However, nostalgia itself is not devoid of agency its relevance to restorative agendas trying to reinstate an ideal lost home or past has repeatedly been discussed (Davis 1979 Hutcheon 2000). Such critiques resonate with oft-cited accounts of postmodern nostalgia and its alleged lack of ‘genuine historicity’, i.e., failure to identify the actual agents of historical change (Jameson 1991). In this view, phenomena like facsimile reprints, stylistic references or narratives focussing on obscure or lost works are all symptomatic of a nostalgic longing – which provides us with a commodified, selective view of the past, and thus defies a ‘true’ sense for the history of comics. The turn towards the medium’s past in contemporary comics and graphic novel production has been critically assessed as an instance of a broader ‘nostalgia’ or ‘retro culture’ (Baetens/Frey 2015). Using a practice-led methodology, the author proposes and describes an ideal research centre for Canadian graphic history that would be operated on a self-sustaining business model. The lack of a sufficiently comprehensive and specialized archive and exhibition space is particularly regretted, with important illustration collections urgently waiting for a home, and existing archives unable to manage current holdings. Canadian self-conception is therefore skewed, and current and future cultural research is impoverished. The cultural inheritance of the United States has especially been overlooked while British ties have been favoured. It argues that the preservation of Canadian visual culture has been biased toward a cultural-nationalist agenda, neglecting the majority of popular illustrated visual culture. ![]() Keywords: historiography, illustration, Canada, archives, preservation, design, research, funding Abstract: This critical historiography documents the reception of anglophone Canada’s illustrators by art history, cultural theory, cultural policy, and institutional collections from the late nineteenth century to the present.
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