The primacy of words over images has deep roots in Western culture. But what if the two are
inextricably linked equal partners in meaning-making? Written and drawn entirely as comics
Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking. Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of
scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry
into the ways humans construct knowledge. Unflattening is an insurrection against the fixed
viewpoint. Weaving together diverse ways of seeing drawn from science philosophy art
literature and mythology it uses the collage-like capacity of comics to show that perception
is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. While
its vibrant constantly morphing images occasionally serve as illustrations of text they more
often connect in nonlinear fashion to other visual references throughout the book. They become
allusions allegories and motifs pitting realism against abstraction and making us aware that
more meets the eye than is presented on the page. In its graphic innovations and restless
shape-shifting Unflattening is meant to counteract the type of narrow rigid thinking that
Sousanis calls "flatness." Just as the two-dimensional inhabitants of Edwin A. Abbott's novella
Flatland could not fathom the concept of "upwards " Sousanis says we are often unable to see
past the boundaries of our current frame of mind. Fusing words and images to produce new forms
of knowledge Unflattening teaches us how to access modes of understanding beyond what we
normally apprehend.
