¶ … Home Examination Culture

Marianne Hirsch discusses an important concept in Holocaust/Memory studies, postmemory. What kind of experience/process does postmemory refer to? Why did Hirsch need to invent such a concept? What is the importance of memory, family, and photography in order to understand postmemory?

Postmemory is a concept that Marianne Hirsch developed as part of memory studies. She contends that memory is something that can be passed on to others, particularly passed on to others in the generation that follows the tragic event, and in this case her focus in the Holocaust, though she explains that her theories can be applied to other events. Early on in her article she succinctly describes the term and the concept of postmemory.

Postmemory describes the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. (Page 103)

Sometimes events are so powerful that the memory of the event goes beyond those who were there and lived through the experience. The concept of postmemory offers insight to the power and potential of memory. She explores the idea of having memories that are both one's own and at the same time not one's own, such as the memories of the Holocaust.

Hirsch's idea of postmemory comes from both her professional and personal experiences. She came upon the idea during her own personal research. She additionally explains how the...

The post in postmemory signals more than a temporal delay and more than a location in an aftermath. Postmodern, for example, inscribes both a critical distance and a profound interrelation with the modern; postcolonial does not mean the end of the colonial but its troubling continuity, though, in contrast, postfeminist has been used to mark a sequel to feminism. We certainly are, still, in the era of posts, which continue to proliferate: post-secular, post-human, postcolony, post-white. (Page 106)
Postmemory is not static; it is in flux. Postmemory also has the ability to exist in the past, present, and the future. Postmemory constitutes the link between time and experience. Like many great thinkers over time, she came upon this term or idea by accident, while focusing upon another subject. She noticed patterns of transmission between generations; she noticed how the transmission of the memories of horrifying or tragic events such as the Holocaust. These patterns led Hirsch to conceptualize memory in a new way that had not previously been conceptualized or articulated.

Postmemory shares the layering of these other posts and their belatedness, aligning itself with the practice of citation and mediation that characterize…