Towards a poetics of memoryCharlotte Delbo's and Cynthia Ozick's representation of the holocaust experience

Zusammenfassung

Recent trends in Holocaust Studies champion an interdisciplinar approach to history. This dissertation, which analyses literary representations of the Nazi genocide, places emphasis on the need to enter l'univers concentrationnaire from a multitude of angles. The fact that they rely on a kind of discourse that has been traditionally related with imagination does not render them less valid as cognitive instruments; it can neither be argued that they lack ethical commitment. To start with this study examines the role played by memory in our contemporary society, where there exists an imperative not to forget the crimes committed by the Nazi regimewe consider which are the ethical and political constraints that determine what is remembered and what is forgotten. These considerations acquire a special meaning when studied with regard to the Holocaust. As a matter of fact, the commemoration of the events depends on who remembers, where does the act of remembering take place and how is the act of remembering undertaken. The study is aimed at showing that literature works as an instrument at the service of memory and that it can also be used as a mechanism of subversion against dominant discourses. Far from a kind of conceptualisation based on looking at literature from an aesthetic dimension, we defend the social function of literature. Through an analysis of the work of Charlotte Delbo, a survivor, and of Cynthia Ozick, a Jewish-American writer thoroughly committed to the suffering of her coreligionists, emphasis has been placed on the fact that both testimony and fiction are valid responses to the Holocaust. This event is considered from a three-tiered perspective: memory, identity and trauma.