Sophie read Nick Sousanis’ Unflattening through the lens of addiction and trauma, and researched comics, narrative theory, semiotics, psychology and neuroscience to discuss the nature of perception and its role in recovery. In graphic narrative we have the language of the unconscious and a unique and powerful way to communicate distorted and fragmented realities created by trauma and the associated suppressed emotions and memories. Graphic autobiography is a process for exploring hidden trauma, and in acknowledging, processing and letting go, as well as sharing it with others, it can be a powerfully healing act.

Sousanis’ uses the concept of Flatland (from Edwin A. Abbott’s novella of the same title) where 2D inhabitants cannot fathom the concept of upwards, to represent a way of thinking and seeing the world that is fixed, closed and narrow. Unflattening shows that by fusing words and image, we can access modes of understanding beyond what we normally apprehend.

In this paper, Sophie compares Flatland to the experience of being locked into lethal habits, as well as the narrow cultural enclosures that cultivate stereotypes. She presents Graphic Autobiography as a means to change the narrative, and in doing so helping to disrupt the cycle, to shift personal perception and bring about a more compassionate, multi-dimensional society.

In 1962, John Hubley became Harvard University’s first teacher of animation in the new Visual Arts Center, and it was his idea to make a film based on Edwin Abbott’s famous novel about life in a two-dimensional world, Flatland, and you can watch it here.