In the Cobweb of the Past. Traumatic Memory in Márta Mészaros' Aurora Borealis and Adania Shibli's Minor Detail

Abstract

The study examines the cinematic and literary expressions of traumatic memory in Márta Mészáros’ film, Aurora Borealis (2017) and Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail (1917). Both fictional stories use real historical backgrounds and explore issues of representation, recollection, documentation, individual and collective memory in relation to the theme of rape in the war conflict. Both the novel and the film avoid the illusion of total accessibility and, through the deconstruction of conventional narrative structure, gently shed light on events that are missing from the grand narrative of history and personal life, and that remain in the shadows. Just as the traumatized person communicates through bodily performances in the absence of verbal means, both the novel and the film reveal their own materiality, shifting the experience of uncertainty to the relationship between the receiver and the text, to the position of the interpreter.