Ghosts in Latin American Jewish Literature
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2018 Haunted Stories, Haunted Selves: Ghosts in Latin American Jewish Literature Charlotte Gartenberg The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2767 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] HAUNTED STORIES, HAUNTED SELVES GHOSTS IN LATIN AMERICAN JEWISH LITERATURE by Charlotte H. Gartenberg Graduate Center, City University of New York A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Latin American, Latino and Iberian Cultures in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York. 2018 © 2018 CHARLOTTE H. GARTENBERG All rights reserved ii Haunted Stories, Haunted Selves: Ghosts in Latin American Jewish Literature by Charlotte H. Gartenberg This manuscript has been read and accepted by the Graduate Faculty in Latin American, Latino and Iberian Cultures in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy ______________________ ____________________________________ Date Magdalena Perkowska Chair of Examining Committee ______________________ ____________________________________ Date Fernando DeGiovanni Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Magdalena Perkowska Silvia Dapia Fernando DeGiovanni Alejandro Meter THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract Haunted Stories, Haunted Selves: Ghosts in Latin American Jewish Literature by Charlotte H. Gartenberg Advisor: Magdalena Perkowska This study approaches haunting in Latin American Jewish Literature from the 1990s through the 2010s as it appears in works by and featuring the descendants of Jewish immigrants. In these decades, this trope is frequently invoked as both a literary metaphor and a critical lens. It arises from and activates a number of themes common in trauma studies and in postmodernism, such as loss, the transmission of memory, our relationships to the past, the rupturing of traditional realities and questions of what can be known and represented. It is particularly prevalent amongst those who pen and protagonize the works which I examine due both to their historical and identitary positions. They are the children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants to Latin America, inheritors of traumatic memory, and, as Jews and as thinkers in the era of postmodernism, people with particular relationships to time, history and identity. This study separates haunting by modes of encounter, looking at its figuration into ghosts, its power in haunted places and its embodiment in ghostly objects. By parsing this trope from numerous perspectives, this study examines how the motifs conjured in and by the ghostly link to the construction of identities, how these are inscribed within a larger context of group and nation, and how haunting creates ground for new modes of encountering and relating realities. iv Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv Contents .......................................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... vii Introduction: Lessons of Haunting.................................................................................................. 2 1. Introduction and Scope ............................................................................................................ 2 2. What is Haunting? ................................................................................................................... 4 3. Why Haunting? ........................................................................................................................ 8 4. To Haunt or not to Haunt? ..................................................................................................... 11 5. Organization of this Study ..................................................................................................... 16 Chapter 1: The Ghost takes Shape: Interpreting 20th and 21st Century Haunting ......................... 23 1.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 23 1.2. The Ghost on the Couch: Psychoanalytic and Trauma-Based Approaches to Haunting ... 24 1.3. Citizen Ghost or the Role of Haunting in Approaches to History ...................................... 32 1.4. The Jewish Ghost: On Haunting in Jewish Identity and Experience ................................. 42 Chapter 2: Inheriting Ghosts: Forging Stories and Selves out of an Unknown Past .................... 53 2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 53 2.2. Isaac Goldemberg’s La vida a plazos de don Jacobo Lerner: Ghosts as a Failure of Inheritance ................................................................................................................................. 63 2.3. Sergio Chejfec’s Lenta biografía: The Subtle Revelations of Ghosts That Do Not Speak 79 2.4. Eduardo Halfon’s El boxeador polaco and Signor Hoffman: The Gift of the Ghost or Stories that Haunt ...................................................................................................................... 90 2.5. Conclusions or “Endings That Are Not Over” ................................................................. 100 Chapter 3: Rites of Return: Claiming Haunted and Haunting Spaces ........................................ 102 3.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 102 3.2. Tela de sevoya: A Journey to Locate Places of the Dead and Spaces of the Living ........ 115 3.3. “Volver a Berlín”: Ghost Guides in a City of Specters .................................................... 131 3.4. Codas and Conclusions .................................................................................................... 143 Chapter 4: Objects of Memory: Embodied Absences, Haunted Bridges and Ghostly Albums . 149 4.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 149 4.2. El alma al diablo: The Many Lives of a Single Heirloom ............................................... 159 v 4.3. “Objetos personales”: Guests in a Home Museum .......................................................... 165 4.4. Photographs as Memory Objects, Photographs as Imprints of the Past ........................... 172 4.5. Las cartas que no llegaron: Album of a Ghost Family ..................................................... 181 4.6. Poste restante: Ghost Album of a Family ........................................................................ 191 4.7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 202 Conclusions without Endings ..................................................................................................... 203 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 214 vi Acknowledgements Thoughts are not made alone in a vaccum, and the ones in this dissertation are the result of the countless conversations and contributions of many people to whom I owe my thanks. First to my committee members for providing feedback and acting as intellectual and professional examples to which I can aspire. Professors Silvia Dapia, Fernando DeGiovanni, Alejandro Meter, and, in particular, my director, Magdalena Perkowska were essential to this process. Magdalena, I consider it an incredible stroke of good fortune to have had such a generous, attentive and rigourous mind guiding both my dissertation and my navigation of the academic world. I also owe a great debt to Graduate Center, CUNY, its Center for Jewish Studies, and the doctoral program of Latin American, Latino and Iberian Cultures. In this place and from the people who make it a home, I gained life lessons which exceeded what one expects to find at a school or in a classroom. My infinite gratitude to all of my colleagues, friends and family who listened to me repeatedly tangle and untangle the ideas for this dissertation and my endless opinions on the process of its creation. Luis Henao, Mariana Graciano, thank you for being a sounding board, thank you for laughing at me, thank you for making me part of your lives. The thoughts here also would not have been possible without Rikki Frenkel, my Jew guru, and my brothers and sisters in arms, José Chavarry, Kristina Jacobs, Pablo García Martínez, Isabel Dominguez Seoane, Soledad Marambio and many others in Mexico and New York. Thanks seems insufficient to this last group of people that fill my life with joy and help me preserve my spark of madness (often keeping it from becoming a forest fire). Krista Durney and Susanna Makela, thank you for the work sessions and the not-work sessions