AN ABSENT WITNESS: THE AFFECTS OF TRAUMA ON MEMORY, IDENTITY, AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GEORGE PEREC’S JE SUIS NÉ AND W OU LE SOUVENIR D’ENFANCE

Title:	AN ABSENT WITNESS: THE AFFECTS OF TRAUMA ON MEMORY, IDENTITY, AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GEORGE PEREC’S JE SUIS NÉ AND W OU LE SOUVENIR D’ENFANCE
Author:	Krock, Valerie Anne
Description:	French author Georges Perec was deterred from writing an explicit autobiography, yet his works exhibit autobiographical aspects. Perec’s failure to write an autobiography in a straightforward manner may be attributed to the fact that he suffered a traumatic childhood experience: he was orphaned during World War II, losing his father to the battlefield and his mother to the Holocaust. This thesis seeks to comprehend Perec’s reaction to his traumatic experience and how this manifests itself in his writing. This thesis seeks to answer the questions: What constitutes the denial in Perec’s writing? How can the reader discern it? How does Perec express ambivalence about his traumatic experience? How does he divert the reader’s attention away from his autobiography? Why does he provide elements of the very thing that he is denying? By evaluating these questions, I will examine the paradox of Perec’s use of writing not to communicate.
Permanent Link:	http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1154639406 http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/18690
Date:	2006

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