Memory and Forgetting in Lisa Appignanesi’S the Memory Man

• Authors: Dagmara Drewniak
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this paper is to look at Lisa Appignanesi’s novel The memory man ([2004] 2005), which won the 2005 Holocaust Literature Award, and examine the patterns of remembering and forgetting as indispensable aspects conducive to the formation of Jewish identity. The main character of the book, Bruno Lind, a Holocaust survivor and a scientist dealing professionally with the complicated neurological issues of remembering and losing memory, tries to recollect his war memories during a journey to the places of his youth which are at the same time the sites of his and his family’s trauma. The Holocaust, change of identities, the war memories and finally the stay at the DP camps and escape to Canada return to Bruno Lind’s mind in order to be passed onto the next generation and remembered. This article shows Appignanesi’s novel as an important contribution to the discussion on the role of memory in Jewish identity.

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 47
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 163-175

Dates

published

2012-12-01

online

2013-03-27

Contributors

author

Dagmara Drewniak

• Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

References

• Appignanesi, Lisa [2004] 2005 The memory man. London: Arcadia Books.
• Appignanesi, Lisa Losing the dead. Toronto: McArthur & Company.
• Bernard-Donals, Michael F. 2009 Forgetful memory: Representation and remembrance in the wake of the Holocaust. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
• Eaglestone, Robert 2008 The Holocaust and the postmodern. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Fine, Ellen S. 1998 “Transmission of memory: The Post-Holocaust generation in the diaspora”, in: Efraim Sicher (ed.), 185-200.
• Hirsch, Marianne [1997] 2002 Family frames. Photography narrative and postmemory. Cambridge - London: Harvard University Press.
• Kearney, Richard 2004 On Paul Ricoeur: the owl of Minerva. Transcending boundaries in philosophy and theology. Farnham - London: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
• Nora, Pierre 1989 “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire”, Representations 26: 7-24.[Crossref]
• Ricoeur, Paul 2004 Memory, history, forgetting. (Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer.) Chicago - London: University of Chicago Press.
• Sicher, Efraim (ed.) 1998 Breaking crystal. Writing and memory after Auschwitz. Urbana - Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
• Simms, Karl 2003 Paul Ricoeur. London - New York: Routledge.
• Whitehead, Anne 2008 Memory. Oxon - New York: Routledge.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10121-012-0017-5