Family Pictures Hirsch

Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory
Author(s): Marianne Hirsch

Source: Discourse, Vol. 15, No. 2, Special Issue: The Emotions, Gender, and the Politics of
Subjectivity (Winter 1992-93), pp. 3-29
Published by: Wayne State University Press
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Family Pictures:
Maus , Mourning, and Post-Memory
Marianne Hirsch
Allphotographs are memento

mori
.
- SusanSontag
Allsuchthingsof thewar,I triedto
putoutfrommymindonceforall . . .
untilyourebuildmeallthisfrom
your
questions.
- ArtSpiegelman
When myparents and I immigratedto the United States in the

early sixties,we rented our firstapartment in Providence, R.I.,
from the Jakubowiczs,a Polish and Yiddish-speakingfamilyof
Auschwitz survivors. Although we shared their hard-earned
duplex for four years,I never feltas if I had come to know this
tiredold couple or theirpale and otherwordlydaughter Chana,
who was only ten, though her parents were already in theirlate
fifties.We mighthave been neighborsin distantEastern Europe
- Poland and Rumania did not seem so far
apart from the
vantage point of Providence - and neighbors on Summit Ave-
nue, but worlds separated us. They were orthodox and kept
kosher and would not even drink a glass of waterin our house.
We were eager to furnishour firstAmerican apartmentwiththe
latest in what we considered modern and cosmopolitan - wal-
nut Danish and tastefulRia rugs - while theirflat,withits hap-
hazard mixture of second-hand furnitureand Sears formica,
topped with doilies and fringes,had a distinctold-world look
about it.Of course, I was simultaneouslyfascinatedand repulsed
bythe numbers tattooedon theirarms and could not stop asking
mymotherfordetails of theirsurvivalin Auschwitz,theirrespec-
4 Discourse15.2
tiveloss of spouses and children,how theymet each other after

the liberation,how theydecided to marry,to have Chana, to start
a new lifeon the tracesof such inconceivable pain. I remember
well, going to their apartment and staring at the few photos
framedon a small,round livingroom table covered witha doily.
They were picturesof Mr. and Mrs.Jakubowiczs'firstfamilies-
her husband and threesons, hiswifeand threedaughters.I can't
remember these photos visually- in my memory they have
acquired a generic statusof old-lookingstudio familypictures.
Perhaps one was a wedding photo, others mighthave depicted
the two parents and the children. I just don't know any more.
But there was something distinctlydiscomfortingabout them
which made me both want to keep staringat them and to look
away,to get away from them. What I most remember is how
unrecognizable Mr. and Mrs.Jakubowiczseemed in the photos,
and how hard I thoughtitmustbe forChana to livein the shadow
of these legendary "siblings" whom, because she could not
remember them, she could not mourn, whom she had already
outlived in age, whom her parents could never stop mourning.
I thoughtthattheirpresence mightexplain Chana's pallid looks,
her hushed speech, her decidedly un-childlikebehavior.I spent
a lot of timewonderinghow these photos had survived.Had the
JakubowiczsleftthemwithPolish neighborsor friends?Had they
perhaps mailed them to familyabroad? Had theybeen able to
keep them throughtheirtime in Auschwitz,and, ifso, how?
I had forgottentheJakubowiczsand theirphotos until I saw
another photo thatseemed to me, as much as those, to be hov-
ering on the edge between lifeand death - a photo of Frieda,
my husband's aunt who is a survivorof the Riga ghetto and
concentration camp. My mother-in-law had this picture in her
collection and then we found another copy among the photos
of another aunt who had survivedthe war in England. My hus-
band recalls, in one of his most vividchildhood memories, the
moment - in 1945 - when his familyreceived this photo in a
letterannouncing Frieda's survivaland detailingthe death of the
rest of her family.I can picture the familysittingaround their
kitchentable in La Paz, readingFrieda's letter,cryingand staring
at the picture which had crossed the ocean as proof of life and
continuity.I can picture the other aunt, Käthe, receiving the
identical picture at nearly the identical moment, though in
England, and I can imagine her reliefto see Frieda, at least,alive.
How manycopies of the picturedid Frieda have printed,I won-
der,and how manyrelativesdid she send itto?And how did those
relatives then get up from their kitchen tables, how did they
Winter1992-93 5
integrate her image and the knowledge it brought into their

lives?
I am fascinatedwiththismultipledisseminationof the same
image, by the weightof its message in relation to its own unas-
sumingcharacter.There is nothingin thepicturethatindicates its
connection to the eventsof the Holocaust. In the pictureFrieda
is not emaciated or death-like.On the contrary,she looks very
much alive and "normal." She is firmlysituated in an ordinary
domestic setting:Sittingon a bench in frontof a prettyhouse
surrounded by floweringtrees,she is holding a newspaper and
smiling,shyly,at the camera. Verymuch alone, she seems to be
asking something of the onlooker, as if beckoning to be recog-
nized, to be helped perhaps, though I also see a distinctself-suf-
ficiencyin her expression. These contradictionsare articulated
byher posture: her body is twistedin on itself,uncomfortableat
the edge of the seat. The newspaper is a curious prop - perhaps
representingthe public historywhich is the officialalternative
to the privatememoryshe, as a witness,bringsto her addressees.
It is open on her lap, but she looks up at the camera instead. This
picture has become forme a kind of emblem of the persona of
the survivorwho is at once setapartfromthe normalcyofpostwar
lifeand who eagerlyawaitsto rejoin it: in the picture,Frieda sits
on the outside of the fence,she does not seem to be part of that
house. She is the survivorwho announces that she has literally
"sur-vived,"lived too long, outlivedher intended destruction,the
survivorwho has a storyto tell,but who has neitherthe space nor
theaudience to do so in theinstantaneousflashofthephotograph.
As much as the picturesin theJakubowiczlivingroom rep-

resented forme at once death and the timelesspresence of the
past, so Frieda's picture says only "I am alive," or perhaps, "I
have survived"- a message so simple and, at the same time,so
overlaid with meaning, that it seems to beg for a narrativeand
fora listener,fora survivor'stale. Theoristsof photographyhave
often pointed out this simultaneous presence of death and life
in the photograph. "Photographs state the innocence, the vul-
nerabilityof livesheading towardtheirown destructionand this
link between photographyand death haunts all photos of peo-
ple," saysSusan Sontag in On Photography (70) . FollowingSontag,
Roland Barthes,in the mostfamouspassage fromCameraLuddat
insiststhat photographyis also deeply connected to life:
The photographis literallyan emanationof the referent.

Froma realbody,whichwasthere,proceedradiationswhich
6 Discourse15.2
ultimatelytouchme,whoam here;thedurationofthetrans-
missionisinsignificant;
thephotographofthemissingbeing,
as Sontagsays,willtouchme likethedelayedraysofa star.A
sortof umbilicalcord linksthe bodyor the photographed
thingto mygaze: light,thoughimpalpable,is here a carnal
medium,a skinI sharewithanyonewho has been photo-
graphed.(80, 81)
It is preciselythe indexical nature of the photo, itsstatusas relic,
or trace, or fetish- its "direct" connection with the material
presence of the photographed person- thatintensifiesitsstatus
as harbingerof death and, at the same time and concomitantly,
its capacity to signifylife. In the image of the umbilical cord,
Barthes connects the photo notjust to life,but to life-giving, to
maternity.Life is the presence of the object before the camera
and the carnal medium oflightwhichproduces the image; death
is the "having-been-there"of the object - the radical break,the
finalityintroduced by the past tense. It is, for Barthes, the
mother's death. The "ça a été" of the photograph, as Barthes
calls it, creates the scene of mourning shared by those who are
leftto look at the picture. This is what Barthes means when he
identifiestimeitselfas a sortofpunctum: "I read at the same time
This will be and thishas been'I observe with horror an anterior
futureofwhich death is the stake.Bygivingme the absolute past
of the pose (aorist), the photograph tellsme death in the future.
What pricksme is the discoveryof thisequivalence" (96). Never-
theless,Barthesinsiststhat"the photograph does not call up the
"
past (nothingProustianin the photograph) (82) ; photography,
he implies,does not facilitatethe workof mourning.Marguerite
Duras even saysthat "photographs promote forgetting.. . . It's a
confirmationof death" (89) . "Not onlyis the photograph never,
in essence a memory,"Barthes agrees, "but it blocks memory,
quickly becomes a counter-memory" (91). If, indeed,
photography's relation to loss and death is not to mediate the
process of memory,then what is it? What is the source of its
power?
To elaborate on whatSontag calls the photograph's "posthu-
mous irony," she describes Roman Vishniac's pictures of the
Lodz ghettowhichare particularlyaffecting,she argues,because
as we look at them we know how soon these people are going to
die (70). We also know,I mightadd, that theywill all die (have
all died) and that their world will be destroyed and that the
future's(our) onlyaccess to itwillbe (is) throughthose pictures.
The Holocaust photograph, I would like to argue, is uniquely
Winter1992-93 7
able to bring out this particularcapacity of the photograph to

hover between life and death, to capture only that which no
longer exists,to suggestboth the desire or the necessityand, at
the same time,the difficulty, of mourningin
or the impossibility,
the face of massivepublic trauma.
In the broad category of the "Holocaust photograph," I
include theJakubowiczs'familyphotos, Frieda's picture,as well
as Roman Vishniac's picturesof Lodz and the many picturesof
atrocitiesthathave come down to us fromthe concentrationand
extermination camps. I include those pictures which are con-
nected to total death and to public mourning - both pictures
of horror and ordinary snapshots or portraits,familypictures
defined bytheircontextas much as bytheircontent.I recognize,
of course, that there are differencesbetween the picture of
Frieda and the documentaryimages of mass graves,especiallyin
the work of reading that goes into them. Confronted with the
latterimage, we respond withhorror,even before looking at the
caption or knowingthe contextof the image. Knowingthatcon-
text then increases the horror,as we add to the bodies, or the
hair,or the shoes depicted the millionswhich remain unrepre-
sented. Confronted with the formerimage - the portraitor
-
familypicture we need to know itscontext,but then, I would
argue, we respond with a similar sense of disbelief. These two
photographs, then, are complementary:It is preciselythe dis-
placement of the bodies depicted in the picturesof horrorfrom
theirdomestic settings,and theirdisfiguration,thatbringshome
(as it were) the enormityof Holocaust destruction. And it is
preciselythe utterconventionalityand generalityof the domestic
familypicturethatmakes itimpossibleforus to comprehend how
the person in the picturewas,or could have been, exterminated.
In both cases, the viewerfillsin what the pictureleaves out: The
horrorof looking is not necessarilyin the image but in the story
we provide to fillin whatis leftout of the image. For each image
we provide the other,complementaryone. "There was no stone
that marked their passage," says Helen Epstein about her
deceased relatives:
All thatwas leftwerethefadingphotographsthatmyfather

keptin a yellowenvelopeunderneathhis desk.Those pho-
tographswerenot the usual kindof snapshotsdisplayedin
albums and shownto strangers.They were documents, evi-
dence of our partin a historyso powerfulthatwheneverI
triedto read aboutitin thebooksmyfathergaveme or see
8 Discourse15.2
it in the filmshe took me to, I could not take it in. (11;

emphasisadded)
Epstein's statementillustratesthe process of reading the Holo-

caust photograph: looking at the familypictures,placing them
in context through reading and seeing films,being unable to
understand or to name thatcontext- note how Epstein repeats
the indeterminate"it." Epstein's inability"to take it in" is per-
haps the distinguishingfeatureof the Holocaust photograph.
I startedthinkingabout theJakubowiczs'familypicturesand
their connection to the picture Frieda sent around to her rela-
tives- picturesseparated forme by twenty-five years- when I
recently read ArtSpiegelman's Maus the
//, second volume of his
controversialcartoon representationof his father'ssurvivalin
Auschwitz.The firstvolume of Maus alreadycontained one pho-
tograph of Art and his mother which, in the midst of
Spiegelman's drawingsof mice and cats,I had found particularly
moving.But Maus //complicatesthe levelsofrepresentationand
mediation of its predecessor. Seeing, on the firstpage, a photo
ofArtie'sdead brotherRichieu and, on the lastpage, the picture
of the survivorVladek Spiegelman in a starched camp uniform
came to focus forme the oscillationbetween lifeand death that
defines the photograph. These photographs connect the two
levels of Spiegelman's text,the past and the present,the storyof
the fatherand the storyof the son, because these familyphoto-
graphs are documents both of memory (the survivor's)and of
what I would like to call post-memory(that of the child of the
survivorwhose lifeis dominated bymemories of what preceded
his/her birth). As such, the photographs included in the textof
Maus , and, throughthem,Maus itself,become whatPierre Nora
has termed lieuxde mémoire. "Created by a play of memoryand
history,"lieux de mémoireare "mixed, hybrid,mutant, bound
intimatelywithlifeand death, withtimeand eternity,enveloped
in a Möbius stripof the collectiveand the individual,the sacred
and the profane,the immutableand the mobile." Investedwith
"a symbolicaura" lieuxde mémoire can hope to "block the work
of forgetting"(19).
I propose the term "post-memory"with some hesitation,
conscious thatthe "post" prefixcould carrythe implicationthat
we are beyond memory and thereforeperhaps, as Nora fears,
purelyin history.Post-memory, in myreading, has certainlynot
taken us beyond memory,but is distinguishedfrommemoryby
generationaldistanceand fromhistorybydeep personal connec-
tion. Post-memoryshould reflectback on memory,revealing it
Winter1992-93 9
as equally constructed,equally mediated bythe processes of nar-

rationand imagination.I preferpost-memoryto Nadine Fresco's
"absent memory," also derived in her illuminatingwork with
children survivors.Post-memoryis anythingbut absent or evac-
uated: It is as fulland as emptyas memoryitself.Photographyis
preciselythe medium connecting memoryand post-memory.
Like all pictures, the photos in Maus represent what no
longer is. But theyalso representwhat has been and what has
been violentlydestroyed.And theyrepresentthe lifethatwas no
longer to be and that,againstall odds, neverthelesscontinues to
be. If anythingthrowsthiscontradictoryand ultimatelyunassim-
ilable dimension ofphotography- itshoveringbetweenlifeand
death - into fullrelief,it has to be the possibility,the reality,of
survivalin the face of the total death thatis the Holocaust.
The statusof the photographs in Maus is indeed defined by
their context: Spiegelman's provocativegeneric choice of the
comics and animal fable to representhis father'sstoryof survival
and his own lifeas a child ofsurvivors.Ifsince Theodor Adorno's
1949 essay "After Auschwitz," Holocaust representation has
been determined by his suggestion that "after Auschwitzyou
could no longer write poems," then what can we say of
Spiegelman's comics and of the photographs embedded in
them?1
Despite his own careful reconsiderationsand restatements,
Adorno's radical suspicion has haunted writingforthe last forty
years.One of itsconsequences has been an effortto distinguish
between the documentary and the aesthetic. Most theoretical
writingabout holocaust representation,whether historical or
literary,by necessitydebates questions such as truthand fact,
reference and representation,realism and modernism, history
and fiction,ethicsand politics- questions thatmayseem dated
in theoreticalthought,but thatrecent revisionisthistorieshave
brought to the fore with great urgency.Peter Haidu recently
summarized this preoccupation: "Our grasp of the Event must
inevitablybe mediated byrepresentations,withtheirbaggage of
indeterminacy.But thisis a context in which theoryis forced to
reckon with reference - as unsatisfactoryas contemporary
accounts of referencemay be - as a necessaryfunctionof lan-
guage and all formsof representations"(294). The consequent
validation of the documentary makes the archival photograph
- along with spoken testimony - an especially powerful
medium. Julia Kristevahas even argued thatnot only is filmthe
"supreme artof the apocalyptic" but thatthe profusionof visual
imageryin which we have been immersed since the Holocaust,
10 Discourse15.2
and its extraordinarypower to evoke its horror,has silenced us

verbally,impairing the symbolic instrumentsthat might have
enabled us to comprehend the apocalypticeventsofour century:
For these monstrousand painfulspectacles disturbour

mechanisms ofperceptionand representation.Our symbolic
modes are emptied,petrified, nearlyannihilated,as ifthey
were overwhelmedor destroyedby an all too powerful
force.. . . That newapocalypticrhetorichas been realizedin
twoextremes,whichseem to be oppositesbut whichoften
complementeach other:the profusionof imagesand the
withholding of theword.(139)
John E. Frohmayer,formerchairman of the National Endow-

ment of the Arts,goes furtherthan Kristevain the power with
which he endows all documentaryvisual representation.He has
claimed, forexample, thatHolocaust photographs are so upset-
tingthat theirpublic displayneeds to be strictly
controlled:
Likewise,a photograph,forexample of Holocaust victims

mightbe inappropriatefor displayin the entranceof a
museumwhereall wouldhave to confrontit,whetherthey
chose to or not,butwouldbe appropriatein a showwhich
wasproperlylabeledand hungso thatonlythosewho chose
to confrontthe photographswould be requiredto do so.
(qtd. in Liss33)
Documentary images, to Frohmayer,are evidence. They hold up

the "having-been-there"of the victimand the victimizer,of the
horror.They remove doubt, theycan be thrownin the face of
revisionists.In contrast,the aestheticis said to introduce agency,
control, structure,and thereforedistance from the real, a dis-
tance which could leave space fordoubt. ArtSpiegelman seems
to confirmsuch a distinctionwhen, contraryto his earlier ambi-
tion to writethe "Great American Comic Book Novel" ("Maus
& Man" 21), he recentlyinsistedthatMaus be classifiedas "non-
fiction."2
But some have questioned thisdistinctionbetween the doc-
umentaryand the aesthetic,highlightingthe aestheticizingtend-
encies present in all visual representationand, therefore,its
diminished power to convey horror. Christinavon Braun, for
example, decries the wayin which the image - and she means
the image in general - can "transformhorror into the aes-
thetic,"suggestingthat "filmand the photograph have inserted
themselveslike a protectivebarrier between us and the real"
(116, 118; mytranslation)becoming what she has aptlytermed
Winter1992-93 11
a "photo morgana" (119). The immobilizingqualityof the still

- its death-like
photograph fixingof one moment in time -
clearly contributes to this perceived incapacityof the photo to
maintain itsinitialpower.Afterlooking repeatedlyat any image,
the viewerbuilds up sufficientpsychological resistance so as to
become desensitized, to survivethe horror of looking. In von
Braun's reading, thiswould be as true of a picture of atrocities
as of the familypicture of a child who later died in the gas
chambers. For her, the photograph - in itselfcan no more
evoke horror than it can promote memoryor facilitatethe work
of mourning. In placing three photographs in his graphic nar-
rative,ArtSpiegelman raises not only the question of how,forty
yearsafterAdorno's dictum,the Holocaust can be represented,
but also how differentmedia - comics, photographs,narrative,
testimony- can interactwith each other to produce a more
permeable and multipletextthatmayrecastthe problematicsof
Holocaust representationand definitively eradicate anyclear-cut
distinctionbetween the documentaryand the aesthetic. In tak-
ing us fromdocumentaryphotographs to drawingsof mice and
cats, Spiegelman laysbare the levels of mediation that underlie
all visual representationalforms.But confrontingthese visual
media with his father'sspoken testimonyadds yet another axis
to the oppositions between the documentaryand the aesthetic,
on the one hand, and testimonyand fiction,on the other.Con-
sideringthese twoaxes in a relationto one another mightenable
us to come back to the Holocaust photograph (and, throughit,
to photography more generally) and to look at its particular
articulationof life and death, representationand mourning.
The titleSpiegelman chose forhis "survivor'stale" illustrates

well the interplaybetween the visual and aural codes that struc-
ture his texts.Maus sounds like mouse but its German spelling
echoes visually the recurring Nazi command "Juden raus"
("Jews out" - come out or get out) as well as the firstthree
lettersof "Auschwitz,"a word thatin itselfhas become an icon
of the Holocaust. Spiegelman reinforcesthis association when,
in the second volume, he refersto the camp as "Mauschwitz"
and boldly entitles his firstchapter: "From Mauschwitz to the
Catskillsand Beyond." Similarly,Spiegelman's subtitleplayswith
the visual and aural dimensions of the word "tale" - when we
see it,we knowitmeans "story,"butwhen we hear itafterhearing
"mouse" we mightthinkthatit is spelled t-a-i-1. One could even
go further and say that the author uses his own name, never
capitalized on his title as
pages, though it were a visual construct
12 Discourse15.2
able to bring out the tensions between the aesthetic and the
documentary,the figuraiand the mimetic: "art," on the one
hand, and "spiegelman" or "mirror-man," on the other.
Spiegelman's audacious visual/verbalpunning not onlylaysbare
the self-consciousnessof his textualproduction - a self-reflex-
-
ivitythatdisarminglypervades his text it also definesfromthe
beginning the two primary elements of his representational
choices, the visual and the aural.
On one level, Maus tells the storyof Artie's father,Vladek,
from the 1930s in Poland to his liberation fromAuschwitzin
1945; on another level, Maus recounts the storyof fatherand
son in 1980s Queens and the Catskills,the storyof the father's
testimonyand the son's attemptto transmitthattestimonyin the
comics genre which has become his profession,and the storyof
Artie'sown lifedominated bymemories thatare not his own. As
ArtvisitsVladek at his home, in hisworkshop,or on his vacations,
as theysit, or walk, or work,or argue, Vladek talks into a tape
recorder and Art asks him questions, follows up on details,
demands more minute descriptions.The testimonyis contained
in Vladek's voice, but we receivemore than thatvoice: we receive
Art's graphic interpretationsof Vladek's narrative. This is a
"survivor'stale" - a testimony- mediated by the child of this
survivorthrough his own idiosynchraticrepresentational and
aestheticchoices.3These choices are at once based on an almost
obsessive desire for accuracy and the clear abandonment (or
refiguration)of thatdesire in the choice of the animal fable. On
the one hand, then,the tape recordercapturesVladek's storyas
hetellsit, and the textsat least giveus the impressionthatArthas
transcribed the testimonyverbatim, getting the accent, the
rhythm,the intonationjust right.On the other hand, Arthas not
provided the visual counterpartof the tape recorder- the cam-
era. Instead, he has drawntheJewsas mice, the Poles as pigs,the
Germans as cats, the French as frogs,Americans as dogs, the
gypsiesas ladybugs. It seems thatin the aural realm,Spiegelman
seeks absolute unmediated authenticity, while in the visual, he
chooses multiple mediations. But the three photos that are
reproduced complicate considerablythis apparent disjunction
between the visual and aural.4
At firstglance, Spiegelman's animal fable is a literalizationof
Hitler's line whichservesas itsepigraph: "Thejews are undoubt-
edly a race, but theyare not human." If indeed, Jews are not
human, Spiegelman seems to ask, what are they,and, more
importantly, what are the Germans? In response, he drawssche-
matic mice and cat heads restingon human-lookingbodies. But
Winter1992-93 13
these are mice and cats who perceive themselvesas human, who
in all respects except one - their heads - are human. When
Anja Spiegelman (his mother) discoversa rat in the basement
where she is hiding, she is terrified,and Artis amused when he
finds a framed photo of a pet cat on the desk of his survivor
psychiatrist.Spiegelman would like, it would seem, to make it
clear throughouthis books thathis representationalchoices are
-
just that- choices and thatidentitiesare assumed ratherthan
given. When Vladek gets out of hiding to walk through
Sosnowiek, he wears a pig mask, tryingto pass forPolish. Some
children call him a Jew,but the adults believe the mask and
apologize) . Arthas troubledeciding how to drawhisFrench wife,
Françoise - should she be a frog because she is French, or a
mouse because she convertedtoJudaism (fig.1)? YetSpiegelman
seems to come close to duplicatingthe Nazi's racistrefusalof the
possibilityof assimilationor culturalintegrationwhen he repre-
sents differentnationalitiesas differentanimal species. In Maus
II these dichotomous attitudesblur.Artoftenrepresentshimself
not as a mouse but as a human wearing the mask of a mouse.
Eventually,as he startsto drawand getsinto his father'sstory,the
mouse head becomes his own head. IfJews are mice and Ger-
mans are cats, then, theyseem to be so not immutablybut only
in relationto each otherand in relation to the Holocaust and its
memory.They are human but forthe predator/victimrelation-
ships between them. Yet the Vermont friends of Art and
Françoise are dogs, even in the 1980s.
Obviously,Spiegelman's reflectionson "race," ethnicity, and
nationalityas essential (natural) or as sociallyand ideologically
constructedcontain a number of contradictionsand incongrui-
ties,and over the yearsof the twobooks' production, theyhave
evolved.This evolutioncan be traced in the differencesbetween
his firstself-portraitand the one he adopted in Maus II (figs.2
and 3). In the first,the cartoonist is a hybridcreature, with a
man's body and a mouse head, a lonelyartistat his drawingtable
withhis back to the viewer.In the second, the artistis simplya
man wearinga mouse head whichhe anxiouslyholds in his hands
as, facingout, he sadlycontemplateshiswork.No longer isolated,
he is surrounded both by the world of his imagination (a Nazi
guard is shooting outside his window) and of his craft(a picture
of Raw and the cover of Maus are on thewall) . Enteringhis book
has become more problematicand overlaid forSpiegelman, the
access to his mouse identitymore mediated. Spiegelman's ani-
mal fable is both more and less than an analysisof national and
ethnic relations: it is his aestheticstrategy.
14 Discourse15.2
Figure1
At the same time, readers and viewers raised on "Mickey

Mouse," "Tom and Jerry,"and, Spiegelman's favorite,Mad ,
quicklycome to accept the convention of the animal fable and
learn to discern subtle facial and bodily expressions among the
characters of Maus even though the figures' faces rarelyvary
Even the breaks in illusion thatmultiplyin Maus II
significantly.
do not interferewith our suspension of disbelief.We learn to
appreciate Art'sself-consciousness,his questions about the valid-
Winter1992-93 15
Figure2
Figure3
ity of his enterprise and his capacity to carry it out, and we

sympathizewithhis discomfortat the success of Maus. Art,drawn
as a mouse, or wearing his mouse mask, is a figureto whom we
have become accustomed. Even the incongruity,the uneasy fit,
between the characters' heads and theirbodies, and the book's
confusionsabout the natureofracial and ethnicdifference,even
the monumental and pervasivedissonance between the past and
presentlevelsof the narrative(Vladek describinghis deportation
while riding his exercise bicycle in Queens, for example) all
ultimatelycome to be normalized, even erased, in the reading
process.
The reallyshocking and disturbingbreaks in the visual nar-
rative- the points thatfail to blend in - are the actual photo-
graphs and the one moment in which the drawing styleand
16 Discourse15.2
convention changes: the section called "Prisoner on the Hell

Planet" in Maus and the two photos in Maus II. These three
moments protrude from the narrativelike unassimilated and
unassimilable memories. In Maus , for example, the "Prisoner"
section literallysticksout because ofitsblack pages whichdisturb
the uniformlywhite aspect of the closed book. In Maus /7,
Spiegelman sets off the two photos through contrast: they
emerge through their differencenot only from the narrrative
itself,but also fromseveralpages where "photographs" - sche-
matic representationsof framed mice - are shown and dis-
cussed by Vladek: "Anja's parents, the grandparents,her big
sisterTosha, littleBibi and our Richieu. ... All what is left,it's
the photos" ( Maus II 113-16) (fig.4) . When we get to the actual
photographs of Richieu and Vladek, they "break out of the
framework"of Spiegelman's book as much as the black pages of
the prisoner section did. And in doing so, theybring into relief
a tension thatis alwaysthere,on everylevel of the text.
"Breaking out of the framework"is a termShoshana Felman
uses in her book on Testimony ,whereshe recountshow in a course
on the literatureof testimony, the screeningof videotaped inter-
viewswithHolocaust survivors"broke throughthe framework"
of her coursejust as all the writersof testimonyended up break-
ing throughthe frameworkof the books theyhad initiallyset out
to write (48). Felman sees what she calls this "dissonance" as
essential to her pedagogical experience in the age of testimony.
"Breaking through the frame" is a form of "dissonance" -
visual and verbal images are used to describe an incongruity
necessary to any writingor teaching about the Holocaust. How
are we to read the radical breaks in the representationalconti-
nuityof Maus? How do Spiegelman's familypicturesmediate his
narrativeof loss? What alternate story- in the marginsof the
central narrativeof Maus - is told by the familypictures?
Taken together,the threephotographsin Maus I and II reas-

semble a familyviolentlyfracturedand destroyedby the shoah:
theyinclude, at differenttimes,in differentplaces and in differ-
ent guises, all the Spiegelmans - Art and his mother,Arťs
brotherRichieu, and finallyVladek. Distributedover the space
of the twovolumes, these three photographs tell theirown nar-
rativeof loss, mourning,and desire, one thatinflectsobliquely,
both supportsand undercutsthe storyof Maus itself.
In Maus, Spiegelman includes a photograph ofArtieand his
mother labeled "Trojan Lake, N.Y. 1958" (100). They are obvi-
ously vacationing - the ten-year-old Art is squattingin a field,
Winter1992-93 17
Figure4
smilingat the camera, and Anja is standingabove him, wearing

a bathing suit,one hand on his head, staringinto space (fig.5) .
Presumably,the pictureis takenbythe invisiblefather:a conven-
tional division of labor in 1950s family pictures. But the
narrative's next frame immediately announces the brutal
breakup of this interconnectedfamilygroup: "In 1968, when I
was 20, mymother killed herself.She leftno note.,, Poignantly,
Spiegelman juxtaposes the archival photograph with the mes-
18 Discourse15.2
Figure5
sage of death which,throughthe presence of the photo's "hav-

ing-been-there,"is strengthened,made even more unbearable.
The drawingsin the "Hell Planet" section are totallydiffer-
ent from the rest of the volume: not only are theydrawingsof
humans ratherthan of mice and cats,but theyexpress griefand
pain in much more direct,melodramatic,expressionistfashion
- tears running down faces, skulls confronting the viewer,
Vladek lyingon top of the casketscreaming"Anna." Arthimself
is dressed in the striped concentration camp uniformthat has
come down to him throughhis parents' stories:he therebymet-
aphoricallyequates his own confinementin his guiltand mourn-
ing with their imprisonmentin the concentration camp. Hell
Planet is both Auschwitzand Art'sown psyche. "Left alone with
[his] thoughts,"Art connects "MENOPAUSAL DEPRESSION,
HITLER DID IT, MOMMY, and BITCH" (Maus 103) - memory
is unbearable and, in his representationalchoices, Spiegelman
triesto conveyjust how unbearable it is. "Hell Planet" demon-
strateshow immediatelypresentthewarmemoriesof his parents
are for them and for Art - and how unassimilated. But the
grievingArtdoes not literallyrememberthe concentrationcamp
whose uniformhe wears; mediated throughhis parents' memo-
ries,his is whatwe maycall a "post-memory."Artremainsimpris-
oned in his camp uniformand in the black-borderedspaces of
his psyche- drawingMaus , it is implied, representsforhim an
attemptboth to get deeper into his post-memoryand to find a
wayout. In "Hell Planet" the two chronological levels of Maus
merge, and in this convergence between past and present,
destructionand survival- incarnated byAnja's suicide - lies
the root of Art's (perhaps temporary)insanity.But in thismerg-
Winter1992-93 19
ing, this segment merelyexacerbates what occurs at everylevel

of Maus ; Art's stayat the mental institutionin "Hell Planet" is
merely a more pronounced version of the insanity he lives
througheveryday of his post-memorylife.
The other characters attestto the power of "Hell Planet."
Mala, Vladek's second wife, insists it is unlike other comics
because it is "so personal" but "veryaccurate . . . objective" too
(104). Vladek says he only read it because it contained Anja's
picture, and he says that he cried when he read it because it
broughtback memories of his wife( Maus 104) . Vladek keeps his
wife'smemoryalive throughthe picturesof her he has all over
his desk which, as his second wifecomplains, is "like a shrine."
The Trojan Lake photo of motherand son sets the stage forthe
personal, as well as the objective, realistic,and accurate - it
legitimizes "Hell Planet" as a document of life and death, of
death in life. In the photo, mother and son are interconnected
byher arm which touches the top of his head; but the photo itself
is, in Barthes's terms,a carnal medium, connecting the viewer
(Art,Mala, and Vladek, as well as the reader of Maus) with the
livingAnja who stood in frontof the camera in 1958, connected
to her son. In each case, hands become the media of intercon-
nection:Anja places her hand on Art'shead, a hand (presumably
Art's) is holding the photo at an angle at the top of the page, and
Art's hand is holding the pages of "Hell Planet" as they are
represented in Maus. The reader's access to Anja and her story
is multiplymediated byArt'shands and hers- his drawinghand
stands in starkcontrastto her arm on which (unrevealed in the
photograph) was what, in another text, Spiegelman says she
always tried to hide: her tattooed Auschwitz number ("Mad
Youth").5
Anja leftno note - all thatremains is her picture,her hand
on Art's head, theirbodilyattachmentand his memories of her,
transformedinto drawings.It is a picture modulated by other
memories,such as the one in "Hell Planet" ofAnja askingArtie,
in the onlyspeech of hers thathe remembersdirectly(the others
are all mediated byhisfather),whetherhe stillloves her.He turns
away,refusesto look at her, "resentfulof the wayshe tightened
theumbilical cord" (!) and says"sure, Ma." In guiltyrecollection
all Artcan say is "Agh!" ( Maus 103).
But Maus is dominated by this absence of Anja's voice, the
destructionof her diaries, her missingnote. Anja is recollected
by others, she remains a visual and not a verbal presence. She
speaks in sentences imagined by her son, recollected by her
husband. As a memoryshe is mystified, objectified,shaped to the
20 Discourse15.2
needs and desires of the one who remembers- whetherit be

Vladek or Art.Her actual voice could have been in the text,but
it isn't: "These notebooks, and other really nice things of
mother," Vladek explains to Art, "One time I had a verybad
day . . . and all of these thingsI destroyed." "You what?" Art
exclaims. "AfterAnja died I had to make an order with every-
thing . . . these papers had too many memories, so I burned
them" ( Maus 158). Vladek did not read the papers Anja left
behind, he only knows that she said: "I wish my son, when he
growsup, he will be interestedby this" ( Maus 159). This legacy
was destroyed,and Maus itselfcan be seen as an attempt to
reconstructit,an attemptbyfatherand son to provide the miss-
ing perspective of the mother. Much of the text rests on her
absence and the destructionof her papers, derivingfrom her
silence its momentum and much of its energy.Through her
pictureand her missingvoice Anja haunts the storytold in both
volumes.
"Prisoner in Hell Planet" was initiallypublished in an under-
groundjournal and, in Maus , Artsayshe never intended forhis
fatherto see it. "Prisoner" is Art'sown recollection,but Maus is
the collaborativenarrativeof fatherand son: one providesmost
of the verbal narrative,the other the visual; one givestestimony
while the other receives and transmitsit. In the process of testi-
monytheyestablishtheirown uneasy bonding. In his analysisof
the process of testimony, the psychoanalystDori Laub says:
For lackof a betterterm,I willproposethatthereis a need

fora tremendouslibidinalinvestment in thoseinterview sit-
uations:thereis so much destructionrecounted,so much
death,so muchloss,so muchhopelessness,thattherehas to
be an abundanceofholdingand ofemotionalinvestment in
the encounter,to keep alivethewitnessingnarration.(Fel-
man and Laub 71)
Artand Vladek share one monumental loss, Anja's, and on that

basis, they build the "libidinal investment"demanded by the
"witnessingnarration" theyundertake.6
But Anja's role in theirfamilialconstructionmakes Artand
Vladek's collaboration a process of masculine, Orphic creation,
in the termsof Klaus Theweleiťs BuchderKönige.Artand Vladek
do indeed sing an Orphic song - a song about the internal
workingsof a Hades whichfewhave survived,and fewerstillhave
been able to speak about. In Theweleiťs terms,Orphic creation
- the birthof human artforms,social institutions,and techno-
-
logical inventions resultsfromsuch a descent into Hades and
Winter1992-93 21
a reemergence from it: a masculine process facilitatedby the

encounter with the beautiful dead woman who cannot herself
come out and sing her own song. Orphic creation is thus an
artifical"birth" produced by men - by male couples able to
bypass the generativityof women, male couples whose bonding
depends on the tragicabsence ofwomen. In thisprocess,women
play the role of "media" in Theweleiťs sense, of intermediaries,
not of primarycreators or witnesses.In Maus , father and son
togetherattemptto reconstructthe missingstoryof the mother,
and byextension, the storyof women in Auschwitz.They do not
go to Mala, Vladek's second wifeforassistance,even though she
too is a survivor.Mala, in fact,is disturbinglyabsent as a voice
and even as a listenerin the twovolumes. When she triesto tell
parts of her own storyof survival,Artinterruptsto go check on
his father.Her role is to take care of the aging Vladek and to put
up withhis unpleasantness. Moreover,Mala bringsus face to face
withthe limitationsof the book's fairytale mode, withitspolar-
ization of mice and cats, good guysand bad: her name "mala"
emphasizes her position as foil to the idealized, deceased Anja
and sets her up, at least symbolically, as the evil stepmother.And
Art leaves her in that role even when he seems to consult with
her about Vladek. He never sympathizeswith her or listens to
her. Françoise, Art'sFrench wife,is also a mere sounding board
for the confused cartoonist. In his acknowledgments,Spiegel-
man thanksboth women fortheirroles as "media": Mala was his
translatorfrom Polish and Françoise, his editor. Art's hostile
comments about datingJewishwomen complete the process of
banishing female voices fromhis narrativeand basing his story,
in Orphic fashion,on female absence and death. Artand Vladek
performthe collaboration of the creativemale couple: the diffi-
culties thatstructuretheirrelationshiponly serve to strengthen
the tieswhichbind themto each otherand to the labor theyhave
undertaken.
But in the Orpheus story,we should recall,Orpheus maynot
turnaround to lookat Eurydice's face. In "Hell Planet," Spiegel-
man draws Anja and even hands us her photograph - Anja's
face and body, connected to the body of her son, is there for
everyone to see. Seeing her photograph is an act of "memento
mori": her picture a sign of the "having been," of Anja's one-
timepresence and of her subsequent, perpetual,and devastating
absence. The photograph is the visual equivalent of the Orphic
-
song which, through the intermediaryof a cultural artifact
Maus - can bring Eurydice out of Hades, even as it actually
needs to leave her behind. Thus the photograph - the product
22 Discourse15.2
of both the aesthetic and the documentary/technological -

signals this dual presence and absence, in Barthes's terms,this
"anterior futureof which death is the stake" (96).
While "Prisoner" is the work of memory,Maus itselfis the
art of "post-memory."This, in fact,is the statusof the two pho-
tographsin Maus II. The second volume carriestwodedications:
"For Richieu and for Nadja." Richieu is the brotherArt never
knew because he died during the war,before Art's birth;Nadja
is Spiegelman's daughter.The volume is dedicated to two chil-
dren, one dead, the other alive, one who is the object of post-
memory,the other who will herselfcarryon the legacy of her
father'spost-memory.Whose picture,in fact,illustratesthe ded-
ication page (fig. 6)? I have assumed that it is Richieu's - a
serious, about three-year-old child withparted hair and wearing
what looks like knitoveralls.But, upon reflection,the picture is
quite indeterminate.Could itbe Nadja? Could it be a childhood
image of Vladek, I wonder,noting the resemblance between the
twopictureswhich frameMaus /7?Or could it be Arthimself?A
fewpages into Maus //,Artalludes to a photograph of his "ghost-
brother" even as he wonders if theywould have gotten along:
"He was mainly a large blurry photograph hanging in my
parents' bedroom." Françoise is surprised: "I thoughtthatwas
a picture of you, though it didn't look like you" (15). From its
appearance, the photograph could be ofArtor Vladek or Nadja
or Richieu - Spiegelman does not specify.But in terms of its
function,the photograph in the bedroom and the one on the
Figure6
Winter1992-93 23
dedication page clearly has to be of Richieu. Art comments,

"That's the point,They didn't need photos of me in theirroom,
I was alive! The photo never threwtantrumsor got into any kind
of trouble. ... It was an ideal kid, and I was a pain in the ass. I
couldn't compete" (15). This photograph signifiesdeath and
loss, even while,as a kind of "fetishobject," it disavowsloss. The
parents keep it in theirbedroom to referto, Artcompetes with
it,and we take it as the ultimatelyunassimilable factthat it is of
a child who died unnaturally,before he had the chance to live.
The child who could not surviveto live his own life- espe-
cially in his equivalence with Art and Nadja - becomes the
emblem of the incomprehensibility of Holocaust destruction.In
a recentbook entitledChildren witha Star; Deborah Dworkquotes
a chillingstatistic:in Nazi-occupied Europe, onlyeleven percent
ofJewishchildren survivedthe war years (xxxiii). Richieu was
poisoned bythe aunt who hid him so thathe mightbe saved; she
poisoned him so thathe mightnot sufferin the death camps. Art
reports, "After the war my parents traced down the vaguest
rumors,and went to orphanages all over Europe. They couldn't
believe he was dead" ( Maus II 15). The indeterminacyof the
dedication photograph makes it so that we cannot believe it
either - this child could be any of us. In its anonymity,this
photograph, and manyotherslike it,connects to the anonymity
of the victimsand corpses represented in photographs of con-
centrationand exterminationcamps. At the end of the volume,
Art becomes Richieu, and Richieu takes on the role of listener
and addressee of Vladek's testimony,a testimonyaddressed to
the dead and the living:"So," Vladek saysas he turnsover in his
bed, "Let's stop please yourtape recorder.I'm tiredfromtalking
Richieu and it's enough storiesfornow" {Maus II 136). Richieu
is both a visual presence and a listener- and, as he and Art
merge to transmitthe tale,he is neither.The child's photograph,
visible in other framesof Vladek's bedroom, itselfbecomes the
ultimatewitnessto Vladek's survivor'stale. In thisrole, Richieu,
or Richieu's photograph, can confirmthe interminablenature
of the mourning in Maus , and the endlessness of Vladek's tale,
a tale subtitled"And here mytroublesbegan." This is a phrase
Spiegelman picks up from Vladek's narrative,an ironic aside
about Auschwitz.Reading Maus II we realize not only that his
troubles began long before,but that they (and his son's) never
end.
If the child's photograph at the beginning of thisvolume is
the emblem of incomprehensible and unacceptable death,
Vladek's photograph at the end, is intended as a sign of life to
24 Discourse15.2
reconnect the lost Vladek and Anja afterthe liberation. "Anja

guess what! A letter fromyour husband just came." "He's in
Germany.. . . He's had typhus!. . . And here's a picture of him!
"
My God - Vladek is reallyalive! ( Maus II 134) . Reproduced in
the next frame,but at a slant,jumping out of the frame,is a
photograph of the youngVladek, serious but pleasant, standing
in frontof a curtain,wearing a starched striped camp uniform
and hat (fig.7). He explains the picture: "I passed once a photo
place what had a campuniform- a new and clean one - to
make souvenirphotos." Just as Vladek keeps pictures of the
deceased Anja on his desk,he assertsthat"Anja kept thispicture
always." The photograph which signifieslife and survivalis as
important,as cherished,as the one signalingloss and death. But
thisphotograph is particularlydisturbingin thatitstages ,performs
the identityof the camp inmate. Vladek wears a uniform in a
souvenirshop in frontofwhatlooks like a stage curtain;he is no
longer in the camp but he reenacts his inmate selfeven as he is
tryingto prove - throughhis abilityto pose - thathe survived
the inmate's fate.
In Anja's eyes,the uniformwould not call into question the
picture's message: "I am alive, I have survived." She last saw
Vladek in Auschwitz,and she would certainlyhave noticed the
Figure7
Winter1992-93 25
difference between this clean uniform and the one he must

actuallyhave worn. The uniformwould signal to her theircom-
mon past, theirsurvival,perhaps hope fora future.It is a picture
Vladek could only have sent to her- anyone else might have
misunderstooditsperformativeaspect. For readers of Maus , this
picture plays a differentrole: it situatesitselfon a continuum of
representationalchoices, fromthe authenticityof the photos, to
the drawingsof humans in "Hell Planet," to the mice masks,to
the drawingsof mice themselves.This photograph is both docu-
mentary evidence (Vladek was in Auschwitz) and it isn't (the
picturewas taken in a souvenirshop) . This picturemaylook like
a documentary photograph of the inmate - it may have the
appearance of authenticity- but it is merely,and admittedly,a
simulation, a dress-upgame. The identityof Vladek, the camp
survivor,withthe man wearingthe camp uniformin the picture
is purelycoincidental. Anyone could have had thispicturetaken
in the same souvenirshop - anyofus could have,just as perhaps
any of us could be wearing uniformsin our dreams, as Art is.
Certainly,any of us can wear the horizontally striped shirts
Françoise seems to favor(another visual pun?), which only fur-
ther blurs the lines between document and performance. Yet,
like Helen Epstein's familypictures,Vladek's photo is also a very
particularkind of document, appropriate to a historywe cannot
"take in."
Breaking out of the frame, looking intently at the
viewer/reader,Vladek's picturedangerouslyrelativizesthe iden-
tityof the survivor.As listenersof his testimony,as viewersofArt's
translationand transmissionof thattestimony, we are invitedto
imagine ourselves inside that picture. Like Frieda's picture,
Vladek's, with all its incongruous elements, suggests a story.
Maus is the storyelaborated fromthisphotograph of the survi-
vor.With Art and withVladek, the reader is in what Laub calls
"the testimonialchain":
Because traumareturnsin disjointedfragments in themem-
ory of the the
survivor, listenerhas to let thesetrauma frag-
mentsmake theirimpactbothon him and on the witness.
Testimonyis the narrative'saddressto hearing.... As one
comestoknowthesurvivor, one reallycomestoknowoneself;
and thatis no simpletask.... In the centerof thismassive
dedicatedeffort remainsa danger,a nightmare, a fragility,
a
woundednessthatdefiesall healing.(Felmanand Laub 71-
73)
26 Discourse15.2
Maus representsthe aesthetic of the trauma fragment,the

aestheticof the testimonialchain - an aestheticthatis indistin-
guishable fromthe documentary.It is composed of individually
framedfragments,each like a stillpictureimbricatedin a border
thatis closed offfromthe others.These framesare nevertheless
connected to one another in the very testimonial chain that
relates the two separate chronological levels, the past and the
present,thatstructurethe narrativeofMaus. But,once in awhile,
Figure8
Winter1992-93 27
somethingbreaks out of the rowsof frames,or out of the frames

themselves,upsettingand disturbingthe structureof the entire
work.The fragmentsthatbreak out of the framesare details that
function like Barthes's punctum; they have the power of the
"fetish"to signal and to disavowan essentialloss.And embedded
in those fragments- in spite of the conventional fairytale end-
ing of the second volume where Vladek and Anja are reunited
and Vladek insiststhat"we wereboth veryhappyand livedhappy,
happy ever after" (136) , in spite of the tombstonethatenshrines
their togethernessand establishes a seeminglynormalized clo-
sure - the nightmare,the fragility, the woundedness remain
(fig. 8) . The power of the photographs Spiegelman includes in
Maus lies not in their evocation of memory,in the connection
theycan establish between present and past, but in their status
as fragmentsof a historywe cannot take in.
Maus is subtitled"My Father Bleeds History" and the book
showsus thatthisbleeding, in Laub's terms,"defies all healing."
In the wordsof the subtitleto the second volume, "And Here My
Troubles Began" - his "troubles" never end. I have tried to
argue thatthe three photographs in Maus , and the complicated
marginalnarrativeofunassimilableloss thattheytell,perpetuate
what remains in the twovolumes as an incongruityappropriate
to the aesthetic of the child of survivors,the aesthetic of post-
memory.7
Notes
1 I have
deliberately quoted onlythatpartof Adorno's sentence
whichhas becomeso determinative and familiar. The entiresentence
reads: "Perennialsuffering has as muchrightto expressionas a tor-
turedman has to scream;hence it mayhave been wrongto saythat
afterAuschwitz you could no longerwritepoems" (362). In his later
essay,"Commitment"(1962),Adornofurther elaborateshisthoughts:
"I have no wishto softenthe sayingthatto writelyricpoetryafter
Auschwitz is barbaric;itexpressesin negativeformtheimpulsewhich
inspirescommittedliterature. . . . Yetthissuffering . . . also demands
thecontinuedexistenceofartwhileitprohibitsit;itis nowvirtually in
artalone thatsuffering can stillfinditsownvoice,consolation,without
immediately beingbetrayedbyit" (Arato312) . Butthisseemingrever-
sal ofhisoriginalinjunctionis subjecttofurther rethinking laterin the
essay:"The estheticprincipleofstylization . . . makesan unthinkable
fateappear to havesome meaning;itis transfigured, somethingofits
horroris removed.. . . Even thesound of despairpaysitstributeto a
hideousaffirmation" (313).
28 Discourse15.2
2 But thePulitzerPrizecommitteeinventeda
specialcategoryfor
Maus, suggesting theimpossibility ofcategorizing itas either"fiction"
or "non-fiction." As LawrenceLangersaysin hisreviewofMausII: "It
resistsdefininglabels" (1).
3 See Alice
Kaplan'scomparisonofMaus as thetextofthechildof
survivors to KlausTheweleit'sMaleFantasiesas thetextof thechildof
theperpetrators.
4 See
NancyIL Miller'saccountof the 1992 "Maus" exhibitionat
the Museumof ModernArtwheresome of Vladek'stapes could be
heard.Milleranalyzesthelevelsofmediationand transformation that
separate the father's voicefrom the son's text.
5 In this
Lifepiece, Spiegelmandescribesanothersnapshotin
whichtheeleven-year-old Artand his mothersiton theirback porch
looking at an issue of Mad : "You can't see mymother'sleftforearm
behind the magazine. She usuallywearsa broad gold bracelet-
Vladekgivesthemto heras birthday and anniversary gifts- to cover
theblue Auschwitz numbertattooedabove herwrist.On occasionmy
friendshave noticedthe numberand have asked her about it. She
explainsit'sa phone numbershe doesn'twantto forget."
6 See also
NancyMiller'sincisiveanalysisof themissingmother's
storyas thebasisforthefather/ son relationship in Maus.
7 I am forthevaluablesuggestions I receivedat theCenter
grateful
forTwentiethCenturyStudiesat theUniversity ofWisconsin-Milwau-
kee,theBellevanZuylenInstitute at theUniversity ofAmsterdam, and
theJohnsHopkinsUniversity whereI presentedthispaper.I would
also liketo thankCarolBardenstein, LarryKritzman, NancyMiller,Ivy
Schweitzer, Leo Spitzer,Carol Tennessen,KathleenWoodward,and
SusanneZantopfortheircarefulreadingsof thismanuscript.
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Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory

Author(s): Marianne Hirsch

Allphotographs are memento

When myparents and I immigratedto the United States in the

tiveloss of spouses and children,how theymet each other after

integrate her image and the knowledge it brought into their

As much as the picturesin theJakubowiczlivingroom rep-

The photographis literallyan emanationof the referent.

able to bring out this particularcapacity of the photograph to

All thatwas leftwerethefadingphotographsthatmyfather

it in the filmshe took me to, I could not take it in. (11;

Epstein's statementillustratesthe process of reading the Holo-

as equally constructed,equally mediated bythe processes of nar-

and its extraordinarypower to evoke its horror,has silenced us

For these monstrousand painfulspectacles disturbour

John E. Frohmayer,formerchairman of the National Endow-

Likewise,a photograph,forexample of Holocaust victims

Documentary images, to Frohmayer,are evidence. They hold up

a "photo morgana" (119). The immobilizingqualityof the still

The titleSpiegelman chose forhis "survivor'stale" illustrates

At the same time, readers and viewers raised on "Mickey

ity of his enterprise and his capacity to carry it out, and we

convention changes: the section called "Prisoner on the Hell

Taken together,the threephotographsin Maus I and II reas-

smilingat the camera, and Anja is standingabove him, wearing

sage of death which,throughthe presence of the photo's "hav-

ing, this segment merelyexacerbates what occurs at everylevel

needs and desires of the one who remembers- whetherit be

For lackof a betterterm,I willproposethatthereis a need

Artand Vladek share one monumental loss, Anja's, and on that

a reemergence from it: a masculine process facilitatedby the

of both the aesthetic and the documentary/technological -

dedication page clearly has to be of Richieu. Art comments,

reconnect the lost Vladek and Anja afterthe liberation. "Anja

difference between this clean uniform and the one he must

Maus representsthe aesthetic of the trauma fragment,the

somethingbreaks out of the rowsof frames,or out of the frames

Adorno,TheodorW. Negative Dialectics.

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