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Cinememory: Sexualized Trauma and Coming of Age in Holocaust-Related Israeli Films
Sandra Meiri
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2014.04.005
The Open University of Israel, Raanana, Israel
Since 1978 Israeli Holocaust-related narrative films have associated the violence experienced during the Holocaust, including sexual violence, with the violence permeating Israeli society. In keeping with Marianne Hirsch’s notion of “postmemory”, this paper argues that cinema, as a visual form of artistic mediation, has an especially strong impact on the spectator, because it triggers affective, tactile, and bodily responses. Hence, the efficacy of generating an ethics of remembrance of sexually-related violence, based on cinematic aesthetics, which the author terms here “cinememory”. The paper focuses on a sub-genre of Holocaust-related films: coming-of-age films, which explore in different ways the lasting implications of growing-up in the shadow of sexualized trauma; the unconscious transmission of memories and tactile experiences, related to the ubiquity of sexual violence during the Holocaust.
coming-of-age, sexualized violence, transgenerational trauma, cinememory, ethics of remembrance
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