scholarly journals Constructing Narrative Identities in the Holocaust Memories/Memoirs of Three Women

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 75-97
Author(s):  
Louise O. Vasvári
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
The Holocaust

Although only a decade in age separates each one from the next, the women whose life stories are discussed here represent three distinct Holocaust generations of Hungarian-speaking women. I aim to examine the recently published memories/memoirs of these three women whose narratives are all centered in the Holocaust when the deportations began in Hungary in 1944. Their personal stories are placed within a larger socio-historical context, but treat matters which come within the personal knowledge of the writer and therefore offer precisely the kind of alternative micro-history often provided by women’s narratives. All three authors also have in common that they left their homeland as young adults and hence their stories arguably belong more broadly to the most important subgenre of life writing today. While such writing is produced by both genders, writing by females predominates. My aim is, in part, to examine in the texts under discussion the three autobiographers as self-historians in their retrospective and crafted stories told (and retold) in different contexts, so that their life stories are not merely a recapitulation of past events but rather their creation of personal narrative identities.

Zagłada w Danii: kwestia badań i pamięci

2007 ◽  
pp. 156-177
Author(s):  
Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Critical Comment ◽  
Actual Number ◽  
Rescue Operation ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
The Holocaust

The article deals with the most important events of the Holocaust in Denmark. The first part outlines the broader historical context of the events of October  1943 and the deportation of Danish Jews. It also contains a critical comment on the mainstream historical narration, particularly those aspects that concern the situation of Jewish prisoners at Theresienstadt. The second part is an overview of the latest research into the Danish aspects of the Holocaust, such as the expulsion of Jewish refugees, the rescue operation of October 1943, and the actual number of deportees. The author also presents results of her own research of the Danish remembrance culture.

Unpacking the self

Forum+ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
Manju Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cross Linking ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
The World ◽  
Visual Artist ◽  
Sensitive Issues

Abstract In this essay, visual artist and writer Manju Sharma reflects on the use of autobiography as a methodology for storytelling in the visual arts. She focuses on the methods that she uses to explore the self and its relatedness to the world that she wishes to grasp. She also sheds light on how autobiography fits into her artistic practice as a means of finding hidden narratives and to keep the personal narrative related to the world. The essay touches upon the use of personal stories, cross-linking and note-taking to unpack everyday sensitive issues that can allow people to find their voice and to speak out.

scholarly journals Boundaries Through the Prism of Post-secondary and Professional Orientation: The Views of Young Québec Adults of Immigrant Background

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Fahimeh Darchinian ◽  
Marie-Odile Magnan
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Secondary Education ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
English Language ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Post Secondary Education ◽  
Professional Orientation ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Immigrant Background

Based on our collection of life stories (n = 25), our qualitative study seeks to better understand, after the fact, how young, immigrant-background adults in Québec negotiate ethnocultural boundaries through their post-secondary and professional orientation experiences, particularly in terms of linguistic choices. The analyses highlight the strengthening of boundaries within Québec’s educational institutions and workplaces. The results expose different examples of racism experienced by young adults in their relations with the Québec francophone majority that led them to integrate into English-language post-secondary education and workplaces. In addition, young adults from “black” and “Arabic” minorities more frequently report racist attitudes from francophone Quebecers.

scholarly journals Women’s narratives of displacement and their afterlife

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 233-243
Author(s):  
Simona Mitriou ◽  
Elena Adam
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Empathic Understanding ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Unique Status

Women’s Narratives of Displacement and their AfterlifeThis paper focuses on the connection between life writ­ing and postmemory. The case of Anița Nandriș-Cudla’s life writing is presented based on its unique status: women’s testimonies are rare in Romanian memory discourse, and when present, they are lim­ited to known intellectual figures. Moreover, the displacement narratives occupy a small place in Ro­mania’s post-1989 collective memory discourse and, as survivors of deportation inexorably pass away, life writing becomes increasingly important in the transmission of memory. This paper argues that increasing attention to the narratives of the past traumas can develop the intergenerational transmission of memory and knowledge. The process of coming to terms with the past must offer space to alternative memories and narratives with which, the research shows, second or third generations can relate, based on similarities and resemblance, and in this way develop an empathic understanding of current events.Женские свидетельства о переселениях лиц и их жизнь после смерти В данной статье основное внима­ние уделяется связи между биографическими писаниями и записями о прошедших событиях postmemory. Писания о жизни Аниты Нандрис Кудла представлены здесь благодаря иx уни­кальному статусу, так как женские свидетельские показания очень редки в румынских произ­ведениях и записях, связанных с историческими событиями и, даже если они присутсвуют, они ограничиваются показаниями известных интеллектуальных личностей. Кроме того, записи о переселениях занимают небольшое место в писаниях коллективной памяти Румынии после 1989-го года и, вместе со смертью тех, кто остался в живых после депортаций, писание о их жизни становится все более важным в процессе передачи памяти. В данной работе утверждается, что повышенное внимание к прошлым травмам способствует передаче воспоминаний и знаний следующим поколениям. Восприятие прошлого должно также оставить место для альтернативных воспоминаний и записей, в которых, как показывают исследования, вторые и третьи поколения могут найти много общего и таким образом развивать в себе способность эмпатически понимать текущие события.

Fighting for Family and Glory: Hope, Racialization, and Exploitation in a U.S. Boxing Gym

2021 ◽  
pp. 019372352110626
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Torres Colón
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Youth And Young Adults ◽  
Professional Boxing ◽  
Sociocultural Systems

Relaying on years of ethnographic research and boxers’ life stories, this article examines how boxers from racialized and marginalized communities hope for family and glory in a Midwestern U.S. gym. Hope for family is embraced by youth and young adults who develop familial ties with trainers and fellow boxers. Hope for glory begins in gyms but ultimately must be sought in competitive arenas of elite amateur tournaments and professional boxing. Competitive arenas, however, exists in sociocultural systems that capitalize on the brutalization and exploitation of racialized bodies as boxing fanatics crave blood, pain, and concussions. In these contexts, boxers’ hope for glory is fulfilled through exploitation—both physical and cultural—of their collective bodies; and hope for glory compromises the relationships and sense of community that are established as boxers pursue hope for family.

Coptic Life Stories

2020 ◽  
pp. 416-429
Author(s):  
Arietta Papaconstantinou
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
The Self ◽  
General Lack ◽  
True Source

This chapter highlights Coptic life-writing; identifying its various strands and forms can open new avenues for the analysis of Coptic literature. On the whole, the rise of the biographic that has been noted more generally for Late Antiquity is greatly felt in Coptic texts, perhaps even more strongly than in other languages as a proportion of the overall production. In many ways, the impulses of classical biography can be found in Coptic texts: they are used to define morality, provide examples, obtain adherence, persuade, justify, or legitimize. From the self-denying exemplum to the incredible superhero whose adventures inspired a mix of entertainment, suspense, and fear, the range of admirable individuals was broad. What brings all of those life stories together is their general lack of individuality in the characterization. The stress of these stories is on the authority embedded in a number of exemplary individuals, and the true source of that authority comes from conformity to a model and a set of received criteria. Accordingly, the genre is not at all introspective, despite the meta-discourse on introspection that pervades the ascetic biographies.

Growth Themes in Personal Narratives

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-192
Author(s):  
Jack Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Life Stories ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Value Orientation ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Mechanisms Of Development

Theme in a personal narrative conveys the narrator’s value orientations (what the person values, is motivated by, needs, or believes is important in an event) but not whether the event turns out well (tone does that). Three great themes in both literature and life stories are agency, communion, and growth. Themes of eudaimonic growth are central to the transformative self. Growth themes come in various, overlapping forms, notably agentic, communal, reflective, and experiential forms. Growth themes and growthy tones work together to convey not only the value orientation of growth but also the value fulfillment or attainment of eudaimonic growth, experienced as a sense of meaningfulness. Growth themes link actions to motives and to mechanisms of development, which may be why growth themes are powerful predictors of separate measures of happiness, love, wisdom, and growth, regardless of the type of event.

scholarly journals Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Holocaust Literature

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Ethnic Difference ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Us

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” has been notorious since its first publication in 1948, but rarely, if ever, has it been read in light of its immediate historical context. This essay draws on literature, philosophy, and anthropology from the period to argue that Jackson’s story, which scholars have traditionally read through the lens of gender studies, invokes the themes of Holocaust literature. To support this argument, the essay explores imaginative Holocaust literature from the period by David Rousset, whose Holocaust memoir The Other Kingdom appeared in English translation in 1946, anthropological discourse from the period on scapegoating and European anti-Semitism, and critical discourse on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism from the period by Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno. The analysis finds that, in representing the phenomena of scapegoating and death selection in a small town in the US, Jackson’s story belongs to an abstract discourse on Holocaust-related themes and topics that was actively produced at midcentury, as evidenced partly by Rousset’s influential memoir. A master of the horror genre, Jackson could have drawn on her own experience of anti-Semitism, along with her known interest in the study of folklore, to contribute this chilling representation of the personal experience of death selection to a discourse on Holocaust-related themes. As this article shows, the abstract discourse Jackson’s story joined is marked by skepticism about or disinterest in ethnic difference and anthropological concepts. Due to the fact that this article features comparative analysis of Holocaust literature, a sub-topic is the debate among scholars concerning the ethics of literary representation of the Shoah and of analysis of Holocaust memoir. Jackson’s story and its context invoke perennially important questions about identity and representation in discourse about the Shoah and anti-Semitism.

Jung’s Answer to Job: a modern myth for the times

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-180
Author(s):  
Christine Doran
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
World War ◽  
Giambattista Vico ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Times ◽  
Modern Myth

ABSTRACTJung’sAnswer to Jobwas one of the most allusive, and yet elusive, texts he ever wrote. This article offers an interpretation of what Jung was intending to accomplish in writing this strange book. It places it in historical context in the aftermath of World War II, a time of widespread public shock at the Holocaust and fear of imminent global destruction. By outlining some notable theories about the nature of myth, the true significance of Jung’s achievement can be better understood. In this regard the insightful concepts of the Italian philosopher, Giambattista Vico, are particularly helpful. The myth that almost immediately began to grow up surrounding the writing of the book and its controversial public reception is also discussed.

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