Dora Osborne
Mal d'archive: On the Growth of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-Project
Osborne, Dora
Authors
Abstract
In Archive Fever, Derrida opens a critical perspective on the status of the trace as that which remains with his reading of Gradiva, the Pompeian fantasy woman who is supposed to have left her singular toe-print in the ash of Vesuvius. This article returns to the figure of Gradiva as emblem for the non-coincidence of origin and trace, in order to outline the (increasingly troubling) archival aspects of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-project, a large-scale, decentralized memorial commemorating those deported under National Socialism. Returning to the site of a missed encounter, Demnig attempts to reinscribe the trace of those who vanished there. But as his project grows, it also shows signs of archive fever, betraying a desire to take possession of the trace of the other, and revealing how, as Derrida describes, the archive does not exist without the political control of memory.
Citation
Osborne, D. (2014). Mal d'archive: On the Growth of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-Project. Paragraph, 37(3), 372-386. https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2014.0135
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Publication Date | Nov 1, 2014 |
Deposit Date | Oct 5, 2015 |
Publicly Available Date | Jun 6, 2016 |
Journal | Paragraph |
Print ISSN | 0264-8334 |
Electronic ISSN | 1750-0176 |
Publisher | Edinburgh University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 37 |
Issue | 3 |
Pages | 372-386 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2014.0135 |
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