Mapping Memory: Cartography in Contemporary Holocaust Culture

In recent years, new scholarship in cartography has emerged that has begun to challenge the apparent non-neutrality of maps as representations of physical space. In the eyes of some, the ‘memory boom’ of the 1980s and 1990s, which was in no small part occasioned by an exponential increase in works of Holocaust memory, posed a similar challenge to the authority of traditional historiography. Despite such developments, there has hitherto been little research that seeks to systematically connect cartography to memory as a means of representing cultural-memory phenomena, despite the fact that maps are at times employed in cultural works that aim to address such questions. As such, this thesis asks how authors and artists respond to the legacy of the Holocaust in contemporary cultural works through the use of cartography. Particularly, it is concerned with establishing what relation questions of memory – both cultural and individual – bring to bear on the cartographies included within the works of Miriam Katin, Amy Kurzweil, Jeremie Dres, W.G. Sebald, and Nikolaus Gansterer. Accordingly, a theoretical framework combining scholarship in both cartography and memory studies will be employed. Broadly, maps within the works of these authors can be conceived of as fluid, flexible entities that challenge traditional conceptions of cartography as near-objective; this is in part owing to their connection with the questions of Holocaust memory inherent to each work – maps tend to mirror mnemonic concerns in accordance with their fluidity. Consequently, this thesis offers a potential avenue for an increased understanding of how spaces of the Holocaust are interpreted from a contemporary (cultural) perspective.