Paris as a Material Witness in a Differend: Patrick Modiano's Dora Bruder

Abstract

Abstract: The article examines Patrick Modiano's much commented upon semi-autobiographical historiographic metafiction Dora Bruder [The Search Warrant] (1997) through the lens of two interconnected theoretical concepts: the "differend", coined by Jean-François Lyotard to designate a situation where a plaintiff is divested of linguistic and legal means to claim her damage, and the "material witness", as Susan Schuppli has dubbed an object capable of testifying to past violence. I argue that, in the face of the evidential deficit that proceeds from the destruction of the Jewish diaspora of Paris during the Holocaust and from France's post-war memory politics in relation to the Occupation and Deportation, Modiano relies on the French capital's topography and architecture for information about Dora, her parents, and her community. Moreover, like Schuppli, he invests Parisian addresses with juridical significance so that they can become witnesses in the case he builds against wartime and post-war French authorities with a view to countering the differend to which Dora and her likes have been sentenced.