Cultural Topographies of the Holocaust and Identity. On The Semantics of Emptiness in the Contemporary Polish and German Literature

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to outline the relationship between memory, space and identity with the help of the term “cultural topography.” All of the named categories will be discussed constructivistically, i.e. in accordance with the latest research on space, memory and identity. The culturally targeted analyses are underlayed by several specific Polish and German novels concerning oneself and the Holocaust from various perspectives. The selection includes texts by authors of the third generation 72 The similie related to the famous poem by Paul Celan Death Fuguecould seem too pompous or too obscene, were it not for a specific distance towards the character that the narrator adopts throughout the novel. The reader has been so far instructed well enough how to treat this type of references. Thus, it does not attract much opposition or outrage.of Holocaust-survivors, the so called later-born and intellectual witnesses who have no biographical relation to the Holocaust but nevertheless feel ethically bonded with this topic. The analysis of the texts concerns certain specific semantics of emptiness whose literal reconstruction is the main goal of this article.