Precarious Lives, Precarious Comics. Autofiction and Autobiography in Contemporary Spanish Women Cartoonists

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze precariousness and precarity in recent Spanish comics by young women cartoonists. Mamen Moreu, Ana Belén Rivero, Ana Oncina, Teresa Ferreiro and Roberta Vázquez have been influenced by the global financial crisis of 2008, partaking of a certain “poetics of crisis” which has emerged in Spanish literary and comics production. Precarious employment, economic uncertainty and social vulnerability are shown in their comics. What is unique of these group of authors is that they use their precarious reality as the source material for their humorous, yet bitter, stories. They expose their economic constraints, precarious jobs, and unstable relationships by using self-irony, grotesque imagery, and graphic distortion. We argue that these cartoonists show themselves as vulnerable characters facing difficult circumstances while at the same time exorcising their vulnerability through humor; by doing so, precariousness attains an empowering aspect.