Heroes for Change or Systems for Change? Is it time to reject heroism discourse? : A critical eye into a comic edutainment on SDGs

Sammanfattning: This study seeks to extend observations on critical citizenship education by examining what the edutainment Comics Uniting Nations, which presents the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), may tell us about the UN view of imagined agency and citizenship, and subsequently, its broader view of development. Given that the SDGs’ message within the comics targets a global audience, the research work in this thesis puts the comic Heroes for Change to the test by surveying how the minority community in Gaza, occupied Palestine feel and situate themselves in the SDGs’ universal message. This is done via interviews with representatives who work with the youth in Gaza at local NGOs. The main discursive and visual analytical tools are postcolonial critical literacy in international development initiatives, soft vs critical theories of citizenship, and superhero semiotic and panel rhetoric organization. The result of this work shows that while the comic uses a universal and convivial citizenship discourse, it misses being a bottom-up designed agenda and hence misses distinguishing between marginalized and ordinary citizens. Also, the superhero metaphor echoes a problematic aspect in opening space for critical thinking and challenging the status quo, which calls to spark further debate on the limitations/potentials of superhero discourse as a communicative tool for radical development/social change.