CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Article Title

Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated

Authors

Doro Wiese, University of Amsterdam

Abstract

In her article "Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated" Doro Wiese discusses Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. In the text a photograph plays a decisive role: the image of two young people drives the Jewish American Jonathan to visit the Ukraine. The photograph is presumably of Jonathan's grandfather Safran and a woman named Augustine who saved Safran's life during a nazi raid of his village: the photograph becomes an ekphrasis, a description of a visual work of art in another medium which transforms the generic characteristics of written and photographic representations. According to Anselm Haverkamp, photographs are visual citations from history and about history: they show not only people and/or objects at a specific moment in time, but also point towards the irretrievability of that moment. Yet, when photography is transposed into another medium that performs the effects of a confrontation with the given-to-deathness of the people displayed, photography-in-ekphrasis might perform not only mourning over the irretrievability of the life that is lost, but the ethical necessity to resist the devaluation of life in the present.

Recommended Citation

Wiese, Doro. "Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.4 (2012): <http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1865>

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