According to Jung, the individuation process is a spiritual transformation through which the individual attains the maturity of his personality. This process requires the incorporation of subconscious material to the conscious life. The unconscious, though personal, is according to the famous psychologist full of images and archetypes that conform what Jung called the “collective unconscious”, which transcends the personal and expands inter-culturally through time and space. This is the perspective used in the present study of Soldados de Salamina (2001), a novel by the Spanish writer Javier Cercas. The hero of this story that combines fiction and reality travels from the present time into the past of his country, the Spanish Civil war, with the purpose of understanding. This immersion in time parallels another one in his psyche through which he deepens into the collective unconscious of the Spanish people. As a result, we have the vital, spiritual and psychological voyage of a man that stars the narration from a chaotic state to finally emerge innerly renovated and mature. By virtue of this transformation, we witness the hero’s process of individuation. Soldados de Salamina returns to the mystery of the ix unconscious and becomes the narration of a voyage of a human being from his deepest psyche, both as a universal and a particular man, towards his conscience. Comprehension is ultimately the engine of a novel that revisits the Spanish past in order to heal inner wounds.

Die Arbeit nutzt Konzeptionen des „multidirektionalen Erinnern“ in Verbindung mit einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Urbarmachung psychoanalytischer informierter Bildermontagen, um eine Serie von acht Fotos, die der afroamerikanische Soldatenfotograf William A. Scott, III 1945 in und um das Konzentrationslager Buchenwald gemacht hat, mit anderen Bildern rassistischer Gewalt und der Shoah zu konstellieren. Mir ist es einerseits um die eigentümliche (A)Visualität von Verschränkungen und Relationalitäten der 8 Bilder mit rassistischer Gewaltgeschichte und Shoah zu tun, andererseits um einen ästhetischen Möglichkeitsraum von Relationalitäten rassistischer, afroamerikanischer Gewaltgeschichte und Shoah anhand von derlei Bildermontagen. Es tritt also Unsichtbares, ja sogar eine Visualität ohne Sichtbares in den Blick. Zugleich treten die Montagen in ihrem Gemacht-Sein hervor, ihr Konstruktionsprinzip stellen sie so wie die eigentliche Bilderfolge gleich mit zur Disposition. Verbindungsstück der Bilder und ihrer Montagen sind Operationen, die entweder an oder in den Bildern zu sehen sind. Diese Operationen strukturieren die einzelnen Kapitel, je zwei der acht Fotos stehen dabei im Zentrum. In den Montagen leiten mich drei Ideen: die Operationalität der Bilder, genauer die Idee des Sendens im Anschluss an Derrida, das „Meta-Konzept“ Spektralität, insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Konzeption von Avisualität, anknüpfend an die Überlegungen Akira Mizuta Lippits / The work utilizes concepts of "multidirectional memory" in conjunction with a kulturwissenschaftliche reclamation of psychoanalytically informed montages, in order to create a constellation of images of racist violence and the shoah with the eight photographs taken by the African-American soldier photographer William A. Scott, III 1945 in and around the Buchenwald concentration camp. On the one hand, I am concerned with the peculiar (a)visuality of entanglements and relationalities of the eight images with racist history of violence and the Shoah, and on the other with an aesthetic space of possibility of relationalities of racist, African-American history of violence and the Shoah on the basis of such image montages. The invisible, even a visuality without the visible, comes into view. At the same time, the montages emerge in their fabrication, their principle of construction, like the actual sequence of images, is put up for discussion aswell. Connecting the pictures and their montages are operations that can be seen either on or in the pictures. These operations structure the individual chapters, with two of the eight photos at the center of each. Three ideas guide me in the montages: the operationality of the images, more precisely the idea of sending following Jacques Derrida, the "meta-concept" of spectrality, and finally, the concept of avisuality, following on from Akira Mizuta Lippit's considerations.