Abstract
Constant and ongoing revision is the compositional tactic through which many contemporary superhero narratives negotiate the powerful struggle between reiteration of the genre’s past, and creative expression of its future. Instead of a gradual succession of improved renditions of a text, each one effacing and superseding the imperfections of its predecessors, revision is revealed as the production of multiple versions whose differences and diversities are “capable of being in uncertainties”, as Keats describes the creative attitude which he terms Negative Capability: ontologically equal textual variations that wear their inconsistencies openly, and reject the pressure to resolve their multiplicities into the synthetic continuity of a polished final text. This article explores the parallels between this narrative strategy and the struggles to reestablish and reinvigorate classroom revision practices in the wake of the sea changes within contemporary composition studies frequently characterized as the social turn. In the following pages, two superhero narratives, Planetary; and Supreme: The Story of the Year, will be explored as offering new frames and metaphors that can assist in re-imagining the practice of revision within the writing classroom, a process that can be described as revising revision for the multiversity.
Recommended Citation
Hyman, David
(2015)
"Revision in the Multiversity: What Composition Can Learn from the Superhero,"
SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education: Vol. 2:
Iss.
1, Article 5.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sane/vol2/iss1/5
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