Abstract
Vielleicht Esther exemplifies the postmemorial family narrative: a traumatic past is traced from the perspective of the non-witness. However, Katja Petrowskaja's text complicates the boundaries of the text's genre and postmemorial discourse: established figures of postmemory, genealogy, and temporality, e.g. the family tree, are interlaced with a textile imagery and notions of the palimpsest, pointing to a topographical approach that entails affiliative, non-familial forms of postmemorial response and an understanding of historical responsibility as ‘implication’. Both affiliation and implication involve the reader in a particular way, while invoking broader debates about the shape of Holocaust memory in a future without survivors.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 168-189 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Modern Language Review |
Volume | 131 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2 Jan 2018 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language
- Literature and Literary Theory