The Return of the Dead: Memory and Photography in W.G. Sebald's Die Ausgewanderten

Introduction: Photographic Interventions

“…Cf. also Harris 2001;Long 2003;Shaffer 2003;Duttlinger 2004;Horstkotte 2005aHorstkotte , 2005bSteinlechner 2005; Barzilai 2006;Tischel 2006;and Gnam 2007. 13.…”

"Das metaphysische Unterfutter der Realität": Recent Publications and Trends in W.G. Sebald Research

“…Swales references the articles that have set the standard for discussions of text-image relations in Sebald's works, 21 as he connects this idea of an "interplay of materiality and mentality" to the dual role that photographs play in Sebald's texts: they are at once documentary and evocative.…”

“…Lethen's emphasis on the process of perception, the essential separation and tension between a viewer's perception and the "real world," broadens the current textimage discussions of Sebald's works. Lethen also highlights a critically important thematic and poetic tension in Sebald's works: "Die Grammatik seiner allseits beobachteten altmeisterlichen Prosa cartesianisiert die Wahrnehmung, relativiert den 'Dunst,' den er thematisch feiert" (21).…”

Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender, and Transmission

“…On postmemory, see Liss 1998; Hirsch 1997Hirsch , 2001Hirsch , 2002 We have developed the notion of ''points of memory'' in relation to Barthes and the punctum in several related essays: see especially Hirsch and Spitzer 2005. Barthes's compelling discussion of the relationship of photography to death has inspired much of the vast literature on visuality, photography, and the Holocaust and on the transmission of affect in the act of memory: see especially Hüppauf 1997;van Alphen 1997van Alphen , 2005Zelizer 1998Zelizer , 2001Baer 2000Baer , 2002Morris 2001;Eigler 2001;Harris 2001;Hornstein and Jacobowitz 2002;Yacobi 2002. ''blind field'' outside the frame. 7 For Barthes, the punctum is first a detail: a pearl necklace, for example, or a pair of lace-up shoes in a family portrait taken by James van der Zee in 1926 (Barthes 1981: 44).…”