The ethics of looking at a tree

Abstract

In The Generation of Postmemory, Marianne Hirsch describes "postmemory" as the relationship that the "generation after" the Holocaust bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before, to experiences that were transmitted so deeply and affectively – by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up – as to "seem" to constitute memories in their own right. However, at a time when most of the Holocaust survivors have already died, another kind of individual memory takes place. It is that of the generations who, despite not having those experiences, have established some kind of link with the trauma through its images (and its representations) that contribute (as historical, literary or artistic work) to recontextualize a past that has never to be forgotten.