The Afterlife of Traumatic Memories
The Workings and Uses of Empathy in Antonio Muñoz Molina's Sefarad
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12718633 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicola Gilmour (0000-0003-2546-5181, Victoria University of Wellington, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 88 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 839-862 |
| Publication date | 2011-08-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bulletin of Spanish Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1475-3820 • E-ISSN: 1478-3428 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14753820.2011.603491 |
| OpenAlex | W1968060440 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
This article examines Antonio Muñoz Molina's Sefarad (2001), a novel which centres on memory and remembering traumatic events of the past. The article analyses the role which literature can play in transmitting memories of trauma to future generations when no eyewitness remain. By re-presenting histories, memories and memoirs in his text, Muñoz Molina attempts to bear witness to the past in a new way. This act of witnessing is made possible by the exercise of the empatheticimagination, both in the writing process and in the deliberate attempt to create an empathetic reaction in the reader. The analysis of the novel draws on much of the critical research published over the last 20 years in the fields of Trauma, Memory and HolocaustStudies, as well as studies on empathy. Spain's own traumatic past (the Civil War and dictatorship but also the Expulsion of the Jews in 1492) is linked to the broader trauma of the Holocaust and the Stalinist gulags and, in all cases, it is the empathetic act of literary creation that enables an act of witnessing. This act of witnessing is inevitably partial, flawed and universalizing but nevertheless constitutes an important act of resistance to forgetting
Afterlife · Art · Art history · Cognitive psychology · Dictatorship · Empathy · Forgetting · Literature · Memoir · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Resistance (ecology · The Holocaust · Traumatic memories · Witness · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Memory, violence, and history · Psychology · Social Psychology · Spanish Culture and Identity
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.31 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2021 (9) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |