Traversing ruins: Kristen Radtke’s post-apocalyptic dark tours in Imagine Wanting Only This

ABSTRACT

Kristen Radtke’s graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This (2017) visually chronicles the author’s journeys through post-apocalyptic sites including abandoned cities, derelict landscapes, and architectural ruins in order to process the grief over the loss of her uncle and to confront her recurrent thoughts on mortality. Diagnosed with a fatal heart condition that catapults her into reflections on the transience of human existence, Radtke seeks answers by engaging in a series of dark tours to find physical manifestations of her inner turmoil amidst deserted cities and modern ruins. This essay examines how Radtke treads complex subjects of loss, angst, and death through nuanced visual storytelling while associating her vulnerable body with the dilapidated structures she explores. It further investigates how ruins as transitional spaces that simultaneously evoke recollections of a catastrophic past as well as the hope of human endurance offer avenues of self-reflection for the grieving protagonist, aiding her to successfully navigate her grief and overcome her anxieties.

KEYWORDS:

• Dark tourism
• death
• ruins
• Kristen Radtke
• Imagine Wanting Only This

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Much of the scholarship on life writing maintains that autobiographies and memoirs depict not the unvarnished truth about the author’s life but the experiences of the autobiographical character created by the author based on their prejudices and preferences (de Man 1979; Nelson 1997). However, examining life writing in comics, Elisabeth El Refaie (2012) suggests that ‘it is impossible to draw strict boundaries between factual and fictional accounts of someone’s life, since memory is always incomplete and the act of telling one’s life story necessarily involves selection and artful construction’ (12). Likewise, while affirming that the characters in life writing ‘are authorial creations’ (171), Thomas G. Causer (2012) claims that ‘they are not like fictional characters: they do not exist solely within the narrative. They stand (in) for real, mortal people who share a world with us’ (171). Considering these debates, one can argue that the writers of autobiographies engage in a balancing act between fact and fiction while retelling life experiences.

2. In the opening monologue of Manhattan (1979) Woody Allen voices his adoration for New York City while lamenting how drugs, loud music, television, and crime destroyed its moral fabric turning New York a ‘metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture’ (00:01:55).

3. Radke’s vision is evocative of the genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) wherein a God decreed apocalyptic flood purges the universe of human wickedness and restores the pre-creation state.