Transmedial translation of 23-F in Anatomía de un instante (2009) by Javier Cercas

Abstract

This article will explore how historical memory in its various medial aspects is aesthetically experienced in Javier Cercas’s novel Anatomía de un instante (2009). 23-F is the only military coup recorded on camera and an integral component of cultural memory in Spain. By using the recordings as a reference, Cercas’s work is able to go far beyond a postmodern historical novel in demonstrating the inadequacy of any attempt to approximate historical reality. More than that, by communicating a literary, transmedial reproduction of the recording, he allows the reader to understand this collective memory in all its complexity making understandable the awareness of the unresolvable distancing of historical events as Lebenswissen [‘life knowledge’].