ULOGA FOTOGRAFIJA U (RE)KONSTRUKCIJI PROŠLOSTI U DELU „ISELJENICI“ V.G. ZEBALDA

Abstract

The American literary theorist Marianne Hirsch develops the concept of postmemory to explain the way descendants experience and interpret experiences of their parents, which they remember only as narratives and images they grew up with. This work relies on her methodological framework, which she conceived with the children of Holocaust victims in mind, but whose understanding she extended to include the descendants of perpetrators as well. The primary aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of documentary evidence, specifically photographs, in the reconstruction of the unexperienced past by the postmemory generation, as well as to analyze how W.G. Sebald, as a descendant of perpetrators, uses documents in a broader sense to present the past to himself and others, and to compel future generations to remember and become secondary witnesses.