The Phantom Comics And The New Left is a book published by Palgrave Pivot in Sweden on the 15th of February 2020. Written by Robert Aman, the book one of the first in-depth texts focusing on the foundational superhero, the Phantom. The book contributes to the ever-growing body of literature on the rise of the New Left, the student revolts, the solidarity movements and other events associated with the leftist radicalization during the 1960’s-1970’s. It also details how the Phantom offers a direct commentary on Sweden’s perception of its own role in the world as a leading proponent of international solidarity.
Robert Aman is Associate Professor in Education. He received his Ph.D. from Linköping University (2014) and has been a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Glasgow (2015-2017), and a visiting research fellow at Duke University (2010), University of Oxford (2013), and Sciences Po Paris (2015).
His publications include the books Impossible Interculturality?: Education and the Colonial Difference in a Multicultural World (Linköping, Linköping University Press, 2014), Decolonising Intercultural Education: Colonial Difference, the Geopolitics of Knowledge, and Inter-Epistemic Dialogue (London, Routledge, 2017), and, with Timothy Ireland, Educational Alternatives in Latin America: New Modes of Counter-Hegemonic Learning (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Aman’s research is multidisciplinary with a base in critical cultural theory. He has published several articles on interculturality and intercultural education, indigenous movements in Latin America, multiculturalism, epistemic racism, and migration. His most recent work explores ideology in Swedish comic books with a particular focus on how the political ideals of the New Left during the 1970s found its way into superhero comics.
The Phantom Comics And The New Left contains 152 black and white pages measuring 14.8cm x 21cm with English text, available in both Paperback and Hardback formats. The book is of interest to researchers and students in comics studies, cultural studies, media studies, and sociology. The front and back covers can be seen below, with the front cover featuring an image of a raised fist, a common symbol of protest, freedom, revolution, and solidarity.
The description provided by Palgrave Pivot for the book reads:
This book is about the Phantom in Sweden, or, more correctly, about Sweden in the Phantom. Robert Aman uncovers how a peripheral American superhero – created in 1936 by Lee Falk – that has been accused of both racism and sexism has become a national concern in a country that several researchers have labelled the most anti-racist and gender equal in the world. When a group of Swedish creators began their official production of licensed scripts based on The Phantom comic in 1972, the character was redefined through the prism of New Left ideology. The plots of these comics, besides aiming to entertain, also sought to affirm for readers the righteousness and validity of an ideological doctrine that, at the time, was dominant among the Swedish public and influential in the country’s foreign policy. Ultimately, Aman demonstrates how the Swedish Phantom embodies values and a political point of view that reflect how Sweden sees itself and its role in the world.
thephantom.fan 