Prosthetic Memory and the Disruption of Affective Control in the Graphic Fiction of Lourenço Mutarelli

Abstract

The processes of affective automation, particularly the process that Stiegler terms “mnemotechnological control,” are a constant underlying theme in the work of the Brazilian comic book artist and novelist Lourenço Mutarelli. No comic book artist or script writer has explored, to the same degree as Mutarelli, the intermedial nature of the comic form both as a technology of affective control and as a tool to examine and contest this control. Mutarelli’s career as a comic book writer and artist spans the period of the postdictatorship. He started creating comics during the late 1980s in independently distributed Fanzines and saw his first critical success in 1991 with the album Transubstanciação [Transubstantiation]. In 2005, he declared his comic A caixa de areia [The Sand Box] to be his last venture in the medium only to return in 2011 with Quando o meu pai se encontrou com o ET fazia um dia quente [When my dad met ET the weather was fine]. His work provides a register of the urban anxieties of the age: predominant among them is the increasing exteriorization of memory into technological supports and the role this plays in what Shaviro refers to as the “generation and capitalization” of affect.