Reading (in) the Holocaust. Malgorzata Wójcik-Dudek
the memory of children, i.e. of the so-called fourth generation.
As postmemory, the notion coined by Hirsch, simultaneously refers to the present and to the future, it is invaluable in exploring the history of Holocaust representations, supporting in this way the construction of a history of historiography which encompasses the narratives of several generations of historians and artists. Ironically speaking, the Shoah has a future, as it were, which Norman Finkelstein showed quite uncompromisingly in his controversial The Holocaust Industry, where the Holocaust – or, more precisely, the memory of the Holocaust – was envisioned as an effectively working, profit-generating mechanism. Things being the way they are, Finkelstein appealed to his (our) contemporaries to perform “the noblest gesture” for the six million Holocaust victims, that is, “to preserve their memory, learn from their suffering and let them finally rest in peace.”7
This is quite a radical suggestion and it stands a rather slim chance of being followed,8 although researchers agree that while the powerful appeal which the Holocaust testimonies initially had has not subsided perhaps, the ways in which this potency is hoarded and used have profoundly changed. Berel Lang, who sharply criticises the subjectivity and figurativeness of literary discourse, which is after all a testimony to the second generation’s altered attitude to the memory of the Holocaust, insists that “the most valuable […] writings about the Nazi genocide appear in the form of historical discourse,”9 and though this discourse will continue to develop, “admittedly, a second and third generation of memories ←13 | 14→[…] have since added their identities to the event itself […] an incentive to art and reflection.”10
The strict position adopted by Lang, who basically denied all those who have not experienced the Holocaust personally any right to narrative, could not but invite incisive criticism. Hayden White, one of Lang’s most vehement polemicists, insisted that there were no objective facts and historiography was always an interpretation. His famous dictum that “[t];here is an inexpungable relativity in every representation of historical phenomena”11 initiated explorations of historical prose, or rather of a postmodernist genre of the (neo)historical novel which produces historiographic metafiction that typically shows the historical embedment of fiction and the discursive structuring of history.12 According to White, the chief (if not the only) purpose of the narrative form is to facilitate the absorption of information.13 Consequently, if historiography is inescapably figurative, there is no avoiding metaphorisation in any accounts of the Holocaust experience.14
The concept of the narrativity of history proved revolutionary vis-à-vis Holocaust representations; it also invaluably contributed to the idea of the ethical shift which was taking place in historiography and was embodied first and foremost in a heightened alertness to the positioning of the knowing subject and his/her attitude to the object of knowing.15 Specifically, White’s theory undermined the belief in the objectivity of depictions of the past and in the transparency of language as a medium, instead offering reflection on the narrative structures underpinned by metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony.
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Frank Ankersmit, a practitioner of late narrativism, has gone a step further. The Dutch philosopher has developed a concept of historical experience which originates in contact with an object that offers direct access to the past. Thereby, Ankersmit proposes going beyond narrative and becoming receptive to a specific revelation of the past. This means that post-postmodernist history should focus on experience comprehended as a sublime relation with the past. Such a concept of history demands that accounts of the past use aesthetic categories rather than epistemological ones, a notion that triggered immediate criticism from historians.16
Undoubtedly, postmemorial practices can also easily be accused of appropriating the past because, as Hirsch explains, the link between postmemory and the past is established through imagination, projection and creation, rather than through recollection.17 It is precisely the concept of recall that will exert a considerable, differential influence on the shape, or rather shapes, of memory, because “in the model Hirsch proposes, it is essential to register the temporal and qualitative difference between the memories of the first and second generations of the Holocaust. Postmemory is memory which is in a sense belated, even vicarious, as Hirsch puts it, in relation to the memory of the Survivors, for one of its goals is to work through the parents’ trauma anew, something they have failed to do themselves.”18
According to Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, the definition of postmemory should be extended to include displacement as its vital factor, because memory is concretised in a symbolic space and time, which turn out to be, as it were, a replacement of the past. Tokarska-Bakir claims that this displacement is caused by the fact that the actual Holocaust survivors,19 who have instilled certain models of Holocaust representations in the second generation, are inevitably passing away. Consequently, the depositaries of such interpretations of the past are understandably challenged to remember the Shoah otherwise than it ←15 | 16→was transmitted to them.20 Multiple synonyms of postmemory are invented in repeated attempts to capture this transfer of narrative from parents to children; notable examples include absent memory, belated memory, inherited memory, prosthetic memory, memory of ashes and the like.21
In the course of time, principles channelling intergenerational communication were established and endorsed in the space of postmemory; consequently, the necessary conditions of mutual understanding were met, such as the development of the same system of meanings for communication participants; attentive listening to the sender of the message; and the negotiation of an agreement among the communication participants. Of course, in the context of the second generation’s postmemory, these principles of Luhmann’s communication model could not be expected to be accurately implemented, because the survivors, as a rule, tended either to be silent or to rely on severely restrictive narrative practices. What was needed was a new model of writing that was compatible with the experiences of the second generation and, at the same time, addressed to the subsequent one. Aesthetically shocking tales of the children of survivors were primarily supposed to fulfil a therapeutic function.
This process is perfectly encapsulated in David Grossman’s novel See Under: Love. One of its parts, entitled “Momik,” is a profound analysis of relationships between a child who has been raised in complete ignorance of the Holocaust, which directly affected his grandfather, and the adults entangled in the conspiracy of silence. Momik endeavours to release the “Nazi Beast” all by himself in order to deal with it once and for all. For this purpose, he hurts the animals he keeps shut in the basement of his house, yet as cruelty does not bring him any closer to the truth about the Holocaust, Momik attempts to grasp it by reading. However, even though he reads avidly and assiduously, he still cannot comprehend the passivity of his grandfather and other victims of Nazi oppression. He grows alienated from his loved