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Remembrance of things past

Trauma and mourning in Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance

Dartmouth College

Perec’s W is studied as a ‘memory text’ revealing the effects of the trauma associated with the loss of his parents during the Second World War. Perec’s text recognizes the mourning process as an engagement with the aporia created by the inability to bear witness. A dialogical relationship is produced by the juxtaposition of ‘autobiographical’ narrative and fantasy text (the fictional representation of the island of W). This enables the latter to function as a heuristic device allowing the writer to come to terms with loss. Viewed as an ethical act, Perec’s writing project stages the mourning process of a fractured life as a reparative gesture enabling the ‘other’ to be kept alive.

Key Words: Holocaust • maternal loss • memory • mourning • trauma

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