On the Threshold of Jewish Identity: Tracing Postmodern Notions of Liminality and Gendered Memory in the Memoirs of Elie Wiesel and Ruth Klüger

Abstract

This dissertation explores the postmodern notions of liminality and gendered memory in the memoirs Night (Elie Wiesel) and Still Alive (Ruth Klüger), and how they influence the construction of individual (and collective) Jewish identity. The memory process is exposed to be narrative and gendered, as language, space, and social context – which shape our memory – are decidedly different for men and women. Taking into account the liminal status women and Jews occupy within European society turns identity construction in Jewish survivor writing into a liminal process situated on the threshold between past/present, life/death, individualism/collectivity. As the umbrella theory in this dissertation, liminality connects postmodern insights into gendered memory and identity construction. Defining liminality primarily through the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Bjørn Thomassen, and Clemens Ruthner extends its applicability to literary studies and philosophy. Together with Robert Eaglestone's connections of postmodernism to the Holocaust, liminality is related to the identity construction of Jewish Holocaust survivors. The theories on gender and abjection proposed by Julia Kristeva, Simone de Beauvoir, and Judith Butler are then paired with theories on Jewish and female memory discourse proposed by Anne Fuchs, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and Sylvia Paletschek and Sylvia Schraut to underscore the liminality in Jewish memory discourse. The analysis of Wiesel's and Klüger's memoirs focuses on three main aspects: the spatio-temporal, narratological, and social liminality constructed in their narratives. These expose Wiesel's Jewishness hinging primarily on his religious piety and being deeply rooted in the past as well as the Jewish collective, whereas Klüger focuses more on her individual role as a female literary critic and faults the patriarchal canon. Considered through the postmodern lens of liminality and gendered memory, the identity construction performed in Night and Still Alive acquires an individualism and a transnationality which paint a complex picture of Jewish survivor identity.