This paper examines how contemporary graphic narratives function as a decolonial archive for conveying the lived experiences of resource extractivism, focusing on Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land (2020) and Pablo Fajardo & Sophie Tardy-Joubert’s Crude: A Memoir (2021). Combining close visual analysis with decolonial reading practices informed by Cultural Materialism, Indigenous Studies, and Material Ecocriticism, the study explores how these works operate as counter-archives that embody stories of dispossession, ecological disruption, and community fracture. Through attention to panels, testimonial sequences, depictions of land as pedagogy, and the visual encoding of ritual, objects, dress, and food, the analysis demonstrates how graphic narrative translates Indigenous ecological intelligence into multimodal forms - texts and images, that resist colonial epistemic erasure. Drawing on frameworks of Petrocultures and the concept of Structure of Feeling, the study highlights how the graphic medium captures the atmospheric, infrastructural, and affective reach of oil economies as well as the emergent emotional registers produced by extractive modernity. It further argues that extractivism manifests as disruptive kinship, fracturing relational networks and impairing cultural memory. Through modes of graphic witnessing, these works bridge space and temporality, creating a discourse that confronts indigeneity by binding the community, regardless of their intersectionality. Ultimately, the paper contends that graphic novel mediates as an intermedial counter-narrative within visual narratology, positioning it as a multimodal approach capable of articulating ecological, cultural, and grassroot justice.

Authors:
Ardhra P, National Institute of Technology Calicut, India
Preeti Navaneeth, National Institute of Technology Calicut, India

About the Presenter(s)
Ardhra P is a Research Scholar in the Department of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology Calicut. Her research includes comics and graphic novels, climate change, ecocriticism, and literature and environment.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardhra-p-a938b7337

Dr. Preeti Navaneeth is Assistant Professor, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Calicut. Her work spans cultural and gender studies, critical theory, film studies, and contemporary literature, focusing on identity, media, & representation.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/preeti-navaneeth-bba17179/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Preeti-Navaneeth?ev=hdr_xprf

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardhra-p-a938b7337

Additional website of interest
https://nitc.academia.edu/ArdhraP

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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