After Memory: World War II in Contemporary Eastern European Literatures

Published by De Gruyter 2021

After Memory

World War II in Contemporary Eastern European Literatures

Edited by: Matthias Schwartz , Nina Weller and Heike Winkel

Volume 29 in the series Media and Cultural Memory

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110713831

Overview
Contents

About this book

Even seventy-five years after the end of World War II, the commemorative cultures surrounding the War and the Holocaust in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe are anything but fixed. The fierce debates on how to deal with the past among the newly constituted nation states in these regions have already received much attention by scholars in cultural and memory studies. The present volume posits that literature as a medium can help us understand the shifting attitudes towards World War II and the Holocaust in post-Communist Europe in recent years. These shifts point to new commemorative cultures shaping up ‘after memory’. Contemporary literary representations of World War II and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe do not merely extend or replace older practices of remembrance and testimony, but reflect on these now defunct or superseded narratives. New narratives of remembrance are conditioned by a fundamentally new social and political context, one that emerged from the devaluation of socialist commemorative rituals and as a response to the loss of private and family memory narratives. The volume offers insights into the diverse literatures of Eastern Europe and their ways of depicting the area’s contested heritage.

Author information

Matthias Schwartz, Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin; Nina Weller, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder); Heike Winkel, Berlin.　

Supplementary Materials

bellu&bellu_growing in the cracks

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	V
After Memory: Introduction Matthias Schwartz, Nina Weller and Heike Winkel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Growing in the Cracks: On Ecologies of the Margins bellu& bellu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
I Imaginary Adoptions: Family Histories and Personal Legacies
Bodies of Evidence: Memory, the Forensic Imagination and Family Histories about former Yugoslavia Stephenie Young Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
Transnational Aspects of Postmemory in Third-Generation Fiction: The ‘Contrapuntal’ Cases of Piotr Paziński and Erwin Mortier Kris Van Heuckelom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
Ghost-Writing World War II Memories: Romanian Holocaust Survivors’ Life Stories in Post-Cold War Western Societies Dana Mihăilescu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
Legacies of Stalinism and the Gulag: Manifestations of Trauma and Post Memory Ernst van Alphen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
II Revisionist Appropriations: National Belongings and Collective Identities
Is the Past a Secret Language? The Jewish Other and the Holocaust in Iurii Vynnychuk’s Novel Tango of Death Roman Dubasevych Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
Post-Imperial Resentments: Alternative Histories of World War II in Popular Post-Soviet Speculative Fiction Maria Galina Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Chetniks and Partisans: Conflicting Narratives in Contemporary Serbian Literature Davor Beganović Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Delectatio Morosa: Reflections on Affective Compensation, Conflation, and Fantasy in Polish Memory Culture Joanna Niżyńska Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
III Fictional Interventions: Alternate Narratives and Subverted Mythologies
‘Spectral Stories’: Fictional Re-Inventions of the Holocaust in Contemporary Polish Literature Aleksandra Ubertowska Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248
Counterfactuals and (Counter)memory: Im/possible Modes of ‘Undoing’ the Great Patriotic War Brigitte Obermayr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
The ‘Gift of Memory’ and the ‘Gift of Oblivion’: Holocaust and World War II in Contemporary Hungarian Literature Stephan Krause Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
De-Mythologising History: On the Fictional and Phantasmatic Dismantling of the Leningrad Blockade Narrative Nina Weller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
IV Imaginative Reconfigurations: Average Heroes and Ambivalent Subjectivities
Digging up Skulls, Fighting with Words: On Radka Denemarková’s Novel Money from Hitler Heike Winkel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	334
Layers of the Crypt: Baltic Women’s Postmemory of World War II in Life Stories and Fiction Tiina Kirss and Rutt Hinrikus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	361
Bridging the Gaps: The Poetics of Postmemory in the Czech Graphic Novel Alois Nebel Madlene Hagemann and Gernot Howanitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	409
Obsessed with the Past: On the Topicality of the Historical Novel in Eastern Europe Today Matthias Schwartz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	429
Appendix
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	457
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	459
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	465

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars, students and a broader audience interested in memory, Eastern European, literary, cultural and media studies
Pages
- Front matter: 7
- Main content: 479
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 7
- Coloured Illustrations: 9
Keywords: World War II Memory; World War II in Literature; Theory of Memory; Eastern European Cultures

eBook

Published: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 9783110713831

Hardcover

Published: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 9783110713732