Abstract
Lensen addresses the continued central importance of Holocaust memory for the construction of a common transnational European identity, taking the novel Grote Europese roman [Great European Novel] (2007) by Belgian author Koen Peeters as a case study. Lensen argues that the novel formulates an outspoken plea for the acknowledgement of the Holocaust as a fundamental component of a transnational European identity, and as a pre-requisite for developing an ethical and political attitude that allows for mutual understanding and a common future European community. Lensen further argues that while Grote Europese roman exemplifies a plain, almost propagandistic case for a joint European memory and identity, the novel, as a work of art, simultaneously rejects the idea of homogenous memory and identity by adopting a poetics that reflects a resistance to any kind of prescriptive master narrative.
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Notes
- 1.
See for example Deborah Parsons, “Nationalism or Continentalism: Representing Heritage Culture for a New Europe,” in Beyond Boundaries: Textual Representations of European Identity, ed. Andy Hollis (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 1–23.
- 2.
See for example Frank Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 18.
- 3.
Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 4–5.
- 4.
Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012), 21.
- 5.
Quoted in Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 21.
- 6.
Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 4; Gregor Feindt et al., “Entangled Memory: Toward a Third Wave in Memory Studies,” History and Theory 53, no. 1 (2014): 24–44. 24.
- 7.
Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 4; Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, “Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory,” European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 1 (2002): 87–106. 87; Astrid Erll, “Travelling Memory,” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 4–18. 4.
- 8.
Aleida Assmann, Auf dem Weg zu einer europäischen Gedächtniskultur (Vienna: Picus, 2012); Claus Leggewie and Anne Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung: Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt (Munich: Beck, 2011); Klaus Eder, “Remembering National Memories Together. The Formation of a Transnational Identity in Europe,” in Collective Memory and European Identity. The Effects of Integration and Enlargement, ed. Klaus Eder and Willfried Spohn (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 197–220.
- 9.
As Leggewie and Lang state: “In this book, we argue that a supranational Europe can only obtain a politically viable identity if the public discussion and reciprocal recognition of contested memories are as highly priced as treaties, the European single market and open borders.” Leggewie and Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung, 7. All translations from the original German are my own.
- 10.
Leggewie and Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung, 14. While positioning the Holocaust at the center of Europe’s collective memory structure, Leggewie at the same time points at the necessity of integrating as many traumatic memories as possible into that structure.
- 11.
Levy and Sznaider, “Memory Unbound,” 93; Jeffrey Alexander, “On the Social Construction of Moral Universals. The ‘Holocaust’ from War Crime to Trauma Drama,” European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 1 (2002): 5–85.
- 12.
“This shared recourse to the murder of millions of European Jews as an overall singular crime against humanity offers a negative foundational myth for Europe.” Leggewie and Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung, 15.
- 13.
Koen Peeters, Grote Europese roman (Amsterdam; Antwerpen: Meulenhoff; Manteau, 2007).
- 14.
Hugo Bousset and Sofie Gielis, “Koen Peeters,” in Kritisch lexicon van de (moderne) Nederlandstalige literatuur (na 1945), ed. Ad Zuiderent, Hugo Brems, and Tom Van Deel (Houten: Wolters, 2009), 1–12, A1, B1–3.
- 15.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 4. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the original Dutch are my own.
- 16.
Lawrence Buell, “The Unkillable Dream of the Great American Novel: Moby-Dick as Test Case,” American Literary History 20, no. 1–2 (2008): 132–55. 135.
- 17.
Koen Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 109. (Translation Sven Vitse).
- 18.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 29.
- 19.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 73.
- 20.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 246.
- 21.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 123.
- 22.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 217.
- 23.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 217.
- 24.
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London; New York, NY: Verso, 2004); Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London; New York, NY: Verso, 2009).
- 25.
Butler, Frames of War, 2.
- 26.
Butler, Frames of War, 1.
- 27.
Butler, Frames of War, 5.
- 28.
Michael Rothberg, “Multidirectional Memory and the Implicated Subject: On Sebald and Kentridge,” in Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, ed. Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik (New York, NY; London: Routledge, 2013), 39–58.
- 29.
Michael Rothberg, “Memory Bound: The Implicated Subject and the Legacies of Slavery” (Reading, Memory Unbound, Mnemonics Summer School, 2013).
- 30.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 44.
- 31.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 62.
- 32.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 171.
- 33.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 242.
- 34.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 243.
- 35.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 134.
- 36.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 59.
- 37.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 231.
- 38.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 283.
- 39.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 293.
- 40.
Hugo Bousset, “The Periodic Table of Europe: On Koen Peeters and Primo Levi,” in Dutch Studies in a Globalized World, ed. Margriet Bruijn Lacy (Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 2009), 155–63.
- 41.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 135
- 42.
Sven Vitse, “Images of Europe: The (De)construction of European Identity in Contemporary Fiction,” Journal of Dutch Literature 2, no. 1 (2011): 99–127.
- 43.
“National Memorial Fort Breendonk,” accessed July 7, 2014, http://www.breendonk.be/EN/.
- 44.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, “Letzte Jahre 1827–1832,” in Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens, ed. Karl Richter, Münchner Ausgabe, vol. XVIII/i: Letzte Jahre, 1827–32 (Munich: Hanser, 1996), 131.
- 45.
Peeters, Grote Europese roman, 293.
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Lensen, J. (2017). Towards a Transnational Ethics for Europe: Memory and Vulnerability as Gateways to Europe’s Future in Koen Peeters’s Grote Europese roman . In: Kraenzle, C., Mayr, M. (eds) The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39152-6_5
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