LASTING ECHO OF THE HOLOCAUST: MEDIATED TRAUMA IN LATE 20TH — EARLY 21ST CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION AND DRAMA

Abstract

Literature is one of the most effective ways for representing traumatic memory since it accomplishes this task by means of imagery. In American literary studies, the extensive research of the Holocaust literature tended to deploy the prevalent model focusing on the tragic fate of European Jewry through the prism of the victims’ psychology. The survivors of the unspeakable experience are striving to express (or repress) it from the perspective of their new American reality. Based on fiction and drama of the late 20th — early 21st centuries, the paper seeks to present an alternative mode of addressing the Holocaust trauma as second-hand experience of the characters who happen to be not direct victims, but rather «bystanders», nevertheless affected by PTSD. It seems expedient to apply certain premises laid out by the theorists of trauma (C. Caruth, D. La Capra, G. Hartman and others) to writings by Michael Chabon, Paul Auster, and Arthur Miller dealing with mediated («muted») Holocaust experience. This version also has at its core correlation between the factual and the fictional, the role of memory and imagination, temporal, spatial, and psychological distancing from the blood-curdling events. At the same time, special emphasis is laid on symbolic connotations bringing America within the ambit of reflections on the nature of ubiquitous evil. Veering towards traditional forms of narrative, the authors also make use of the potential inherent in fragmented story-telling. The texts highlight the strategies of working through the trauma including proactive initiatives, accepting the Other in oneself, transforming traumatic memory into other forms, such as cohesive narrative and/or fragmentary catalogue.