This article takes Jenny Erpenbeck’s provocative novel Heimsuchung as an opportunity to consider how the mass rape of German women in 1945 has functioned as a ‘mnemonic signifier’, that is, a symbolic figuration of broader memory discourses. Through a close reading of this work, I show that this mnemonic signifier often dovetails with cultural ‘rape scripts’ that determine whether and how sexual violence is addressed, recognized and understood. Exploring how wartime rape has been remembered thus opens up new perspectives on the social and political salience of memory. This article consequently addresses the need for a ‘mnemographic ethics’ that foregrounds the victims of historical violence and their experiential realities, matters that are all too easily suppressed or transfigured in processes of remembrance and interpretation. It argues that literature can offer a model for such a practice.
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