Memória, trauma e testemunho do Holocausto Judaico: uma análise dos dois volumes de Maus: a história de um sobrevivente, de Art Spiegelman.

Abstract

The comic book Maus, A Survivor’s Tale, by Art Spiegelman, on the Holocaust, had its two volumes published in Brazil by Editora Brasiliense between 1986 and 1995. This graphic novel was the first of its kind to receive the Pulitzer Prize. Moreover, it was and continues to be a significant work concerning the testimony of the Holocaust catastrophe. Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew persecuted and imprisoned in Auschwitz, one of the concentration and extermination camps organized and managed by the Third Reich regime during World War II, is the main character of the book. His story is globally recognized and constitutes the primary source of this study. We aim to investigate the possibilities and limitations of this comic book in its historical portrayal, which will be analyzed in light of the concepts of memory, trauma, and testimony, as discussed by Huyssen (2004) and LaCapra (2005), individual and collective memory, as analyzed by Halbwachs (1990), postmemory, as studied by the Romanian scholar Hirsch (2012), and the relationship between memory and history, as examined by the Argentine critic Sarlo (2007). Based on these authors, our objective is to reflect on the narrative construction of the book regarding the catastrophe. As our research methodology, we analyze excerpts from both volumes of Maus, taking into account its specificity as sequential art, a concept coined by cartoonist Will Eisner (1989), and the analytical approaches to this form of art proposed by McCloud (1995). For a better understanding of Spiegelman's work, we also briefly examine the comic book In the Shadow of No Towers (2004). It is essential to emphasize that this research does not aim to revise the Holocaust or question its historical veracity, and we vehemently repudiate such attitudes. This study seeks to understand and remember, not to neglect well-established historical facts.