Not Western

Photocomics were widely popular in South Africa in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, yet they have received little critical attention. This article has two goals. First, it seeks to contextualise the production and consumption of photocomics during apartheid. Second, focusing on one popular form of the photocomic – the Western – I look at how narrative and aesthetic conventions of the form reinforced, yet simultaneously disturbed, the apartheid state's fantasy of total segregation. Reading practices fostered interracial contact in the imaginative and affective spheres even while apartheid doctrine attempted to prevent it. Conjoining text and photograph, sequence and still, mimesis, fantasy, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the photocomic is not just an outmoded form of popular entertainment, but instead connects readings in popular culture with the formation of complex political subjectivities.