Univ., Diss.--Hamburg, 2001. / Bibliographie S. [277] - 301.

By investigating the metaphorical connection between bloodletting and the act of writing and drawing, this thesis examines the effects and potential dangers of bearing witness and recording witness testimonials as it is experienced by first-generation and second-generation Holocaust witnesses/authors respectively. Primo Levi’s works as well as biographical records documenting his life and death are examined as the primary sources for the analysis of the survivor or first-generation witness/author. Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels Maus and Maus II provide the source materials for the exploration of the second or ‘postmemory’ generation’s experience with recording their own inherited transgenerational trauma. To support this metaphorical and theoretical framework, I will engage the theories of Janet McCord and her study on suicide and Holocaust survivors as well as employ the works of Sigmund Freud, Dominick LaCapra, Cathy Caruth and Marianne Hirsch in relation to their work on cultural trauma and memory. / Graduate

Submitted by Fernanda Rodrigues de Lima (fernanda.rlima@ufpe.br) on 2018-07-13T21:33:38Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO Victor Vitório de Barros Correia.pdf: 6196262 bytes, checksum: 62a2df5e9b4c86c67d557282b4cd57d5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Alice Araujo (alice.caraujo@ufpe.br) on 2018-07-18T22:14:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO Victor Vitório de Barros Correia.pdf: 6196262 bytes, checksum: 62a2df5e9b4c86c67d557282b4cd57d5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-18T22:14:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO Victor Vitório de Barros Correia.pdf: 6196262 bytes, checksum: 62a2df5e9b4c86c67d557282b4cd57d5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-22 / Esta é uma abordagem da representação da memória centrada no estudo de caso de Maus: a história de um sobrevivente, de Art Spiegelman, história em quadrinhos que constrói uma biografia do pai do autor, um judeu sobrevivente do Holocausto. A obra é um objeto exemplar para refletir a relação dos afetos entre história e memória, especialmente na memória traumática coletiva e individual. Há uma complexa moralidade entre o lembrar e o esquecer, que dialeticamente desempenham distintas funções vitais ao ser humano. O trauma instaura a necessidade do testemunho, que paradoxalmente é acompanhada de sua impossibilidade – a linguagem é insuficiente para representar e comunicar a ruptura infligida pelo trauma, o que demanda uma árdua consciência da própria limitação a fim de seguir na tarefa de reconstrução simbólica, um esforço de tradução sincera na tentativa de alcançar quem lhe dê ouvidos. Esse esforço levou Spiegelman a uma tentativa de distanciar-se de sua própria história para melhor acessá-la, empregando uma peculiar metáfora visual: em seu livro todos os judeus são desenhados como ratos, alemães como gatos e poloneses como porcos. A autoconsciência e a sinceridade são expressas no caráter metalinguístico de Maus, que trata de sua própria produção, narrando os obstáculos emocionais e os labirintos da memória que Spiegelman encontrou enquanto tentava compreender o passado dos pais e sua relação com eles, uma tentativa de também lançar alguma luz sobre seus próprios traumas. O uso de desenhos e de hibridismo de linguagens nas histórias em quadrinhos enriquece essa capacidade autorreferencial e aprofunda as possibilidades de expressão do autor. Isto faz de Maus também uma obra autobiográfica e uma reflexão sobre a relação recíproca entre o passado e o presente. Tal relação deve fluir no sentido da vitalidade da condição humana, sempre ameaçada pela perene desumanização que tem na violência sua raiz e fruto. Dito isto, após apresentar Maus teremos um capítulo sobre história amparado por textos de Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman, Saul Friedländer e Raul Hilberg; o seguinte, sobre memória e testemunho, toma apoio em Aleida Assmann, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, Tzvetan Todorov, Primo Levi, Walter Benjamin, Márcio Seligmann-Silva, Marianne Hirsch e Friedrich Nietzsche; por fim, o capítulo sobre a representação em história em quadrinhos tem o suporte teórico de Scott McCloud, Rocco Versaci e Nick Sousanis. O próprio Art Spiegelman é certamente a mais importante fonte neste estudo. / This approach to memory representation centers on a case study of Maus: a survivor's tale, by Art Spiegelman, a comic book in which he builds a biography of his father, a Jew who survived the Holocaust. The book is an exemplary subject to ponder on the affective relation between history and memory, especially traumatic memory, both individual and collective. There is a complex morality between remembering and forgetting, which dialectically perform distinct vital functions to the human being. Trauma establishes the need for testimony, paradoxically followed by its very impossibility – language does not suffice to represent and communicate the rupture inflicted by trauma, demanding an arduous self-consciousness of one’s own limitation in order to proceed with the chore of symbolic reconstruction, an effort for sincere translation trying to reach those who would listen to it. Such an effort led the author to distance himself from his own history so he could better access it, using a peculiar visual metaphor: in his book, all Jews are drawn as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs. Self-consciousness and sincerity are expressed through Maus’s metaliguistic quality of dealing with its own production, telling about the emotional obstacles and the labyrinths of memory Spiegelman came across while he was trying to understand his parents’ past and his relationship with them, and also to shed some light on his own traumas. The use of drawings and of language hybridism in comic books enriches the self-awareness and deepens the author’s possibilities of expression. All this makes Maus an autobiographical work and a reflection on the reciprocal relationship between past and present. Such relationship should flow towards zeal for the human condition, despite being threatened by the everlasting dehumanization, which is both root to and fruit of violence. That being said, after presenting Maus we’ll have a chapter on history with the support of texts by Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman, Saul Friedländer and Raul Hilberg; the next chapter, on memory and testimony, leans on Aleida Assmann, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, Tzvetan Todorov, Walter Benjamin, Márcio Seligmann-Silva, Marianne Hirsch and Friedrich Nietzsche. Finally, the chapter on comics representation holds theoretical support from Scott McCloud, Rocco Versaci and Nick Sousanis. Art Spiegelman is certainly the main source throughout this study.

Cette étude propose d’explorer les œuvres de Jonathan Safran Foer, Daniel Mendelsohn, et Art Spiegelman, à travers la notion de trace, principe fondateur de l’esthétique et de l’éthique des écritures de l’après-Shoah. L’expérience lacunaire de ces « générations d’après » implique la présence d’une « postmémoire », dont le caractère « différé » sollicite le travail de l’imagination et informe la démarche créatrice de ces artistes et écrivains de l’après, qui reconstruisent le passé de leurs familles. Ces récits de la hantise sont marqués par une « mémoire trouée », et découlent souvent d’une rupture de la filiation, donc d’une défaillance de la transmission. Engagés dans une quête de savoir, narrateurs et protagonistes interrogent l’événement à partir de traces matérielles, ainsi qu’au travers de retours, réels et imaginaires, sur les lieux de l’origine. Ces récits sont composés de matériaux hétérogènes qui créent des ruptures visuelles, et sont informés par divers dérèglements temporels : désordres, disruptions chronologiques, latence et répétition – tous symptomatiques de l’après-coup du trauma. Ces textes postmémoriels posent enfin la question de l’éthique de la représentation. Performativité de la langue, fictionnalisation de l’Histoire, et enjeux de la transmission sont au cœur de ces œuvres en devenir, et interrogent l’éthique de la responsabilité de leurs auteurs, entre passation et travail de deuil. / This study explores the works of Jonathan Safran Foer, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Art Spiegelman through the notion of trace, the founding principle of the aesthetics and ethics of post-Holocaust writing. The incomplete knowledge of these “post-Holocaust generations” implies the presence of a “postmemory”, the “deferred” nature of which requires the imagination to be put to work and informs the creative approach of these post-Holocaust artists and writers, reconstructing their family’s past. These haunting narratives are marked by a “memory shot through with holes” and are often the result of a break in the bond of filiation, and therefore a hiatus of transmission. Having embarked on a quest for knowledge, narrators and protagonists examine the event through material traces, as well as real or imaginary returns to their places of origin. These narratives are made up of heterogeneous elements which create visual ruptures and are informed by various temporal disruptions: disorders, chronological breaks, latency and repetition – all symptomatic of the deferred action of trauma. Finally, these postmemorial texts raise the issue of the ethics of representation. The performativity of language, the fictionalization of History, and the issue of transmission are at the heart of these works in the making, and ethically question their authors’ responsibility, between transfer and the work of mourning.

Art Spiegelman is one of the most important figures in the history of American comics. His work Maus (1980 and 1991) is arguably the landmark text in the field of comic book studies. Given the relatively recent reissue of his first collection Breakdowns (2008) and the publication of his interview/essay collection/scrapbook Metamaus (2011), it is likely that his work will continue to be the subject of critical interest. This thesis concerns the collections Breakdowns (1977 and 2008), Maus (1980 and 1991) and In the Shadow of No Towers (2004). It represents the first book-length extended study of Spiegelman s three major works. The central argument put forth in this thesis is that the Spiegelman oeuvre articulates and manifests a madness which its author perceives to underlie supposedly rational society. In support of this thesis I will employ critical models from the following fields: Holocaust studies, trauma theory, the anti-psychiatry movement, theories concerning the representation of madness, formalist analyses of comics, and Genette s narratological taxonomy.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Hamburg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-301).

This dissertation examines the role the medium of comics plays in the construction and subversion of anti-Arab and Islamophobic discourse. It seeks to address the following questions in particular: how does the medium of comics interpellate subjects regarding the Western discursive formation that conflates Arab, Muslim, and terrorist? What does the medium of comics afford creators in subverting dominant discourses that dehumanize Arabs and Muslims? I argue that as a hypermedium in which text and repeated images are in continual tension, comics challenge the sort of foundational notion of truth necessary for dominant discourse. I use a Foucauldian lens to examine several comics in relation to larger discursive formations. In Chapter 1, I explain the problem, my methods, and my theory in more detail. In Chapter 2, I apply this theory as a lens to examine the rhetorical work the medium plays in subverting dominant discourse in Palestine, a nonfiction piece of comics journalism. I use Chapter 3 to problematize the assertions made in the first two chapters by looking at an instance where comics are used to reinscribe dominant discourse. Specifically, I analyze the graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Report. Chapter 4 acts as something of a retort to Chapter 3; it examines In the Shadow of No Towers to interrogate the ways in which Art Spiegelman explicitly addresses not only the issues he grappled with as a New Yorker during and after 9/11, but the complex relations of representation that arose from the event. Chapter 5 I examine how subversion works when a hypermedium is further remediated by analyzing Didier LeFevre's The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors without Borders. The Conclusion is devoted to discussing the implications of this study, both in terms of pedagogy and in terms of theorizing the relationship and differences between image and text. I argue that comics demonstrate the productive ideological tensions that exist between modes of signification (such as verbal and visual). An understanding of this ideological tension is key for scholars of visual rhetoric and hegemonic discourse. / Ph. D.

No description available.

The genre of comics has had a tumultuous career throughout the twentieth century: it has careened from wildly popular to being perceived as the source of society’s ills. Despite having been relegated to the lowest rung of the artistic ladder for the better part of the twentieth century, comics has been gaining in quality and respectability over the last couple of decades. My introductory chapter provides a broad, basic introduction to the genre of comics––its historical development, its different forms, and a survey of comics criticism over the last thirty years. In chapter two I clarify the nature of comics by comparing it to literature, film, and pictorial art, thereby highlighting its hybrid nature. It has elements in common with all of these, and yet it is a distinct genre. My primary focus is on Chris Ware, whom I introduce in chapter three, a brilliant creator who has garnered widespread recognition and respect. His magnum opus is Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, the story of four generations of Corrigan men, most of whom have been negligent in raising their children. Jimmy Corrigan, as a result, is an introverted, insecure thirty–something–year–old man. Among comics creators Ware is unusual in that his story does not address socio–political issues, like most of his peers, which I discuss in chapter four. Jimmy Corrigan is an isolated tale with a very specific focus. Ware’s narrative is somewhat like those of William Faulkner, whose stories have a narrow focus, revolving around the lives of the inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha county, rather than encompassing the vast landscape of national socio–political concerns. Also, in chapter five I explore the intriguing combination of realist and Gothic elements––normally at opposite ends of the generic continuum––that Ware merges in Jimmy Corrigan. This feature is especially interesting because it is another way that his work explores aspects of hybridity. Finally, in my conclusion I examine the current state of comics in American culture and its future prospects for development and success, as well as the potential for future comics criticism.