BODIES AND SCENES (RE)TRANSLATED IN HABIBI, BY CRAIG THOMPSON: TRANSCULTURALITY AND ORIENTALISM REVIEWED

ABSTRACT In this work, I present and discuss transculturalism, images and translation in Craig Thompson’s graphic novel Habibi, trying to show how this work is a transcultural translation, since it aims to represent an Eastern Arab world to Western eyes, but incurring the same institutionalized orientalism that embodies several other works of art, science and politics in the Western world, which tend to diminish and homogenize the diverse cultures of the peoples living in what is now called the Middle East. In Habibi’s case, it is through bodies and scenes that orientalism is most present, evoking the old formula of the Arabian Nights while telling its story - as if all the peoples of the Middle East lived in the desert wearing turbans, among other stereotypes. In the end, I present a possibility of translation through the images of the graphic novel, in order to try to diminish, at least a little, the influence of the biased orientalism in Habibi.