Visualizing violence: representations of the female body and female trauma in Nina Bunjevac’s Bezimena

[Introduction]: "What does it mean to be nameless? This is the question that lingers throughout Nina Bunjevac’s graphic narrative Bezimena(2019). To be without a name is, in large part, to exist without identity, agency, or power. The process of naming is a political one, bound by power dynamics and structures. The paratext of Bezimena plays a vital role in this comic. In the Author’s Afterword, Bunjevac dedicates the graphic narrative “to all forgotten and nameless victims of sexual violence” (Bunjevac 2019). This positions the graphic narrative as one directly confronting the violence of sexual trauma and a traumatic past. In fact, one of the nameless victims at the center of the story is Bunjevac herself."