understanding the experiences of fun home's main character

    I believe Professor Bump’s framework of “emotive criticism” as he developed in his article about the Bluest Eye can help us contextualize the author’s methodology in Fun Home. Before I explain this further, I would like to begin by recalling certain members of our class’s initial reactions to the graphic novel. The graphic nature of the images presented in the novel are certain to generate diverse emotional responses. It can be uncomfortable to directly confront images of homosexual intercourse for somebody with a background that has limited his or her interactions with anything but intolerance towards homosexuals. Also considering many religious and ideological beliefs reject homosexuality on face, it is understandable that an authentic depiction of a single lesbian’s experience with her family and her sexuality could stimulate diverse responses. As a result, I think that we should be mindful when we form opinions about the content of the book. Rather than being appalled at the graphic nature of the descriptive phrase, the “walls were wet and sticky,” we should ask ourselves why the author decided to use this description (81). The author intended on posing specific provocative questions for the reader, and a retreat into moralism or cynicism could endanger our ability to answer them. The only way that we can properly engage in these questions is if we try to put ourselves in the shoes of the main character so that we can understand the type of trauma that she encountered.

    However, I will concede that utilizing the framework of “emotive criticism” places us in an awkward position in relation to the content of Fun Home. In some ways, it seems like the main character ironically deploys critical literature to describe her experience. This becomes especially self-evident with the author’s treatment of Camus, who she (admittedly apprehensively) correlates with her father’s suicide. While she notes that Camus concludes that suicide is Camus’s conclusion, she provides an image of a highlighted Camus passage describing the “exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd” (47). But it is certainly an awkward disposition, considering the main character herself uses the narrator’s  voice to describe the house as the ‘simulacrum’ in reference to Baudrillard’s theories, among other theoretical references (including a huge emphasis on Greek classics). Certainly the main character seems to make use of positive instances of theories to speculate about her existence.

    However, I believe that ultimately Fun Home calls for an emotive response not relegated to a specific theory. Rather than reading it as an instance of a specific conception of queer theory or alluding to a deconstructionist account of the graphic novel, it is important to keep in mind this unique instance of portraying a queer experience in the form of a graphic novel.  By utilizing a form of novel that has been largely absent from academic analysis, surely this type of experience justifies a unique form of critique.