Margarita Pedchenko
Reframing the Ineffable: Postmemory Experiences in Contemporary Israeli Graphic Novels
2022 | Full access
This thesis examines postmemory experiences in the Israeli graphic novels Second Generation: Things I Did Not Tell My Father (2012) by Michel Kichka, The Property (2013) by Rutu Modan, and The Quiet Beach (2009) by Michal Tamir. Following Marianne Hirsch, postmemory is defined as a type of memory that the children of the survivors of trauma inherit from their parents not through the empirical connection to the event itself, but rather through stories, imagery, and iconic symbols of trauma. This transmission proves to be so strong that it creates a “memory” of its own right, rooted in imaginative investment, projection, and creative process. Operating in the framework of postmemory theory, this work applies its basic principles to the multimodal medium of graphic novels and identifies the unique artistic strategies employed by the authors, such as the use of imagery, symbolism, mirroring, colors, shading techniques, perspective, and incorporation of familial and iconic pictures into the narrative.
Through this analysis, the study reveals that the works in focus share common narrative themes: silence, loss, loneliness, traumatic reenactment, and struggle for personal autonomy manifested through similar memory nodes, like food, bodies, objects, and imagery. The interplay of visual and textual devices facilitates the expression of the authors’ relationship with the trauma of their parents, allowing them to depict the elusive and often ineffable shadow of the traumatic past.
This study expands the corpus of existing works on postmemory in the visual medium through offering a comparative viewpoint of the graphic novels and gives scholarly attention to works that have not been researched so far, such as the graphic novel The Quiet Beach by Michal Tamir. While this thesis focuses on Israeli graphic novels, it also presents opportunities for future research, including the analysis of works by Western authors.
Supervisor:
Dr. Tsafi Sebba-Elran