THE SEARCH FOR DORA BRUDER AND PATRICK MODIANO’S „EMPHATIC DISTANCE“
Abstract
In this paper, we analyze the novel Dora Bruder by the French novelist Patrick Modiano, with the emphasis on contemporary theories on the cultural memory of World War Two and Holocaust, as well as taking into account the politics of memory in postwar France. Based on the analysis of the novel, we identify author’s/narrator’s two opposing tendencies that developed during his search for archival remains of Dora Bruder, a Jewish girl killed in the Holocaust. On the one hand, there is a strong need for the author to relate to Dora’s experiences, but on the other, his inability to approach the trauma of the Other. This literary procedure of building up „emphatic distance“ corresponds with broader tendencies of the „second generation“ in artistic representations of the Holocaust.
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