<p>This study considers the pedagogical significance of mourning and remembrance in the context of the commemorative culture surrounding the “9/11” attacks on America, which have stimulated recent explorations of what it might mean to commit to ethical remembrances of the dead. Critical of “9/11” memorial discourses that provide justifications for heightened “homeland” security and military mobilization in the “War on Terror,” this project not only addresses the educative force of memorial-artistic responses in creating meaning out of mass deaths, but also dissociates the concept of the public memorial as foremost an apparatus of the state, private corporations, and other institutions which seek to use memorials towards amnesiac or ideological objectives. Analyses of the memorial responses addressed in this project unpack how particular modes of remembering “9/11” and its victims are themselves reflections upon the meanings and objectives of collective remembrance. The project first explores the “September 11^th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows” organization and how it negotiates the ways public sentiment is mobilized “in the name of” victims and their families. Through an analysis of Art Spiegelman’s <em>In the Shadow of No Towers</em>,<em> </em>I examine the capacity of graphic narrative to bear witness to traumatic events and speak to their legacies in non-hegemonic ways. Lastly, the project explores how Samira Makhmalbaf’s film <em>God, Construction and Destruction</em> calls for the re-evaluation of strategic memorial practices that risk reducing “9/11” remembrance pedagogies to universalizing modes of remembrance that further subjugate already marginalized communities. Stimulated by such memorial responses that interrogate conventional practices and assumptions of collective remembrance, the project argues that the public remembrance of “9/11” is a crisis of and for education: that is, an important occasion to seek and call for modes of remembrance and sites of pedagogies that foster an openness to the critical and transformative force of historical trauma.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Im Fokus der vorliegenden Studie steht die Position zweier historischer Ereignisse der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus in der lokalen Erinnerungskultur Dresdens: zum einen die Novemberpogrome des Jahres 1938, zum anderen der alliierte Luftkrieg gegen deutsche Städte. Für den Untersuchungszeitraum von 1945 bis 1990 werden dabei das gesamte Spektrum der staatlichen, kirchlichen und unabhängigen Erinnerungsakteure, deren jeweilige Praxis und ihr Verhältnis zueinander auf Basis lokaler und regionaler Archivalien und Presseerzeugnisse vermessen.

Im Fokus der vorliegenden Studie steht die Position zweier historischer Ereignisse der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus in der lokalen Erinnerungskultur Dresdens: zum einen die Novemberpogrome des Jahres 1938, zum anderen der alliierte Luftkrieg gegen deutsche Städte. Für den Untersuchungszeitraum von 1945 bis 1990 werden dabei das gesamte Spektrum der staatlichen, kirchlichen und unabhängigen Erinnerungsakteure, deren jeweilige Praxis und ihr Verhältnis zueinander auf Basis lokaler und regionaler Archivalien und Presseerzeugnisse vermessen.:Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. Einleitung S. 1 1.1. Gegenstand S. 1 1.2. Forschungsüberblick S. 3 1.3. Zielstellungen S. 9 1.4. Genutzte Quellen S. 10 2. Die historischen Ereignisse und die nationalsozialistische Propaganda S. 12 2.1. Der Novemberpogrom in Dresden S. 12 2.2. Dresden im Luftkrieg S. 19 3. Die öffentliche Erinnerung in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone 3.1. Die neue Tauglichkeit der Chiffre S. 31 3.2. Pogromgedenken als Protest im Schatten neuer Helden S. 38 4. Die Staatsgründung und geschichtspolitische Aggression S. 43 4.1. Spätstalinistischer Antisemitismus und die Abwesenheit der Erinnerung S. 43 4.2. Die „Entfaltung eines echten nationalen Hasses“ – Anklage und Integration S. 50 5. Internationale Anerkennung und erinnerungspolitische Entspannung S. 67 5.1. Vom Nutzen und Ausdienen eines Jahrestages S. 67 5.2. Eine „wahre Heimstatt“ – Loyalität und Gedenkspuren S. 77 6. Von der Erinnerungskonkurrenz zum Staatsakt S. 79 6.1. Die (Selbst-)Entdeckung der Schwindenden – Annäherungen und Vereinnahmungen S. 79 6.2. „Leidenschaftliches Bekenntnis“ und „Stilles Gedenken“ – Konkurrenz und Gleichklang S. 101 7. Resümee S. 124 8. Anhang S. 131 8.1. Abkürzungen und Siglen S. 131 8.2. Archive S. 133 8.3. Periodika S. 133 8.4. Literaturverzeichnis S. 134 8.4.1. Primärliteratur und Quellenverzeichnisse S. 134 8.4.2. Sekundärliteratur S. 135

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The academic field of Ecocriticism has in recent years developed into an increasingly interdisciplinary, multifaceted field that no longer only concerns literary studies. This thesis aims to find a new angle that mostly has been overlooked by academics so far. It is therefore suggested to draw a connection between Ecocriticism and Cultural Memory Studies since both fields share interests in their considerations of place. The development of global and transcultural concepts in ecologically oriented literary studies, illustrated by Ursula Heise's concept of an eco-cosmopolitanism are discussed and related to new approaches in Cultural Memory Studies about Heimat (homeland) and belonging to certain places. The study then exemplifies these theoretical concepts by aiming for a close reading of Peter Handke's novel Die Obstdiebin (The Fruit-Thief) where traditional perceptions of Heimat and a local affiliation are criticized and simultaneously new, deterritorialized perspectives introduced.

This dissertation offers the first extended study of the work of the Welsh-French poet Heather Dohollau, whose substantial œuvre in French, published since 1974, has recently received international critical recognition. My thesis centres on the idea of traversée, which originates in Dohollau’s experience of exiles, returns and bilingualism. My chapters elucidate five interconnected themes which all relate to that overarching paradigm. Chapter 1 focuses on Dohollau’s trajectories as reflected in poems on the memory of place, concentrating on South Wales and the island. The quest for place is also a quest for the past, which is handled as an after-image capable of upwelling into the present. Chapter 2 investigates the visual-verbal bilingualism towards which Dohollau’s texts on specific artworks (or ekphrastic texts) seem to strive. Dohollau revitalizes the ekphrastic tradition and challenges its conventional connotations of power struggle (W. J. T. Mitchell) in favour of a poetics of hospitality. Chapter 3 is dedicated to Dohollau’s ethos and practice of slowness. It undertakes a close-reading analysis of her syntactic and sound-related rhythms, connecting them with Derrida’s différance. The idea of poetry as a foreign language is discussed in chapter 4: Dohollau’s adoption of French as her main poetic language in the mid-1960s, her handling of motherhood and daughterhood, and her quest for a poetics of mourning and fidelity are examined in their interrelations. The concluding chapter explores the boundaries between language and the unsaid. Dohollau has been uniquely placed to engage with postwar reassessments of language and its limits (Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot), poised as she is between languages and media. As her poems show, such limits constitute a poetic resource in their own right. Her carefully cultivated liminal stance has given her important insights into the creative process as a passage into words from an unwritten, yet not utterly inchoate other of the poem.