Drawn Literature: Graphic Novels and Hannah Arendt’s Hair

By Ken Krimstein

The initial entry in the Polity of Literature inquiry, “Potatoes or Rice?,” asked: “How can we bring the faces and voices of those in this plurality into view, even in a disembodied realm? How can our bodies—and our lived, collective ‘activity of thinking’—come fully into literature?” One answer is graphic novels. Ken Krimstein, who has been working as “house illustrator” for the Polity of Literature series, published his superb non-fiction graphic novel, The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth, in 2018. Browsing through the book, he spoke about the art of comics, narrative, literature, and the unusual power that graphic novels have to convey the embodied human experience of politics.

Drawn Literature: Graphic Novels and Hannah Arendt’s Hair

8 August, 2022