Memory Transmission, Survival and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Canadian Literature

Abstract

In 2014, the Quebecois writer Catherine Mavrikakis published Diamanda Galas, a tribute to the American artist performer of Greek origin, Diamanda Galas -at the Montreal Publishing House, Héliotrope, inaugurating a new collection, "Guerrières et Gorgones" (Warriors and Gorgons). At the same time and in the same collection, Martine Delvaux published a tribute to the American photographer Nan Goldin, in an eponymous essay. "What survives from/through artists who are prophets of the contemporary?", inquires Mavrikakis. Acting on the tragedy of history and transgressing it, how can literature and art play with experiences of memory transmission and "survival" without necessarily working "to fix" them? What is at the heart of this link between history and creativity, reaffirmed by Georges Didi-Huberman in Survivance des lucioles? Through reflections on transcultural transference, multiculturalism and the power of women to transgress traumatic experiences, this article explores the question of memory transmission in two contemporary narratives on art and the AIDS period of the 1980s.