'The Dance of the Visible and the Invisible': AIDS and the Bande Dessinee

Abstract

Making links between HIV and Comics may not be an obvious thing to do. What connections can there be between, on the one hand, what is arguably the epidemic with the greatest impact this century, affecting an estimated 40 million people worldwide, and calling into question medical, social and political organisation in each country affected-and. onthe other, an art form often trivialised as picture books for children or, at best, a humorous diversion? One answer among others is, of course, that comics can be taken a lot more seriously than they have been as a communicative medium, offering what Scott McCloud calls an almost 'limitless potential as an art form' (McCloud 1994, 201). Likewise AIDS, described by Alain-Emmanuel Dreuilhe as 'avant tout une maladie mentale ... parce que l'isolement et l'angoisse OU il nous plonge fait de nous des alienes' (1989, cited in Benhaim and Broda 1994, 110), requires imaginative communicative action on all fronts, especially in educative contexts, and, why not, using humour effectively as one weapon against silence.