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French bande dessinee [comics] provide an excellent area of analysis for developing the concept of transculturation, originally proposed by Fernando Ortiz, and more recently suggested by Alec G. Hargreaves as a useful term for moving beyond the “French”/“Francophone” opposition. The medium has long been transcultural and transnational, and contemporary French comics production and its colonial heritage include visual and textual elements from (post-)colonial and immigrant cultures. Cartoonists position their comics in relationship to different artistic and cultural agenda that are sometimes diametrically opposed to each other along the colonial affrontier.

The theme of the multiethnic banlieue is a trendy one in comics (bandes dessinees), just as it is in other media. More globally, it is part of a long cultural tradition of showing the underside or ...