Conservatism and feminism: representations of women in Mafalda’s Comic Strips

Abstract

This work proposes an analysis about the discursive practices in Mafalda's comic strips, produced by the Argentinian graphic humorist Quino, which allow a reflection on the role of women in society, ideology and humor present in this process. The corpus of this work is composed of five strips by Mafalda taken from the book Toda Mafalda (2003). The work intends to understand the ideologies and representations of women in society in the selected corpus, and to analyze how humor builds meaning effects. The statements of the characters Raquel, Mafalda and Susanita will be addressed, who, despite maintaining a bond of friendship or kinship, have different discourses and ideologies. Some concepts such as discursive formation, feminism and machismo, the imaginary about women, as well as ideology, the sliding of meanings and metaphor were also worked on. It is important to point out that, even though they were produced in the 1960s and 1970s, Mafalda's comic strips were still relevant and current. In addition, the work allows for a reflection on the ideological family apparatus and its role in the reproduction/transformation of social relations. In the conclusions we discuss the problems of conceiving the ideological apparatus of the family from the point of view of sociological functionalism.