BOOK REVIEWS 423 META: RESEARCH IN HERMENEUTICS, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY VOL. V, NO. 2 / DECEMBER 2013: 423-428, ISSN 2067-3655, www.metajournal.org Hidden Traces. Memory, Family, Photography, and the Holocaust Ludmila BrsanAlexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iai Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual CultureAftertheHolocaust,NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 2012, 320 p. Keywords:postmemory,holocaust,second-generation,feminist,trauma, generation after, photography, death, archive, family Postmemory expresses the experience of those who grew upwiththepreviousgenerationsnarrativesoftraumatic events,whichcannotbeunderstoodandcannotbecreated. MarianneHirschanalyzesthediscourseofpostmemoryinthe worksofseveralartists,beitinnarrative,artorphotography. Theformertakecentrestageintheunderstandingof postmemory. Thequestionhowdowerelatetootherpeoples sufferingtends,withMarianneHirsch,towardsthe autobiographicandfamilial,asanattempttolearnhowone relatestothepastgenerationssuffering.Morethanoralor writtennarratives,photographsareimportantbecausethey survivedmassivedestructionandreturn,likeghosts,to ressurectalostworld.Thetraditionalhistoricalarchivesand methodologiesarelimitedintryingtofathomthebodily, physicaloraffectiveimpactofthetrauma.Thus,acultureof memoryandmemorystudieshavestartedtoappearand develop increasingly. DiscussionsaboutwhatHoffmancallseraofmemory referenced, for Marianne Hirsch, feelings of a personal/ familial nature. The volume inclined towards an ethics and aesthetics of META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy V (2) / 2013 424 remembrance in the wake of catastrophe.How do we relate to others pain? What do we owe the victims? How can we carry ontheirstories,withoutdrawinganyattentiontoourselves? How are we involved in the murders whose witnesses have not been ourselves? MarianneHirschproposesthetermpostmemoryby relatingtoherownautobiographicalreadingsofworksby second-generationwritersandvisualartists,describing,atthe sametime,herownrelationshipwithherparentsstoriesof danger and survival,during the Second World War in Romania andthewaysinwhichtheseimpactedherpost-bellum childhoodBucharest.Byreadingandseeingtheworksof second-generationwritersandartists,andalsobytalkingto herpeers,thechildrenofsurvivors,shewantedtoseeifthey sharedthesametraitsandsymptomsthatwouldmakea postgenerationoutofthem.MarianneHirschanalyzestwo texts(ArtSpiegelman'sMausandW.G.Sebald'sAusterlitz) which,inherview,revealthewayinwhichtheworkof postmemoryfallsbackonfamiliar.ArtSpeigelmandraws attentiontohisfatherssurvivalstoryinAuschwitzandthe way in which he perceived the story as a child. He relied on his familys visual archives and on the narrative traditions. Generationafteristhecarrierofpersonal,collective andculturaltraumasofthosebeforethem,remembering images, stories and behaviours: To grow up with overwhelming inheritedmemories,tobedominatedbynarrativesthat precededonesbirthoronesconsciousness,istoriskhaving onesownlifestoriesdisplaced,evenevacuated,byour ancestors.Itistobeshaped,howeverindirectly,bytraumatic fragments of events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but theireffectscontinueintothepresent.Thisis,Ibelieve,the structure of postmemory and the process of its generation. MarianneHirschtriestoanswerseveralquestions regardingthestructureofinter-andtransgenerational transmissionoftrauma.Whyistheterm memorysoinsisted upon?Whyispostmemoryparticularlyatraumaticrecall? Whichaestheticandinstitutionalstructures,whattropesand technologiesbestmediatethepsychologyofpostmemory,the BOOK REVIEWS 425 continuitiesanddiscontinuitiesbetweengenerations,thegaps in knowledge, the fears and terrors that ensue in the aftermath oftrauma?Whatisthepartofthevisualmediumand especially, of photography? Thefirstpartofthebookfocusesonthewayinwhich familymemoryfunctions,itsproblemsandlimits.Theauthor arguesthatpostmemorialworktriestore-activateandre-embodymoredistantpoliticalandculturalmemorialstructure byofferingthemfamiliarandindividualformsofaesthetic expression.Throughoutthisparttheauthoranswerskey-questions:Whymemory?Whyfamily?Whyphotography?In thetransmissionprocess,fromtheinjuredparticipantstothe subsequent generations, important is the memory that signals anaffectivelinktothepastasense,precisely,ofamaterial livingconnectionanditispowerfullymediatedby technologies like literature, photography, and testimony. The works of a second-generation, either in the shape of narratives or memoirs, are the long-term effects of the fact that theylivedclosetopainandnexttowitnesseswhosurvived historicaltraumas.Thechildtakesuponhimselfthe responsibilitytofix,tocompensateloss.Familylife,according toMarianneHirsch,isentrenchedinacollectiveimaginary shapedbypublic,generationalstructuresoffantasyand projectionandbyasharedarchiveofstoriesandimagesthat inflectthebroadertransferandavailabilityofindividualand familial remembrance. Astophotographs,photographicimagessurvived devastation more than oral or written narratives, becoming the proof of destruction processes and thus constituting the cultural workofpostmemory.GeorgesDidi-Huberman(2008)also provesthetestimonyoftheHolocaustcanbetransferredfrom textsandfantasiastoincontestableimagesthattrytosaythe unsaid. Familyphotosorthefamilialaspectsofpostmemory couldbeconsideredlesscrediblethanpublicimagesorthe images showing horrors, but Marianne Hirsch claims that when we look at photographic images of a lost world we look not only forinformationorconfirmation,butalsoforanaffective connection that might get the affective quality of events across: META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy V (2) / 2013 426 Photographsthusbecomescreensspacesofprojectionand approximation,andofprotection.Small,two-dimensional, delimitedbytheirframe,photographsminimizethedisaster they depict, and screen their viewers from it. But in seeming to openawindowtothepast,andmaterializingtheviewers relationshiptoit,theyalsogiveaglimpseofitsenormityand its power. Throughoutthevolumetheauthoroftenreferences RolandBarthespunctumtheorythatleadtotheperceptionof images,ofthingsfromthepast,aspointsofmemory intersectionpointsbetweenthepastandthepresent,memory and postmemory, personal remembrance and cultural recall.1 MarianneHirschproposestoframepostmemoryon feminist terms, as well, finding it interesting to look for female first and second generation witnesses in order to find a feminist angletoknowingthepast.Sheunderlinesthefactthatour accesstothepostmemoryoftheHolocaustwasgenerally shaped by works by and about men, fathers and sons.Thesecondpartofthebookanswersthequestionslike: Why have images become iconic so easily? How do artists of the postgenerationuseperpetratorimagesstructuredbya genocidalNazigazetomemorializevictims?Theauthor referencesseveralauthorsthatdiscussedtheissueofimages thatdepictatrocities.SusanSontag(1977)discussesinthe pages of On Photography the power and danger of photography toanesthetizetheonlooker.Sontagwarnedaboutthedangers ofphotography,fortheimagepiercesandanesthetizes.2 Photography,inherview,isamediumthatflattens, homogenizes all images and the value of all images. The problem that Marianne Hirsch approaches concerns the fact that in the representation of Holocaust the repetition of thesameintenseimagescanbenoticed,imagesthatare,in fact,veryfew,usedeverywhereiconicallyandemblematically to recall the event.The fact is all the more intriguing as many morevisualdocumentsexist.TheNazisoutdidthemselvesin recordingtheatrocitiestheycommitted,immortalizingboth victimsandperpetrators.Theobsessiverepetitionofthesame few images delimitated and radically reduced the visual archive BOOK REVIEWS 427 ofthisevent,thusriskingadistancingandahackneyingofa painful piece of history. Marianne Hirsch claims that, on the contrary, repetition connectsthefirstgenerationwiththesecond,sothatan inheritedtraumaticpastmaybetransmitted:Therepeated imagesoftheHolocaustneedtobereadnotsomuchforwhat theyrevealbutforhowtheyrevealit,orfailtodoso.Asin themselvesfiguresformemoryandforgetting,theyarepartof an intergenerational effort at reconstitution and repair. Whenwelookatimagesofthemassgraves,ameeting betweenmemoryandforgetfulnesstakesplace,sothatwesee earth,wounds,death,weareoverwhelmedbyshockand bewilderment,butatthesametimetheorganismsareburies, the traces are hidden, and forgetfulness has begun. The author thinksthateachtimewelookattheseimageswerepeatthe meeting between memory and forgetfulness, between shock and self-protection,andtheroleoftheworkofpostmemoryisto unearth the graves, to obliterate the strata of forgetfulness. MarianneHirschalsonotes,inthesecondpart,an aspectsignaledbythetheoreticiansofphotography,who highlightthesimultaneouspresenceoflifeanddeathinthe photograph:Theindexicalqualityofthephotointensifiesits status as harbinger of death and, at the same time, its capacity tosignifylife.Lifeisthepresenceoftheobjectbeforethe camera;deathisthehaving-been-thereoftheobjectthe radical break, the finality introduced by the past tense. Roland Barthesalsoclaimedthateachphotographresemblesaliving imageofadeadthing,animagethatproducesdeathwhileit attempts to safeguard life.In some images, the camera is in the exact same position asthegun,andthephotographerinthesamestanceasthe executioner,whoisunseen.Moreover,theviewerspositionis identical to that of the gun so that our gaze, just like that of the photographer,takestheexecutionersplace.Eachphotograph representsamomentchosenbyaphotographerandagaze. That is why there are often tendencies to transform experience inawayofseeing,tomaketheexperiencebecomeidenticalto the process of its being photographed. META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy V (2) / 2013 428 NOTES 1ToRoland,photographyisacertainbutfugitivetestimony.What Marianne Hirsch wants to express through the concept of postmemory is very accuratelyfoundintheexperienceRolandBarthesdescribesofmeetingwithhismothersimage,oftheintersectionofthepastwiththepresent: Photographytherebycompelledmetoperformapainfullabor;straining towardtheessenceofheridentity,Iwasstrugglingamongimagespartially true,andthereforetotallyfalse.(66)Unlikeoralorwrittenhistory,inthe caseofphotography,asRolandBarthesnotes,wecanneverdenythatthe thing was there (Barthes 1982). 2AsMarianneHirschremarked,SusanSontagreconsideredherstatements in her following studies. In Regarding the Pain of Others she admits, though, thatphotographycanandmustdepicthumansuffering,teachesushowto copewithhumanlossanddevastationacrossglobaldistances.Nevertheless, Sontagclaimsthat,toconnectphotographstoemotionsandtomakethese emotionsraiseawareness,viewersmustalreadyhaveacontextinwhichto place them, thus highlighting the fact that familiarity exceeds the value of the feeling.Ontheotherhand,SusanSontagemphasizesthatweliveinapost-photographic era, that photography that depicts pain merely captures reality. Photographsdontallowonetoimagine,refusingfantasy.Thefear,here,is notinaestheticizingtheimagesofatrocitiesorthatthesecouldbealtered and thus rendered unreal, but in they can only be true. REFERENCES Barthes,Roland.1982.CameraLucida.Reflectionon Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Didi-Huberman,Georges.2008.ImagesinSpiteofAll:Four PhotographsfromAuschwitz.Chicago:UniversityofChicago Press. Hirsch,Marianne.2012.TheGenerationofPostmemory. WritingandVisualCultureAftertheHolocaust.NewYork: Columbia University Press. Sontag,Susan.1977.OnPhotography.NewYork:Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Address: Ludmila BRSAN Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi Department of Philosophy Bd. Carol I, 11 700506 Iasi, Romania E-mail: ludmila.barsan@gmail.com