Narrative Identity and Trauma: Sebald's Memory Landscape

Narrative identity is said to consist of a few key reference points-places, events, peoples, ceremonies, rites, ideas, and values-that translate into sites of memory that are representative of a person's or a community's past. In this essay I explore the role of traumatic memories in the f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The European legacy, toward new paradigms toward new paradigms, 2014-11, Vol.19 (7), p.883-900
Main Author: Mitroiu, Simona
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Europe
Group identity
Life stories
Memory
Narratives
Values
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Summary:Narrative identity is said to consist of a few key reference points-places, events, peoples, ceremonies, rites, ideas, and values-that translate into sites of memory that are representative of a person's or a community's past. In this essay I explore the role of traumatic memories in the formation of collective identity, the national or transnational sites of memory that are officialized by the state. I argue that collective traumas need to be counterbalanced by personal memories that can diminish their pain and thus enable people to regain their lost sense of being at home. To demonstrate this claim I discuss the twentieth-century traumas that have affected European identity by and through the life stories of W. G. Sebald's characters in The Emigrants (1992) and Austerlitz (2001), which combines the collective and the personal narrative identity. I conclude that the performative aspect of the past needs to be translated into personal forms of commemoration that surpass the official memory archive, which task requires a comprehensive and sensitive understanding of those traumas at both the individual and collective levels.
ISSN:1084-8770
1470-1316
DOI:10.1080/10848770.2014.965525