1 IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE Vol. 22, No.1 (2021)
Editorial
Anneleen Masschelein
Anne Reverseau
Hilde Van Gelder
Image [&] Narrative was launched in 2000 by Jan Baetens, Professor of Cultural Studies at the KU Leuven
and an eminent specialist in literature, comics, photo novels, among others. The ambitions of this online academic journal, which was intended to be multilingual (which explains the ampersand "&") and is still bilingual today, were to bring the literary and the visual closer together and to reduce the barriers between legitimate and ordinary culture. Thanks to the dynamism of its editorial team, Image [&] Narrative has become an important, classified academic journal, a veritable showcase for cultural studies in Belgium and beyond.
In the 70 issues published since "Cognitive Narratology" in 2000, illustrated books, photography and especially comics have occupied center stage, but cinema, children's literature, poetry and posters also found their way into the journal. The image, of course, is omnipresent, but there is also the question of the absent image, the image "in the text", for example with the two issues "Photographic Untruths in Fiction" in 2019 and 2020. The contemporary period (the issues devoted to Lewis Trondheim or manga, for example) is close to the previous centuries (the Belle Epoque for the issue "Impression(s)" in 2019 or the 18th century for the issue devoted to Horace Walpole in 2017). The relationship between politics and photography is also discussed in the issues "Photography and Capitalism" (2018) and "Repoliticizing Discourses on Photography" (2017).
Image [&] Narrative is thus intended to be transnational and transmediatic, as the title of a thematic issue of
2017 makes explicit: "Audiovisual Memory and the (Re)Making of Europe".
Image [&] Narrative does not have a fixed field of research, rather it poses questions of its own: how does the
image tell a story? What narratives do images create, call or crystallize? What looks, gestures and events in front of the images?
A year ago, Jan Baetens handed over the journal to the editorial team of Anneleen Masschelein, Anne Reverseau and Hilde Van Gelder. We would like to continue his two-decade work, honoring the initial openness and diversity of approaches, while also establishing our own editorial focus on the relationship between images and narratives, and the postulate that an image is never alone but always in relation.
The special issue that we have prepared to open this new chapter and the year 2021, composed solely of "Varia", is a way of highlighting this diversity, as well as the dynamism of the magazine and its readership (as had already been done in 2004 and 2014).
The issue reveals some surprising angles of approach in the so-called "Text-Image" studies. For some great names unexpected perspectives are opened, such as the study of Picasso’s poems; the analysis of the website of a 19th-century author, Hector Malot; the question of the shock photographs of the Vietnam war, treated in a
2 IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE Vol. 22, No.1 (2021)
philosophical way; the cinema of Péter Forgács, from the angle of montage; photography, through the character of “the spectator"; and finally a cartoon in its metacritical dimension and a rare engraving project. This issue of "Varia" follows another special issue, Initials J.B., composed of creative contributions, poems, literary texts, photographs, drawings, and even a photo novel. The issue, edited by two of Jan Baetens’ former colleagues, Nadja Cohen and Anne Reverseau, was intended as a creative counterpart to his immense critical range, and as an original way to mark the transition. It was constituted of work by a variety of authors and artists whose work the creator of Image [&] Narrative loves and defends, as a gift to mark the magazine’s 20th anniversary. This issue 21.3 was published online, but also as a book at Impressions nouvelles in September 2020.
From the next issue onwards, we will return to short thematic issues, augmented by a few "Varia" and reviews. The next issues will address, among other themes, representations of precariousness, transmedia practices, the challenges of artists’ and writers’ houses, the role of iconographic circulation in national identities, the representation of famous women, children’s books linked to museums, and other questions that may be submitted to us in the coming months, since the journal has, since its origins, always been open to proposals for thematic issues as well as isolated articles.
However, we will also add a new section to the next issues. In a new chapter in the history of the journal, we want to give more space to original and/or creative forms of research, to texts that fall outside the strict academic format, such as surveys, accounts of experiences, letters or texts from artists, or even lexicons. While the journal has sometimes welcomed this kind of work, we would like to go further and create a special section, "Experiences".
Another change in this new formula, in 2021 is that we will go from 4 to 3 annual issues, in order to slow down the rhythm to a more modest scale. In this way, we want to publish Image [&] Narrative at breathing moments in university calendars: at the very beginning of autumn, before the start of the school year, in the end of January, and at the end of the academic year, in May/June.
Curious, open, intermedial, crossing over different times: these are the qualities of Image [&] Narrative to which we are committed. They are the journal’s strong points, that stood out in our rereading on the past issues, and the ones we want to continue to emphasize in future issues.
