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Negotiating Space in Literary Representations of Holocaust Trauma: Jorge Semprún's Le grand voyage and Antonio Muñoz Molina's Sefarad

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Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2016
<mark>Journal</mark>Bulletin of Hispanic Studies
Issue number1
Volume93
Number of pages18
Pages (from-to)45-62
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article examines the representation of travel in two Holocaust narratives: Jorge Semprún's Le grand voyage (1963) and Antonio Muñoz Molina's Sefarad (2001). It argues that train journeys in these two texts function as a metaphor for the therapeutic process by which witnesses of a catastrophic event undertake a psychic journey back to the root of their trauma through the construction of a narrative. The centrality of trains and movement in these texts points to the necessity of negotiating space in order to work through trauma. While focusing specifically on the texts by Semprún and Muñoz Molina, this article seeks, more generally, to put the mobility turn of cultural studies in dialogue with trauma studies by establishing a link between trauma and space in representations of the Holocaust.