Between collective amnesia and saturation of memory: Narratives compared

Abstract

In this paper the forms of memory concerning the Shoah - ranging from collective amnesia to saturation of
remembrance - are compared. The overload and excessive presence of the information, images and initiatives related to
the Remembrance Day results on the one hand in a sacralization of the message conveyed but also, on the other hand, in
its hollowing out and trivialization. In relation to this media cacophony, education and appropriate curricula are argued
to deserve absolute priority in order to prevent memory from turning into a spectacular and self-referential fetish. The
different ways of representing the Shoah - a theme linked with memory are then investigated. In contemporary culture
two ways of representing and narrating Auschwitz can be distinguished: its theatricalization on one hand, and
emphasizing its ineffability on the other. The question of ineffability constitutes a backdrop against which the constant
need for narrating, representing and commemorating can be understood. Relative to the end of grand narratives, the
Shoah seems to have remained the one and only epic worth narrating and a new absolute worth probing. In this context,
literature plays a special role. Several narrative models about Shoah are compared