressions of masculinity, femininity, and transness. Here, the figure of the siren, described as ‘mezza pesce’⁵⁸ with the aim of highlighting its composite nature, becomes the graphic emblem that sustains and summarises, at a visual level, the verbose soliloquy with which the protagonist expresses doubts about his gender identity.⁵⁹ The siren also serves as the guiding figure who, by teaching him how to swim (an image that clearly evokes the practice of embracing the fluid dimension of life), ferries Nicoz to the realm of gender transition and elucidates him on the joys of in-betweenness that the journey of self-discovery presupposes.⁶⁰ And it is precisely with a textless double page (Figure 4)⁶¹ where the protagonist himself turns into a genderless siren with both male and female anatomical elements (beard and breasts), happily swimming in the sea, that the graphic novel ends.

Figure 4. Nicoz Balboa, Play with Fire, p. 202-203. © Nicoz Balboa 2020 © Oblomov Edizioni-La Nave di Teseo 2020.

In light of this analysis, Play with Fire is a hymn to queerness, here intended as the ‘open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning’ that a subject recognises as constituent of their gender identity, thus rejecting monolithic approaches to gender and sexuality.⁶² This eminently queer ethos is confirmed by Balboa, who recognises it as a guiding principle even when it comes to his ongoing transition into a man, a process that, being driven by a binary sense of belonging to a specific gender, could be interpreted as opposed to the hybridity of queerness.⁶³ On the contrary, transition is approached by the author as a journey that does not lead to a final destination to be labelled as opposed to the point/gender of departure:

La narrazione intorno alla transizione di genere è sempre stata: ‘parto da qui perché devo passare la frontiera e arrivare lì. E a quel punto devo nascondere la mia lingua di partenza e devo parlare solo la lingua del paese d’arrivo perché mi devo integrare, devo far finta di essere’. Mentre invece ormai è sempre meno così, anche se c’è una frangia di persone trans che non lo accetta e che a me fa venire ancora più i capelli bianchi.[…] Sono d’accordo che per alcune persone, me compreso, la binarietà è importante. Cioè tu hai bisogno di transizionare, sennò se fossi super fluido, se la tua identità non ti richiedesse di prendere gli ormoni, non lo faresti, saresti free. E invece c’è una componente binaria, nell’aver questo tipo di bisogno. Però ognuno si definisce come vuole, ognuno decide. E vedo sempre di più, per fortuna, questa integrazione: la transizione non è passare la frontiera, ma rimanere un po’ tra le due frontiere, anche quando vivi già nel paese dove sei arrivato: sei un soggetto a cavallo, un soggetto trans.⁶⁴

As the metaphor of the frontier used by Balboa suggests, the in-between realm of the queer transition overlaps with the median space that the diasporic subject inhabits in order to cultivate his desire both to be integrated as part of a new culture and to maintain recognisability in his country of origin. In other words, Balboa and his graphic narratives advocate for the constitution of a ‘diasporic queer subject’, which is to say, a subject who embodies ‘a decisive change of orientation away from primordial identities established alternatively by either nature or culture’.⁶⁵

Alice Socal. Existential Displacements and the Politics of Girlish Motherhood

Born in Mestre and now living in Germany, where she works as illustrator and comics artist, Alice Socal is another important figure in the contemporary diaspora of Italian fumettisti and another artist whose creative trajectory displays a clear link between the contestation of normative gender roles and the refusal of a clear national identity.

Socal moved to Hamburg in 2007, when she was twenty-one years old, in order to participate in an Erasmus project at the local HAW – Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften – as part of a student exchange programme with the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, where she was studying at the time. The Erasmus exchange later turned into a more permanent residence, both at HAW, where she graduated in 2012, and in Hamburg, where she lived for nine years before moving to Berlin. Transnationalism is not only part of Socal’s formation, which is clearly divided between the prolific Bolognese comics school and the smaller but stimulating Hamburg scene where our artist benefitted from the mentorship of Anke Feuchtenberger.⁶⁶ It is also a distinctive feature of her work as a comics creator. Characterised by the adoption of a clear experimental style influenced by the Manga imaginary, Socal’s production has mainly taken the form of graphic novels and small book projects distributed by independent publishers in Italy and Germany. Her debut graphic novel, Sandro,⁶⁷ is the outcome of the final project she submitted at HAW. Despite being originally written in German, it was published in 2015 by the Italian Eris Edizioni. Two years later, she published Il fratello di Jürgen,⁶⁸ written with Alessandro Romeo, with the Bolognese Canicola and Cry Me a River with Coconino Press.⁶⁹ The latter was written during a long stay in Italy, where Socal temporarily returned for a summer while dealing with a personal moment of uncertainty that almost led her to the decision of permanently leaving Germany.⁷⁰ In 2019, she published the short graphic book Junior with the Latvian Kuš, which originally came out in English and was later translated into Italian by MalEdizioni.⁷¹ More recently, during the years of the Covid-related pandemic and of her encounter with the personal experience of motherhood, Socal invested most of her creative efforts in publishing strips and vignettes on social media, which resulted in the publication with the German Rotopol, of Wie lange noch (2022),⁷² a graphic novel that reworks the aforementioned social media posts. Despite not having published her last book in Italy yet, the author confiremed during our interview that an Italian version of Wie lange noch was among her projects, as it would have allowed her to continue to be recognised as an artist in the peninsula, to continue to have ‘un piede qui e un piede lì’, which can increase career opportunities.⁷³

If in the case of Balboa the issues of sexual and gender identity are central, Socal’s production displays a clear propensity for the representation of in-between phases of personal growth (particularly between youth and adulthood) where the diasporic dimension of geographical and bodily displacement is a recurring theme that often intersects with other issues, such as existential and sentimental precarity, posthuman encounters and gender non-conforming bodily changes. Sandro is centred around the (mostly imaginative) adventures of a male character who, in occasion of his 26th birthday, reflects on his existential path and comes to terms with his own insecurities by reencountering and ultimately abandoning his imaginary friend. It is in Cry Me a River that the theme of the life crisis caused by the uncertainties of the limbo between youth and adult life meets the challenge of geographical displacement and migration. Here, the main character is going through a phase of readjustment while temporarily living in a foreign city with his girlfriend, with whom he is planning an inevitable break-up that coincides with the death of one of his dogs. By choosing of alternating sequences of panels where actions are displayed either in slow motion or as rapidly evolving, Cry Me a River insists on the theme of stillness and movement, a clear metaphor for the chaotic and contradictory dimension of the diasporic experience. Here, the subject is productively captured between the drive towards the new set of possibilities on offer in the destination country and a persistent sense of belonging to the homeland. The productivity of this condition is emblematised by the image of the river, a symbol where the temporal and spatial components of fluidity and stillness converge. This is explained by the short monologue of a secondary character, Paul who reflects on his decision to go back to his city of origin where a river dominates the landscape. He states:

Sai, all’inizio mi sembrava una sconfitta, ma è stato un bene tornare in paese. Ho capito che qui c’è quello che mi serve per stare bene. Noi ci struggiamo con il dramma dell’inesorabile scorrere del tempo. Il fiume scorre in eterno. Il suo scorrere continuo non sembra causargli ansia. Questo mi fa sentire in pace.⁷⁴

In her subsequent publication, Junior, Socal reworks the theme of displacement by providing her readers with an interiorised version of it. In this short book, the protagonist is a male with animalistic features who processes the pregnancy of his partner, a female with feline anatomical characteristics, by imagining that he himself is pregnant, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Junior (Reitman, 1994). The bodily investigation of in-betweenness as a phase and condition clearly related to pregnancy, is now coupled, for the first time, with an implicit reflection on gender roles. The act of representing a pregnant male character who dreams of giving birth to kids with cat or giraffe-life features is not just a provocative inversion aimed at contesting normativity. It is also a creative act that constitutes a nomadic portrayal of subjectivity such as that identified by Braidotti. In fact, Socal’s narrative reinterprets sexual difference as a ‘negotiable, transversal, affective space’⁷⁵ where oppositions (among subject and Other, man and woman, human and animal) are substituted by a set of continuous metamorphoses that end up characterising specific bodily features and capacities as entities in becoming.⁷⁶ In other words, Junior is in tune with the Deleuzian theorisations on the ‘becoming Other’ that Braidotti uses as the main foundation for her conceptualisation of nomadic subjectivities because of its capacity to challenge, through artistic creation, the rigid polarisations from which exclusion stems.

A fluid approach towards gender in particular has always been a creative tendency for Socal who, as we have seen, decided to transpose her own life experiences in graphic narratives with male protagonists. When, during our interview, I asked her to explain why, she stated:

Mi sono sempre riconosciuta come donna, non ho mai avuto grandi problemi con il mio genere. Però in gioventù non volevo essere facilmente identificata come donna. Volevo essere una persona e guardata come tale. Poi mi vestivo come mi andava, non mi facevo problemi. Però non mi sono mai sentita diversa da un’altra persona perché io donna e lui uomo. […] Il rappresentare molti dei miei protagonisti come maschi ha a che fare un po’ con questa identità gender diciamo asessuata, con questa scelta dell’ignorare il genere. Ho disegnato Sandro come personaggio maschile perché mi sentivo più a mio agio a disegnare un personaggio maschile. E mi sono sentita abbastanza rappresentata da lui, pur non essendo lui. E poi anche per una questione tecnica: fino a un certo periodo non ero in grado di disegnare le donne, cioè non avevo il coraggio, avevo paura di sbagliare o di stereotipizzare. […] Per far vedere in un disegno che un personaggio è femminile devi disegnare le tette, i fianchi e io non avevo il coraggio di affrontare questa cosa.⁷⁷

Socal’s declared rejection of gender binarism influenced her creative practice. This is evident in her decision to avoid drawing feminine characters because, in comics, they are generally characterised by a significant degree of sexual stereotyping. This position changed with the experience of motherhood. Since the beginning of her first pregnancy, Socal has turned self-narration into an explicit mode by starting to draw herself in comic strips and vignettes that have been published online and subsequently collected in Wie lange noch. She portrays herself either as a female cat or as a young woman with bodily features that clearly recall her own. Nevertheless, the choice to symbolically incorporate femininity by addressing themes that are commonly associated with the female sex and with the feminine gender, such as pregnancy and motherhood, appears as a conventional perspective on identity, which diverges from Braidotti’s notions of fluidity and becoming. This approach, however, does not hinder Socal from presenting a portrayal of gender roles, existential transitions, and migratory patterns that is nomadic in nature and inherently linked to diasporic experiences. This is done through a graphic depiction of pregnancy and, more surprisingly, motherhood as liminal experiences characterised by a circular process of relational negotiations with the other (the foetus and the child). This challenges the patriarchal trope in which the phase of childhood, girlhood, and youth (where the subject is cared for) are conceptually opposed to that of mothering (where the subject is doing the caring). In other words, this graphic depiction projects the reader into the realm of a girlish motherhood where the boundaries established by a rigid conceptualisation of roles and positions are contested.

Scholars in girlhood studies have clearly pointed out how, in our culture, the girl has come to exemplify ‘an idea of mobility preceding the fixity of womanhood’.⁷⁸ The phase of girlhood is socially and culturally constructed as finishing with the experience of motherhood,⁷⁹ which in our patriarchal societies epitomises womanhood and its connection with the historical and present burden of reproductive and care work.⁸⁰ Socal’s practice of graphic journaling acknowledges and ultimately rejects this distinction, and it is not coincidental that this matter is thematically explored alongside her contemplation of her own diasporic condition. In a comic strip included in the Instagram project Chronicles of a Pregnancy, called ‘Heimat’ (which in German means homeland), the author offers a graphic snapshot of a visit to her parents’ home in Italy during the last phase of her first pregnancy.⁸¹ The opening caption, in which Socal explains that the objective of the trip is ‘to be fed, rested and be my parents’ child for the last time’, is emblematic of the double approach towards the condition of pregnancy: on the one side the conscience of the aforementioned equation between end of girlhood and the beginning of motherhood; on the other the desire to still indulge in being treated and taken care of as a daughter. This is also exemplified by the images in the vignette, where the artist reproduces graphically some of the photographs of her childhood. The whole strip is marked by ambivalence and a refusal to take a position between the phase of youth that coincides with the space of the homeland and the adult chapter of her life that is associated with the independence granted by the life in the country of destination. This is exemplified in the second vignette, where the author represents herself as being fed by her parents while overwhelmed by contradictory thoughts about independence and the desire to be taken care of by someone (Figure 5). It can also be seen in the sixth vignette, where the protagonist lies on a couch because the pregnancy does not allow her much movement, but does not give up her (socially constructed as) youthful desire to party (Figure 6).

Figure 5. Alice Socal, “Heimat”, in Chronicles of a pregnancy. https://www.instagram.com/p/BwzMgJIBq5D/ (last access 17/02/2023).

Figure 6. Alice Socal, “Heimat”, in Chronicles of a pregnancy. https://www.instagram.com/p/BwzMgJIBq5D/ (last access 17/02/2023).

The representation of motherhood that follows continues this approach, which Socal re-adapts through the technique of cartooning. Thanks to the creative possibilities that it grants in terms of alteration of bodily proportions, cartooning allows the artist to create self-representations in which she simultaneously engages with the role of carer/mother and with that of subject who is taken care by either huge puppets⁸² or by the child himself.⁸³ Moreover, her graphic style is characterised by an explicitly girlish aesthetics, in which a palette of pastel colours dominated by pink and its derivatives and childish objects are recurring features. This overall strategy contributes to the symbolic subversion of the gendered paradigm that relegates mothers to the exclusive role of carers and offers a further demonstration of Socal’s capacity to portray her own Self as a hybrid, nomadic entity always occupying the porous threshold between girlhood and womanhood.

Conclusions

The diaspora of Italian comics artists abroad is one example of the possibilities granted by today’s hyper-connected society, which allows migrants to occupy a prolific transnational position between two countries and two professional contexts. The experiences of Nicoz Balboa and Alice Socal confirm the presence of this paradigm and clearly shed light on the ability of contemporary comics artists to cultivate links with the Italian comics scene despite living and working abroad. Not surprisingly, this productive condition of in-betweenness is also transposed at a representational level in the graphic narratives produced by the two artists analysed here. Both Balboa and Socal engage with explicit or implicit strategies of self-portrayal characterised by the recurring themes of travel, displacement, and transcultural negotiation as often painful but always enriching and enlightening practices. In other words, as artists and people as well as objects of representation, Balboa and Socal occupy a ‘diasporic space’ where socio-cultural boundaries and divisions are constantly contested.⁸⁴ A crucial addition to this hybrid positionality is given by both authors’ interest in exploring specifically gendered depictions of their selves. As a result, their work both surpasses cultural divides and systematically questions the rigid binary identity categories imposed by the patriarchal socio-cultural order. In the case of Balboa, this translates into a graphic journaling practice aimed at showcasing the continuous process of unveiling non-heterocisnormative sexual orientations and gender identities. In the case of Socal, the highly gendered narrative that rotates around the experience of motherhood, which has historically shaped women as reproductive machines and caring figures, is deconstructed by the author’s interest in representing her pregnancy and parenting practice as a continuation of (not as opposed to) the experience of childhood and girlhood.

To conclude, Balboa and Socal’s work aligns with what Rosi Braidotti has called ‘nomadic ethics’; a tendency to transpose the rejection of fixity and oppositionality that characterises diasporic practices into the broader realm of subjectivity and of gender identity in particular. Therefore, the representation of subjectivity as a phenomenon devoted to the renegotiation of gender-related dichotomies provided by the two comics artists can be linked to their own transnational condition. This is true both at a conceptual level and at a representational level, as demonstrated by the fact that Balboa’s and Socal’s productions showcase an evident connection between the themes of frequent displacement and that of continuous critical reflection on identity. This double transnational and gendered negotiation, coupled with its portrayal as a prolific movement of becoming, positively resignifies some aspects of the precarious condition of suspension between youth and adulthood that characterises contemporary life. In addition, it sheds light on the (always political) potential inherent in a prolonged phase of growth and development.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project [UIDB/00736/2020] (base funding) and [UIDP/00736/2020] (programmatic funding).

Notes

¹ Roberta Ricucci, The New Southern European Diaspora: Youth, Unemployment, and Migration (Lenham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), p. 3.

² Valentina Cuzzocrea, ‘Squeezing or Blurring? Young Adulthood in the Career Strategies of Professionals Based in Italy and England’, Journal of Youth Studies, 14.6 (2011), 657–74.

³ Valentina Cuzzocrea, ‘“Flexi-Lives”. Facing the Mobility Imperative’, in Youth and the Politics of the Present, ed. by Enzo Colombo and Paola Rebughini (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 44–55.

⁴ Ricucci, p. 3.

⁵ Carola Spadoni, ‘Genere e valori nell’arte italiana’, Il Manifesto, 8 December 2018 <https://ilmanifesto.it/genere-e-valori-nellarte-italiana> [accessed 2 February 2023]; Alessandro Caruso, ‘Professione artista. Che differenza c’è tra un medico e un artista? Il primo è considerato un lavoro, il secondo no. Ma qualcosa sta cambiando’, Insideart <https://insideart.eu/2021/05/13/professione-artista-che-differenza-ce-tra-un-medico-e-un-artista-il-primo-e-considerato-un-lavoro-il-secondo-no-ma-qualcosa-sta-cambiando/> [accessed 2 February 2023]; Francesca Naima, ‘Arte e moda: l’Italia non forma alle sue eccellenze’, L’indipendente <https://www.lindipendente.online/2022/04/16/arte-e-moda-litalia-non-forma-alle-sue-eccellenze/> [accessed 2 February 2023].

⁶ Agnese Malatesta, ‘Fumettisti italiani all’estero e “fuga dei pennelli”,’ Ansa, 29 October 2020 <https://www.ansa.it/canale_lifestyle/notizie/people/2020/10/25/fumettisti-italiani-allestero-e-fuga-dei-pennelli_cb7d706c-6ce5-43f5-97e7-2c0353b200c4.html> [accessed 3 February 2023].

⁷ Malatesta.

⁸ Daniele Comberiati, ‘La migrazione artistica dei fumettisti in Francia dagli anni Settanta ad oggi’, Studi culturali XV.2 (2018), 295.

⁹ Ibid., p. 309.

¹⁰ Sara Dallavalle, ‘Alcuni dati sull’andamento dell’editoria fumettistica in Italia tra graphic novel e fumetto seriale,’ Simultanea 1.2 (2020) <http://italianpopculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Dallavalle_EditoriaFumettisticaFinaleFinale.pdf> [accessed 20 June 2023].

¹¹ Simone Castaldi, ‘A Brief History of Comics in Italy and Spain’, in The Routledge Companion to Comics, ed. by Frank Bamlett, Roy Cook, and Aaron Meskin (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 79–87; Dallavalle, ‘Alcuni dati sull’andamento dell’editoria fumettistica in Italia tra graphic novel e fumetto seriale.’

¹² María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches, ‘Introduction’, in Precarious Youth in Contemporary Graphic Narratives: Young Lives in Crisis, ed. by María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches (New York and London: Routledge, 2022), pp. 1–16 (p. 10).

¹³ Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi, ‘What Is Love? Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves in the Works of Italian Graphic Novelists,’ in Precarious Youth in Contemporary Graphic Narratives: Young Lives in Crisis, ed. by María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches (New York and London: Routledge, 2022), pp. 73–87 (p. 74).

¹⁴ Zerocalcare, Macerie Prime (Rome: Bao Publishing, 2017).

¹⁵ https://baopublishing.it/prodotti/macerie-prime/ [accessed 27 December 2023].

¹⁶ Gipi, LMVDM – La mia vita disegnata male (Rome: Coconino, 2008); Niccolò Pellizzon, Gli amari consigli (Rome: Bao Publishing, 2014); Nuke, Effetto Casimir (Milan: Rizzoli Lizard, 2015); Giulia Sagramola, Incedi estivi (Rome: Bao Publishing, 2015); Nova, Stelle o sparo (Rome: Bao Publishing, 2018).

¹⁷ Mandolini and Busi Rizzi, p. 85.

¹⁸ Teresa Graziano, ‘The Italian e-Diaspora: Patterns and Practices of the Web’, e-Diasporas Atlas (Paris: Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme) <http://www.e-diasporas.fr/working-papers/Graziano-Italians-EN.pdf> [accessed 7 February 2023], p. 4.

¹⁹ Graziano, p. 4; Sara Marino, ‘Transnational Identities and Digital Media: The Digitalisation of Italian Diaspora in London’, JOMEC Journal 7, 2015, ‘The Meaning of Migration’ ed. by Kerry Moore <http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/29785/1/Jomec.pdf> [accessed 07 February 2023].

²⁰ Comberiati, p. 312.

²¹ Maya Quaianni Manuzzato, ‘Promoting Comics in Digital Landscape: Comic Artists as Content Creators’, Studies in Comics (forthcoming 2024).

²² Private interview (online, 20/01/2023).

²³ Gabriel Sheffer, ‘A New Field of Study: Modern Diasporas in International Politics’, in Modern Diasporas in International Politics, ed. by Gabriel Scheffer (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 1–15 (p. 3).

²⁴ Jennifer Brinkerhoof, Digital Diasporas. Identity and Transnational Engagement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 32.

²⁵ Sandra Ponzanesi, ‘Diasporic Subjects and Migration’, in Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women’s Studies, ed. by Gabriele Griffin and Rosi Braidotti (London and New York: Zed Books, 2002), pp. 205–20 (p. 208).

²⁶ Peter Jackson, Phil Crang, and Clare Dwyer, ‘Introduction: The Spaces of Transnationality,’ in Transnational Spaces, ed. by Peter Jackson, Phil Crang, and Clare Dwyer (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 1–23 (p. 2).

²⁷ Dana Diminescu and Dominique Pasquier, Les migrants conectés: TIC, mobilités et migrations (Paris: La Découverte, 2010).

²⁸ Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contested Identities, first ed. 1996 (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), p. 205.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 207.

³⁰ Ibid., p. 208.

³¹ Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 4.

³² Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderland/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987).

³³ Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects, p. 25.

³⁴ Ibid., pp. 30–31.

³⁵ Rosi Braidotti, Transpositions. On Nomadic Ethics (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), p. 9.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 156.

³⁷ https://strangeland.fr/.

³⁸ Balboa’s zines, as most self-published zines, were photocopied versions of original comics that were distributed in underground comics festivals and markets.

³⁹ Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey, The Graphic Novel: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 10–13; Andrea Tosti, Graphic Novel: Storia e teoria del romanzo a fumetti e del rapporto tra parola e immagine (Latina: Tunué, 2016), p. 695; Elisabetta Bacchereti, ‘Introduzione: Un crossover per la modernità letteraria. Il graphic novel’, in Il graphic novel: Un crossover per la modernità letteraria, ed. by Elisabetta Bacchereti, Federico Fastelli, Diego Salvatodori (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2020), pp. VIII–XV, (p. XIV); Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele, ‘Labelling Oneself Fumettista?’, in Precarious Youth in Contemporary Graphic Narratives: Young Lives in Crisis, ed. by Mária Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches (New York and London: Routledge, 2022), pp. 151–64, (p. 157–60).

⁴⁰ Private interview (online, 13/01/2023).

⁴¹ Nicoz Balboa, Nicozrama (Cremona: Centro Fumetto Andrea Pazienza, 2005).

⁴² Nicoz Balboa, Les larmes de crocodile (Paris: Diantre !, 2008).

⁴³ Nicoz Balboa, Born to Lose (Rome: Coconino, 2017).

⁴⁴ Nicoz Balboa, Play with Fire (Nantes: Ici Même Éditions, 2022).

⁴⁵ Nicoz Balboa, Transformer (Bologna: Oblomov, 2023).

⁴⁶ Private interview (online, 13/01/2023).

⁴⁷ Private interview.

⁴⁸ Private interview.

⁴⁹ Private interview.

⁵⁰ Private interview.

⁵¹ Brah, p. 205.

⁵² Nicoz Balboa, Play with Fire (Bologna: Oblomov, 2020), p. 27.

⁵³ ‘Sous rature’ [under-erasure], means that words or sentences are crossed out. A tendency to exploit this strategy has been observed in the work of one of the most influential queer contemporary comics artists, Alison Bechdel, who frequently uses it to represent the renegotiation and constant questioning of identity that characterise queer subjects’ journaling practice. See Christine Quinan, ‘Alison Bechdel and the Queer Graphic Novel’, in Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture, ed. by Rosemary Buikema, Liedeke Plate, and Kathrin Thiele (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 153–68. For a discussion of the concept of ‘sous rature’, see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).

⁵⁴ Balboa, Play with Fire, p. 28.

⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 29.

⁵⁶ Balboa, Play with Fire, pp. 68–123.

⁵⁷ Balboa, Play with Fire, p. 156 onwards.

⁵⁸ Balboa, Play with Fire, p. 170.

⁵⁹ Ibid., pp. 171–72.

⁶⁰ Ibid., pp. 193–94.

⁶¹ Ibid., pp. 202–03.

⁶² Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 8.

⁶³ And in fact it was, as demonstrated by the long discussion between queer and trans theorists, where the notions of anti/normativity and that of rejection/embracement of patriarchal gendered categories are central to the debate. On this, see Chu and Harsin Drager 2019.

⁶⁴ Private interview (online, 13/01/2023).

⁶⁵ Fortier Anne-Marie, ‘Queer Diasporas’, in Handbook of Lesbian and Gay Studies, ed. by Diane Richardson and Steve Seidman (London: Sage, 2002), pp. 183–98, (p. 183).

⁶⁶ Nowadays Bologna is considered one of the main poles for comics in Italy. Apart from being tightly interlaced with the works of important creators of the Italian fumetto of the Seventies and Eighties, such as Andrea Pazienza, Filippo Scozzari, Igort, Lorenzo Mattotti and Vittorio Giardino, Bologna is nowadays considered a hub for those who want a career in the (mostly alternative and authorial part of) comics industry, thanks to the prestigious course ‘Fumetto e illustrazione’ offered by the Accademia di Belle Arti. Significant fumettisti in the Bolognese comics scene include Paolo Bacilieri, Vanna Vinci, Francesca Ghermandi, Ratigher, Tuono Pettinato, Sara Colaone, Fumettibrutti.

⁶⁷ Alice Socal, Sandro (Turin: Eris Edizioni, 2015).

⁶⁸ Alessandro Romeo and Alice Socal, Il fratello di Jürgen (Bologna: Canicola, 2017).

⁶⁹ Alice Socal, Cry Me a River (Rome: Coconino Press, 2017).

⁷⁰ Private interview (online, 30/01/2023).

⁷¹ Alice Socal, Junior (Bresci: Maledizioni, 2020).

⁷² Alice Socal, Wie lange nach (Berlin: Rotopol, 2022).

⁷³ Ibid. Just before the publication of this article, the Italian version of Wie lange noch came out, titled Just Mom. See Alice Socal, Just Mom (Milan 24ore cultura: 2023).

⁷⁴ Alice Socal, Cry Me a River (Bologna: Coconino Press, 2017), p. 114.

⁷⁵ Braidotti, Transpositions, p. 187.

⁷⁶ Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses. Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), pp. 117–70.

⁷⁷ Private interview (online, 30/01/2023).

⁷⁸ Catherine Driscoll, Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 47.

⁷⁹ Joanna Walsh, Girl Online (London and New York: Verso, 2022), ‘The oldest girl in the world’.

⁸⁰ Silvia Federici, ‘The Reproduction of Labour Power in the Global Economy and the Unfinished Feminist Revolution’, in Workers and Labour in a Globalised Capitalism, ed. by Maurizio Atzeni (New York: Palgrave), pp. 85–110 (pp. 100–02).

⁸¹ Alice Socal, ‘Heimat’, in Chronicles of a Pregnancy <https://www.instagram.com/p/BwzMgJIBq5D/> [accessed 17 February 2023].

⁸² Socal, Instagram post, 7 December 2022 <https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl3IuXOMwBF/> [accessed 17 February 2023].

⁸³ Socal, Instagram post, 28 August 2020, <https://www.instagram.com/p/CEbtYiBi7ox/> [accessed 17 February 2023].

⁸⁴ See note 51 above.