Ernst van Alphen: "Legacies of Stalinism and the Gulag"

Ernst van Alphen: "Legacies of Stalinism and the Gulag"

Abstract: In discussions of second- and third-generation Holocaust literature and testimony, it is an accepted idea that the trauma of Holocaust survivors is often transmitted from the first to the second and later generations. In discussions about the legacies of Stalinist terror and the Gulag, the idea of transmission of trauma is absent or is explicitly negated (Etkind, Warped Mourning). Although in the case of Stalinism and the Gulag the trauma it caused manifests itself differently than in case of the Holocaust, this does not mean that the Gulag has not been traumatizing. In my presentation I will analyse, first, the differences between the Holocaust and the Gulag; second, how these differences translate into different symptoms of trauma; third, how these differences result in a different dynamic between a first generation of survivors and the generations after them. Two cases will be central Andrei Zvjagintsev’s film The Return (2003), and Dmitrii Bykov’s novel  Justification (Onpaвданue) of 2005.

Ernst van Alphen is professor of Literary Studies at Universiteit Leiden. His publications include Failed Images: Photography and Its Counter-Practices (Valiz 2018),  Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media (Reaktion Books 2014), Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought (University of Chicago Press 2005), Armando: Shaping Memory (NAi Publishers 2000) Caught By History: Holocaust Effects In Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory (Stanford U.P 1997), Francis Bacon and The Loss of Self (Harvard U.P 1995).

The guest lecture is part of the Russian Space (RSCPR) lecture series

 

When: 22.11.19 at 12.15–14.00
Where: SV-HUM E-0104
Location / Campus: Tromsø
Target group: Students, Guests, Employees
Contact: Yngvar B. Steinholt
E-mail: yngvar.steinholt@uit.no
Add to calendar