The Ever-Shifting Wall: Edmond Baudoin and the “Continuous Poem” of Autobiography

Abstract

This chapter argues that French bande dessinée master Edmond Baudoin’s output must be considered in its entirety as an outstanding and striking autobiographical project, even when some of his comics, taken singularly, may not conform to most formal or theoretical markers of the genre. Although I can focus solely on a few texts here, I show how this project goes well beyond Philippe Lejeune’s “autobiographical pact” and most conceptualizations of graphic memoirs. Taking in account comics-making as a potentially archival art, and by focusing on a number of textual and representational strategies of the author, we will engage with how Baudoin thematizes that which Carolyn Steedman called the difficulties of retrieving past traces.