Terrestrial Realism and the Gravity of World Literature: Joe Sacco’s Seismic Lines

Through a close reading of Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land (2020), graphic novel about struggle Dene people in Canada’s Northwestern territories, this article shows how Sacco effects “peripheral realism” that draws systemic continuities different phases colonial modernity into view. The then describes “terrestrial realism,” which combines his peripheral realism with dialectical participation reader as well. Finally, concluding theoretical discussion, I consider practice drawing allows us to think through response modernity’s combined and uneven development is both materialist decolonial at same time. Although former typically insists on singularity totality, latter promotes contradictory plurality, terrestrial realisms suggest way for theorists world literature find point methodological solidarity against capitalist gravitational force.