Memory and Identity in Margarita Khemlin’s Works

• In Event: Documenting the Violence: Minoritized Identities and Trauma in the Works of Russian and American Writers

Abstract

This paper will investigate the ways in which Khemlin foregrounds the unofficial memory of World War II in order to constitute a narrative Jewish identity. Khemlin removes the mediation of culturally acceptable ways of talking about trauma and disavows critical distance. In doing so, she creates a species of Deleuze and Guattari’s “minor literature” with its own ethical and emotional “center” and a historical trajectory that is meant to counterbalance the official discourse.

Author

• Yuliya Minkova, Virginia Tech