Thesis supervisors:
Tiina Ann Kirss
Eve Pormeister
Opponents:
Frank Hörnigk
Eneken Laanes
Summary:
The doctoral thesis "Excavation and Memory. Thought-images of memory work and moral witnessing in Ene Mihkelson's and Christa Wolf's prose" can be understood as an inquiry into the philosophical potential of Ene Mihkelson's and Christa Wolf's novels.
The doctoral thesis "Excavation and Memory. Thought-images of memory work and moral witnessing in Ene Mihkelson's and Christa Wolf's prose" can be understood as an inquiry into the philosophical potential of Ene Mihkelson's and Christa Wolf's novels.
Estonian literary theorist Jaak Tomberg has drawn attention to the reconciliatory purpose of literature, to the ability of literary texts to remember the failed possibilities of acting in the past. Remembering through writing holds a messianic moment, because it can act as a kind of redemption to the past failures. Literature thus has a capability to illuminate and to model relationships between the present and the past on a philosophical level in a way that it helps the person, who remembers, as well as the readers to grasp the past violence and injustice, pain and loss that has not yet been fully known.
With the help of Walter Benjamin, Avishai Margalit, Giorgio Agamben and other thinkers the dissertation examines the poetics of remembrance in Ene Mihkelson's novels "Ahasveeruse uni" (The Sleep of Ahasvuerus, 2001), "Katkuhaud" (Plague grave, 2007), and Christa Wolf's novels "Kindheitsmuster" (Patterns of Childhood, 1976) and "Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud" (City of Angels: Or, the Overcoat of Dr. Freud, 2010).
What kind of literary techniques and figures - thought-images - can be applied to dealing with the past and for excavating memories from the deepest layers of memory within literature? It is also of interest how and whether moral witnessing can be perceived as a literary practice.