Agonistic homecomings: Holocaust postmemory, perspective and locality

Abstract

This essay explores the relationship of trauma, memory and locality in works of autobiographical nonfiction by Daniel Mendelsohn, Rita Gabis and Julija Šukys. While the lineage of the first extends to historical victims of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe and the lineage of the latter extends (mainly) to historical perpetrators, their works are examined here as examples of third-generation Holocaust postmemory. Each reflects on the experience of war and displacement through the prism of the stories and silences that circulated in their families and émigré communities from Eastern Europe in North America. Each challenges the received family narrative, travels to the site of historical atrocity, and contemplates individual and collective implication in the Holocaust. These texts manifest an agonistic strategy of remembrance that reflects multiple, incommensurable subject-positions. As distinct from the nationalist utopia of antagonistic memory and the de-territorialized ethics of cosmopolitan memory, they highlight locality as the arena for an encounter with the other.