LAUSR

ABSTRACT This essay considers the significance of images of ruins in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Joe Sacco’s works on Palestine. I discuss how these comics artists position the built environment in ruins as witnesses to human rights violations. I argue that Satrapi and Sacco use images of ruins to strategically document the extent of war’s devastation, and simultaneously, to advance complex arguments about the nature of suffering and trauma. Their works engage with human rights discourse and forensic architecture towards the inclusion of objects and things (the ruins) as legitimate victims of war and atrocity.