The Anatomy of Torture: W. G. Sebald and the Representation of the Agonized Body

Abstract

This article analyzes W. G. Sebald's literary strategies of representing physical violence and the agonized human body. It proceeds from the observation that, although references to violence abound in his works, explicit scenarios of torture are very rare. Rather, physical suffering is represented obliquely and by displacement in the medium of the human corpse or the animal body. Sebald's reason for doing so is not his aversion to voyeurism and the exploitation of human suffering, but on the contrary, his attempt to circumvent the psychological mechanism of repression and to shock the reader into an awareness of physical agony. To achieve this goal, Sebald's narrator assumes a liminal position with regard to the scenes of destruction. The following article discusses this strategy of representation in the context of Sebald's concept of testimony and his poetics of montage.