AT VENDE TILBAGE TIL UKENDTE STEDER - POSTHUKOMMELSE OG STED HOS JACOB DAMMAS, JACOB KOFLER OG MAJA MAGDALENA SWIDERSKA

Resumé

RETURNING TO UNFAMILIAR PLACES. PLACE AND POSTMEMORY IN THE WORKS OF JACOB DAMMAS, JACOB KOFLER, AND MAJA MAGDALENA SWI-DERSKA | The emigration of three thousand Polish-Jewish citizens to Denmark as a result of the events in March 1968 in Poland has only recently attracted attention from filmmakers and writers in Denmark. Two documentary films and a novel, created within a relatively short period of time, deal with the topic: Jacob Kofler’s Statsløs (Stateless), 2004, Jacob Dammas’ Kredens (Dresser), 2007, and Maja Magdalena Swiderska’s The Border Breaking Bunch, 2008. The authors are all children of refugees and represent second generation in relation to the cultural trauma of exile. The article examines aesthetic approaches developed by the authors as they (re)tell personal stories, which are mediated through various strategies of postmemory (Hirsch 1997). Postmemory is distinguished from memory by a non-indexical relation to the past and a generational distance, and from history by a highly personal approach. However, it is not addressed here as a psychological category. On the contrary, I argue that postmemory can be viewed as both an analytical and a narrative and aesthetic tool. Questions of place and place-related identity are relevant and inseparable from the three authors’ creative reimaginings of the cultural and personal trauma. Thus, the article focuses on the concepts of place and postmemory, and their interdependencies in the analysed works. Close readings are combined with theoretical reflection, which allows the objects and theories to illuminate each other.