Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Pahor, Marija Juric

Titel

The Necessity to Talk about Auschwitz. The Narrativity of Remembering and Geno-Text of Symbolization

Ist Teil von

• Razprave in gradivo - Institut za narodnostna vprasanja (1990), 2008-01, Vol.56-57, p.6-33

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Relating to the theories of social constructionism and poststructuralism, the article discusses the narrative or discursive constitution of remembrance, with special regard to the "geno-text of symbolization" (Julia Kristeva), based on pre-language articulation, linked to the modality of the primary process. The focus is on the issue: how is this articulation, which encompasses body and subject, reflected in testimonial literature (literary notes, memoirs, narrative interviews) of the survivors of fascist and Nazi concentration camps, especially Slovenes from Carinthia and Primorje. The analyzed materials offer the following conclusion: whenever an individual or a collective finds himself/itself exposed to the so called man-made disasters, an irrepressible desire arises to fix the experience in the memory and to transmit it to the following generations. The article further deals with the dilemma of unpronounceability and "narrative polish", satisfying the need to combine different "subject positions", as well as the need of survival and continuity of existence. However, this tendency cannot conceal the gap, reflected in the feeling of having two identities. The writer Boris Pahor, survivors of several Nazi concentration camps, referred to this ambiguity in the following sentence: "A person before and after Germany -- who knows if these two will ever meet". This cut, caused by life in "extreme conditions", is reflected in the transformation of self, therefore evoking psychological processing which never stops. Adapted from the source document.