Image, Testimony, and Memory in Art Spiegelman, W. G. Sebald, and Primo Levi
This article analyzes the complex intersections between memory, trauma, and literary representation of the Holocaust, focusing on the works Maus: A Survivor's Tale (2005), by Art Spiegelman; The Emigrants: Four Long Stories (2009), by W. G. Sebald; and Is This a Man? (1988), by Primo Levi. The central problem of the research lies in investigating the possibilities and limits of language in extreme situations, where horror challenges the capacity for enunciation. The objective is to demonstrate how these works highlight different places of speech and suffering, ranging from eyewitness accounts in concentration camps to inherited trauma and the melancholy of exile. Methodologically, the research is based on comparative analysis and literary theory, using conceptual contributions from authors such as Giorgio Agamben, Márcio Seligmann-Silva, and Hayden White. The results indicate that, although the Holocaust is often described as unspeakable, the works analyzed construct hybrid languages—between text and image, fact and fiction—that allow the transmission of traumatic experience, constituting an ethical resistance against forgetting and “memoricide.”
Image, Testimony, and Memory in Art Spiegelman, W. G. Sebald, and Primo Levi
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.5157126020112
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Palavras-chave: Holocaust; Testimonial Literature; Memory; Representation.
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Keywords: Holocaust; Testimonial Literature; Memory; Representation.
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Abstract:
This article analyzes the complex intersections between memory, trauma, and literary representation of the Holocaust, focusing on the works Maus: A Survivor's Tale (2005), by Art Spiegelman; The Emigrants: Four Long Stories (2009), by W. G. Sebald; and Is This a Man? (1988), by Primo Levi. The central problem of the research lies in investigating the possibilities and limits of language in extreme situations, where horror challenges the capacity for enunciation. The objective is to demonstrate how these works highlight different places of speech and suffering, ranging from eyewitness accounts in concentration camps to inherited trauma and the melancholy of exile. Methodologically, the research is based on comparative analysis and literary theory, using conceptual contributions from authors such as Giorgio Agamben, Márcio Seligmann-Silva, and Hayden White. The results indicate that, although the Holocaust is often described as unspeakable, the works analyzed construct hybrid languages—between text and image, fact and fiction—that allow the transmission of traumatic experience, constituting an ethical resistance against forgetting and “memoricide.”
- MICHELLE DOS SANTOS
- Larissa Silva Nascimento
- Vanessa dos Santos
- Ewerton de Freitas Ignácio
