‘Memory’ and ‘Oblivion’ in Contemporary German Literature

Abstract

This article explores the concepts of memory and oblivion as dominant themes in the revision and reconstruction of the past in contemporary German literature. Michel Foucault’s method of discursive analysis and Jan and Aleida Assman’s memory theory are used to analyse narrative strategies employed by contemporary German authors. Historical, sociocultural, media, and psychological discourses are viewed as contributing to the formation of protagonists’ individual memories. The trajectory along which ‘functional memory’ transmutes from ‘comforting oblivion’ to the ‘loss of identity’, as depicted in the novels Abschied von den Feinden by Reinhard Jirgl and Animal triste by Monika Maron, is analysed in the context of the cultural trauma experience. A consequence of the traumatic experience is the splitting of the self and intrusion, which is expressed through random tormenting remembrances eluding narrative description. To the fore comes silence, which fulfils a narrative-theoretical function. Contemporary German novels written after 1989 are marked by asymmetry between cultural and individual memory. This asymmetry is manifested at the level of the protagonists’ speech and communicative disorders as well as in the inviability of memories beyond local spaces. Auto-communication, mediated reflection, de(re)construction of memories, and conscious oblivion become the principal models for the formation of individual, social, and national identity.