Multidirectional Memory: Brazilian Fictional Literature on the Holocaust and the Military Dictatorship

This project aims to examine the relationship between reality, fiction, and memory through the multidirectionality between the memory of the Holocaust and the memory of Brazilian military dictatorship. It does so through an analysis of contemporary fictional texts written by second and third generation Brazilian descendants of Holocaust survivors, on the one hand, and, by family members and descendants of victims of the Brazilian military dictatorship, on the other. The history of both Holocaust and antisemitism is largely present in the literature dealing with the dictatorship. It usually works as a metaphor for working-through the new (and still open) wound originated by institutionalized torture and murder of particular groups. Conversely, the violence perpetrated during the military dictatorship has contributed to the resurgence of Brazilian literature on the Holocaust, highlighting the convergence of distinct traumatic pasts in the present. One of the questions to be answered is how and to what extent these fictional literary representations can communicate the specificities of the Brazilian case while illustrating the scope of Holocaust memory in World Literature. This leads to another question: to what extent can these memories be intersubjectively communicated through their literary representation?

The language of fiction, as a narrative mode, offers a means of negotiating memory and identity across multiple generations in relation to silenced historical traumas. The research encompasses both an analysis of literary texts and a critical engagement with existing scholarship on memory studies, trauma writing, and first-person narrative (including autofiction) to establish a solid theoretical framework and contribute to discussions on the key conceptual dimensions of the study.

Fig. above: Announcement of the disappearance of university professor and political activist Ana Rosa Kucinski and her husband Wilson Silva in a Brazilian newspaper by her father Majer Kucinski. Source: National Truth Commission: Caso Ana Rosa Kucinski