Abstract

Beyond picturing local experts and activists working to both remediate the harm caused by chlordecone and representing the iconographies of anticolonial resistance, how can a form like documentary comics enact or contribute to political change? I argue that one answer lies in the way that the formal interrelation of images and other media in comics creates meaning. The iconic solidarity of Tropiques Toxiques permits the copresence and coordination of media operating along different epistemological valences, from the objective-abstract symbology of diagrams and data visualizations to the subjective experience of the human to the archival document, rendered accessible and interactive via the augmented reality interface. Each medial form, operating in copresence, changes the way we see and understand the others just as each of Oublié’s collaborators and interlocutors, brought into the iconic solidarity of the comics, constitute a coalition of scientific, medical, and political expertise.