Someone well-versed in the mechanisms of perception should be skeptical of any artform that purports to portray thoughts “in all their complexity.” Comics can definitely challenge the mind in a special way, but they have their limitations as well, just like any medium of art.

He claims that comics provide “a means to capture and convey our thoughts, in all their complexity, and a vehicle well-suited for explorations to come” (67). I believe he is correct about this, although I suspect his assessment of comics’ potential may be slightly inflated. Sousanis rightly suggests that upending our habits of perception can bring about expansions of consciousness, and thinks that comic books––with their trademark mixture of words and images––are in a unique position to precipitate such changes. Sousanis has taken their philosophies to heart and put them to excellent use. Having studied Dewey under Johnson’s guidance during my undergraduate education, I was delighted to see these names woven into such an unusual and boundary-breaking treatise. Sousanis’s perspective is deeply indebted to American philosopher John Dewey, who he cites more than once, as well as to Mark Johnson and George Lakoff, two inheritors of Dewey’s tradition. Meaning is…conveyed not only by what’s depicted, but through structure: the size, shape, placement, and relationship of components––what they’re next to and what they’re not, matters. He explores the ironic tension between the expansion of scientific knowledge and the intellectual barriers that arise between different areas of study, and also demonstrates a keen understanding how relationality affects meaning: Drawing from the works of scientists, philosophers and artists, Sousanis creates a journey through three-deminsional space rendered on two-dimensional surfaces. Sousanis defines “unflattening” as “a simultaneous engagement of multiple vantage points from which to engender new ways of seeing” (32). The artwork in this book is brilliantly conceived and exquisitely rendered. The written text is somewhat vague and highly repetitive, but Sousanis more than compensates for this weakness with visual creativity. Sousanis’s central message––that we should learn to see from multiple perspectives at once instead to searching for the “correct” outlook––is an important one, despite not being particularly novel.

This stunning work of art presents a gauntlet of brain-teasers that challenge our assumptions about the nature of human perception and understanding. Nick Sousanis’s Unflattening has the look of a graphic novel, but it’s actually a group of interrelated philosophical essays presented in comic book form.

Sousanis unflattening