Ghost Images: Representations of Second-Generation Memory in Contemporary Children’S Literature
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GHOST IMAGES: REPRESENTATIONS OF SECOND-GENERATION MEMORY IN CONTEMPORARY CHILDREN’S LITERATURE By Anastasia Maria Ulanowicz B.A. in English and History, College of Notre Dame of Maryland, 1997 M.A. in English, University of Pittsburgh, 2000 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. in English/Cultural and Critical Studies University of Pittsburgh 2006 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented By Anastasia Maria Ulanowicz It was defended on September 1, 2006 And approved by Valerie Krips, PhD, Associate Professor Troy Boone, PhD, Associate Professor Adam Lowenstein, PhD, Associate Professor John Beverley, PhD, Professor Dissertation Director: Valerie Krips, PhD, Associate Professor ii GHOST IMAGES: REPRESENTATIONS OF SECOND-GENERATION MEMORY IN CONTEMPORARY CHILDREN’S LITERATURE Anastasia Maria Ulanowicz, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2006 Ghost Images: Representations of Second-Generation Memory in Contemporary Children’s Literature, studies how texts produced for and about children represent the child’s unique capacity to remember events that preceded her/his birth in order to address questions of how traumatic historical events should be remembered and mourned. Drawing on such theorists and critics as Augustine, Maurice Halbwachs, Henri Bergson, Walter Benjamin, Paul Ricoeur, and Marianne Hirsch, I argue that second-generation memory may be defined, first, by its position at the critical intersection between collective and individually-experienced memory, and second, by its reliance upon the mimetic faculty. Insofar as such an order of memory depends heavily on intergenerational relationships between witnesses and their children, and insofar as it depends upon a capacity for mimetic thought and action (which, according to Benjamin, is most dramatically evidenced in the figure of the child) I elaborate of this definition and its implications by performing close readings of recently published texts produced for and/or about children, such as Helen Epstein’s Children of the Holocaust, Zlata Filipovic’s Zlata’s Diary, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s The Hunger, Judy Blume’s Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, and M. Night Shyamalan’s feature film, The Sixth Sense. In my analyses of these respective texts, I elaborate on how second-generation memory is shaped by the political discourses of diasporic and national communities, the relationship between the intergenerational and intertextuality, and dominant cultural notions of childhood. Moreover, I consider how the proliferation of texts such as these during the last quarter of the twentieth century may be indicative of a general cultural inclination to memorialize – often without romanticizing – past traumatic events, an inclination that has been iii largely influenced by the development of the new media, multicultural discourse, and the effects of globalization. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………vii I. Ghost Images: An Introduction...................................................................................1 A. Introduction………………………………………………………………. 1 B. Second-Generation Memory and Post-Memory…………………………. 10 C. Toward a Formulation of Second-Generation Memory…………………. 22 D. Children’s Literature and Second-Generation Memory…………………. 34 E. Overview…………………………………………………………………. 48 II. A Homeopathic Little Pill: The Problem Novel, Cultural Memory, and National Identity in Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s The Hunger…………………….58 A. Introduction………………………………………………………………. 58 B. The Hunger as a Problem Novel …………………………………………. 68 C. The Preservation of Cultural Memory……………………………………. 79 D. The Problem of National Identity…………………………………………. 90 III Anne Frank’s “Own True Heir”: Intertextuality and the Intergenerational in Zlata’s Diary…………………………...……………………..110 A. Introduction……………………………………………………………… 110 B. Entering the Diary…………………………………………………………. 115 C. Sifting Through the Fragments…………………………………………….. 126 D. Consuming the Romantic Child……………………………………………. 142 E. “A Bundle of Contradictions”………………………………………………155 IV. Sitting Shivah: Holocaust Mourning in Judy Blume’s Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself…………………………………………………………….172 A. Introduction…………………………………………………………………172 B. “Let’s Play Concentration Camp Instead”: Approaching the Event ………176 C. The Photograph……………………………………………………………..179 D. “The Photograph, Taken in Flux”…………………………………………..185 E. Hollywood Narrative and the Search for Meaning…………………………188 F. Mastering the Narrative…………………………………………………….193 v G. Sitting Shivah: From Melancholia to Mourning…………………………...199 V. Spectacles Without Lenses: The Optical Unconscious and Second- Generation Memory in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense ……..……………208 A. Introduction………………………………………………………………… 208 B. Reincarnating the Romantic Child…………………………………………. 215 C. “They Only See What They Want to See”………………………………….220 D. Awakening to a Dream…………………………………………………….. 230 E. Memory in the Ruins……………………………………………………… 240 F. Fragments of Redemption…………………………………………………. 245 VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY ….……...…………………………………………………….. 251 vi Acknowledgements While it only took me approximately two years to write this dissertation, the questions that motivate this work are those that I have contemplated for most of my life. Even as a young child, I intuited that my life was not entirely my own: not unlike the young heroine of Judy Blume’s novel, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, I knew at some level that my life was intimately bound up with those who had gone before me, whose secrets I could only begin to unravel by telling stories of my own. In a sense, then, this dissertation is simply a rearticulation of the stories I began to cobble together as a young person and which I continue to reformulate as an adult. If I have been given the opportunity to engage with these stories in an academic context, then I certainly have a number of individuals to thank for it. I am indebted, first, to my professors at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, especially Drs. William Davis and Allison Dray-Novey, who first recognized in me the potential for graduate study. If I have at all disappointed Dr. Davis by wandering away from my original intention of becoming a Victorianist, I hope that my introductory comments in Chapter Two are adequate proof of my continuing preoccupation with the nineteenth-century New Woman novel. I am also thankful to Professor Lina Insana of the University of Pittsburgh French and Italian department, in whose graduate seminar on Holocaust representations the idea of this dissertation first germinated. Professors Jim Seitz and Marah Gubar of the University of Pittsburgh English department were especially supportive of my intellectual work and helped me to navigate the professional details such work entailed. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Ronald Judy, without whose example I could not begin to read Benjamin, and without whom I could vii not begin to understand what it means to be a “naïve” reader. Finally, I owe many thanks to Katerina Dowbenko of the University of Pittsburgh Slavic department, who reminded me – always at the right moments – why I was writing this dissertation in the first place. I cannot begin to thank the four individuals who were most closely involved in helping me bring this dissertation to completion. I have long admired Dr. John Beverley’s work on testimonio – and the commitment he expresses in such work to the necessity of political action within literary and cultural studies – and I feel honored to have had him as a reader on my doctoral committee. Dr. Adam Lowenstein’s incisive comments and extensive knowledge of film and trauma theory have profoundly affected my own thinking: I hope that this dissertation shows how seriously and carefully I regarded the questions he asked me throughout the various stages of my doctoral work. Dr. Troy Boone’s pain-staking attention to detail, quick wit, and depth of knowledge made an indelible impression on this project. Finally, I cannot begin to thank my chair, Dr. Valerie Krips, who has been both my intellectual mentor and my very dear friend: she is, quite simply, the greatest teacher I have ever had. If the day-to-day process of completing this project often could be exhausting, I have several individuals to thank for keeping my spirits – and my interest – alive. Anustup and Manisha Basu were my first friends at the University of Pittsburgh, and continue to be two of my greatest intellectual role models. Kirsten Strayer literally lived with this dissertation from its first outlining to its ultimate defense, and I know I could not have completed it without her companionship. I owe many thanks, too, to Kara Andersen, Sarah Cledwyn, Erica DeMolleseau, Shay Hellman-Mackay, Eryn Joslyn, viii Andrea Lapin, Ashish Mitra, Kerry Mockler, Nathalie Op de Beeck, Violeta Petrova, Jon Skuldt, and Kate Trower. Finally, I must thank my closest relations: those who, as Ricouer puts it so well, “approve of my existence and whose existence I approve of in reciprocity and equality of esteem.” I can only hope to treat others with the kind of generosity that Mr. and Ms. Ralph and Mary Dwan and Dr. Nancy Ulanowicz have shown me in the past few years. No doubt, I owe my early fascination with language and memory to George Melnykovich and Thom Nadeau. Emil Ulanowicz and Lydia Chmilewsky-Tidd taught me what it is to be a witness and what it means to survive; to their memories, I dedicate my third and fifth chapters,