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- Title
- From Gutenberg to Google: Five Jewish Diasporic Auto/Biographies.
- Creator
- Mendelow, Elaine Susan Barron, Berger, Alan L., Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature
- Abstract/Description
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I have chosen to begin with an analysis of Megillat/Book of Esther because of its chronological placement as well as its status in Jewish tradition as the prototype of diasporic auto/biography. Briefly, it relates the story of a covertly Jewish queen who makes the decision to risk her life in order to save her people from genocide. (Professor Patricia K. Tull takes credit for the expression, the “Esther moment” to describe Esther’s choice to commit to her life-changing Jewish self...
Show moreI have chosen to begin with an analysis of Megillat/Book of Esther because of its chronological placement as well as its status in Jewish tradition as the prototype of diasporic auto/biography. Briefly, it relates the story of a covertly Jewish queen who makes the decision to risk her life in order to save her people from genocide. (Professor Patricia K. Tull takes credit for the expression, the “Esther moment” to describe Esther’s choice to commit to her life-changing Jewish self-identification, with all its inherent risks.) Determination and recognition of the danger she faces are reflected in Esther’s comment, “If I perish, I perish.” Postcolonial theory is a prism through which to view the ancient story and ultimately relate its elements, particularly “the Esther moment,” to the diasporic auto/biographical narratives included in the dissertation. Robin Cohen’s explanation of the concept of victim diaspora will be contrasted with the Kabbalistic interpretation of diaspora as the divinely orchestrated means to mend the world. The teachings of the Ari, 16th century Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria, as well as 20th and 21st century essays illuminate the discussion of the mystical myths and legends which offer a positive interpretation to several millennia of Jewish exile. A general overview of the genre of autobiography/life narrative includes 20th and 21st century theorists, i.e., Philippe Lejeune, Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson and others, who address specific issues related to modern technology’s role in creating life narratives. The journey extends from parchment scrolls through printing press book production to filmic representations. Though thousands of years separate Book of/Megillat Esther from the interviews, they are unified by significant commonalities. The dissertation will focus on some facsimile of an “Esther moment,” where a Jewish calling spoke to participants and altered the course of their lives. Accessible for viewing online, each narrative is informed by a review of the family’s earlier diasporic journey. Diasporic synergies for each narrative will demonstrate a confirmation of the hypothesis. Connecting to one’s Jewish roots can be viewed as reparation of a rupture, a cultural diasporic journey to reach, if not the physical point of origin, a spiritual homecoming.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2018
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013122
- Subject Headings
- Jewish diaspora, Jewish autobiography, Narratives, Biography
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- POSTMEMORIAL STRUCTURES: PORTRAITS OF SURVIVOR-FAMILY HOMES IN SECOND-GENERATION HOLOCAUST LITERATURE AND ORAL HISTORY.
- Creator
- Wilson, Lucas Frederick William, Berger, Alan L., Florida Atlantic University, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
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This study demonstrates the relationship between intergenerational trauma and domestic space, specifically focusing on how Holocaust survivors’ homes became extensions of their traumatized psyches that their children “inhabited.” Based on my analysis of literature and oral histories of the second generation, my project employs the theory of postmemory to demonstrate how the spatial and temporal conditions of survivor-family homes, along with the domestic practices and objects contained...
Show moreThis study demonstrates the relationship between intergenerational trauma and domestic space, specifically focusing on how Holocaust survivors’ homes became extensions of their traumatized psyches that their children “inhabited.” Based on my analysis of literature and oral histories of the second generation, my project employs the theory of postmemory to demonstrate how the spatial and temporal conditions of survivor-family homes, along with the domestic practices and objects contained therein, rendered these domestic milieus spaces of traumatic contagion. Postmemorial structures often functioned as spaces that afforded few illusions of familial permanency, thereby familiarizing survivors’ children with an intimate and pervading fear of external threat at a young age, which challenged or precluded feelings of parental protection and refuge within the domestic. I discuss the ways by which the second generation’s inherited perceptions of space—along with their inherited perception of matter and time— structured and structure their perceptions of their domestic lives. This study explores how, in turn, postmemorial structures shaped and shape the second generation’s inherited perceptions of space, matter, and time. As survivors’ traumas were registered in the very space of their homes, their homes functioned as material archives of their Holocaust pasts, creating domestic environments that commonly also wounded their children. In addition to survivors’ unspoken traumas, their spoken narratives of the Holocaust were also imbued in the space of postmemorial structures to such an extent that these homes became the very “framework” or “architecture” of their psychosocial lives. I argue that insofar as survivor-family homes were imaginatively transformed by survivors’ children into the sites of their parents’ traumas—whether they were concentration camps, ghettoes, places of hiding, etc.—their domestic spaces became central technologies that catalyzed and perpetuated the intergenerational transmission of Holocaust trauma and embodied experience. I further argue that the ways by which they describe their home lives constitute indirect expressions of their belated relationships to the Holocaust.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2022
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014013
- Subject Headings
- Holocaust survivors in literature, Children of Holocaust survivors, Generational trauma
- Format
- Document (PDF)