The Jacket is a graphic novel based on a research experience carried out in autumn 2021, along the Italian-French border. Here, border crossing practices take place with the support of Solidaires people who help the migrants in their attempts to cross the border, pursuing the dream of continuing the game. A dramatic game.
The author of the graphic novel led us, by assonance of imagery, to Frantz Fanon’s text “Black skin and white masks”. Accordingly, the relationship between the body of the White and the body of the Black, develops in a sort of menage a trois, in which even the jacket which pass from one person to another, takes on a voice, becoming a living protagonist of the dream of those people who desperately attempt to realise their migration dream. A dream that, as in the game’s premise, often develops under the form of a nightmare. “I wanted to be simply a man among other men. I wanted to arrive young and smooth in a world of our own and build together” (F. Fanon).
The fieldwork experience brought together sociologists, activists and social workers, encouraging the encounter between subjects with different backgrounds.
Excerpts from Fanon’s text, written in 1952, found new reference in reality, revealing the crisis of the relationship between white and black peole. “I fight for the birth of a human world, that is, a world of mutual recognition’ (F. Fanon).
This graphic novel means to highlight the long-time cooperation between the Visual Sociology Research Group of the University of Genoa with the Frantz Fanon Association and the ethno-psychiatric team of ASL4 – Chiavari; but it’s also a tribute for the 50th anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s death.
Illustrator: Stefano Greco.
Script: Simone Spensieri and Gianluca Seimandi.
Preface: Roberto Beneduce, Piero Gorza, Luca Giliberti e Luca Queirolo Palmas.
