On the Charge of Memory. Auschwitz, Trauma and Representation
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Maureen Turim
What does a field of dogs, arranged like seagulls watching the ocean, suggest about the representation of trauma and Auschwitz? The question, posed in homage to Andrzej Munk's film Pasazerka (The Passenger, 1963), has a long answer. The answer developed here has philosophical and theoretical implications that take us deep into the structure of trauma as understood in the aesthetics of films of consequence. Munk's film provides a particularly forceful example of what representation might mean, as it links Jewish trauma to that of political resistance, yet tells this tale with consummate and poignant irony through the eyes of a Nazi who reexamines her subjective memory, and the testimony she made in bad faith. This makes the movie into a particularly complex example of Holocaust fiction; as one of the most hauntingly composed films of the twentieth century, it underscores a maxim of progressive modernist art: form embodies meaning.
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction. Performing Cultural Trauma in Theatre and Film. Between Representation and Experience
- Hitchcock, the Holocaust, and the Long Take: Memory of the Camps
- Playing Soldiers at the Edge of Imagination. Hotel Modern and the Representation of the Unrepresentable
- On the Charge of Memory. Auschwitz, Trauma and Representation
- Mediating Memories. The Ethics of Post-9/11 Spectatorship
- The Violin Player, the Soccer Game and the Wall-Graffiti. Rhetorical Strategies in the Border-Regions between Israel and Palestine
- Mourning as Method. William Kentridge's Black Box/Chambre Noir
- “‘It's about us!’. Violence and Narrative Memory in Post 9/11 American Theatre
- Beyond Medusa. Recovering History on Stage
- Unclaimed and Unclaimable. Memories of the RAF
- Afterimages. Post-Holocaust, Posttraumatic, and Postcolonial Cinemas
- Das Warten auf den Herrensignifikanten oder: Die Verhandlung von Zufall, Zeichen und Notwendigkeit in Thomas Pynchons The Crying of Lot 49 als Kritik des Indizienparadigmas
- Von der “(Un)Möglichkeit, sich in die Fremde hineinzuleben”. Kulturelle Assimilation als Desintegration am Beispiel von Ilija Trojanows Roman Der Weltensammler
- Rezensionen
- Liste der Mitarbeiter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction. Performing Cultural Trauma in Theatre and Film. Between Representation and Experience
- Hitchcock, the Holocaust, and the Long Take: Memory of the Camps
- Playing Soldiers at the Edge of Imagination. Hotel Modern and the Representation of the Unrepresentable
- On the Charge of Memory. Auschwitz, Trauma and Representation
- Mediating Memories. The Ethics of Post-9/11 Spectatorship
- The Violin Player, the Soccer Game and the Wall-Graffiti. Rhetorical Strategies in the Border-Regions between Israel and Palestine
- Mourning as Method. William Kentridge's Black Box/Chambre Noir
- “‘It's about us!’. Violence and Narrative Memory in Post 9/11 American Theatre
- Beyond Medusa. Recovering History on Stage
- Unclaimed and Unclaimable. Memories of the RAF
- Afterimages. Post-Holocaust, Posttraumatic, and Postcolonial Cinemas
- Das Warten auf den Herrensignifikanten oder: Die Verhandlung von Zufall, Zeichen und Notwendigkeit in Thomas Pynchons The Crying of Lot 49 als Kritik des Indizienparadigmas
- Von der “(Un)Möglichkeit, sich in die Fremde hineinzuleben”. Kulturelle Assimilation als Desintegration am Beispiel von Ilija Trojanows Roman Der Weltensammler
- Rezensionen
- Liste der Mitarbeiter
