만화로 읽는 홀로코스트: 아트 스피글만의 『쥐』

Abstract

Art Spiegelman’s Maus graphically represents the story of Vladek Spiegleman’s experiences in the Holocaust, which is interviewed by the author himself. This study starts from the unexpected marriage between the form and the subject, that is, comics and the Holocaust. Comics has been rarely considered to be a serious medium enough to convey the traumatic history of the Holocaust. However, the commercial and critical success Maus has achieved proves it wrong. Spiegelman’s Maus provides an opportunity to reconsider the possibility of comics as a powerful medium and genre, as well as to invigorate the study of comics. This paper is in particular interested in the ways the Holocaust is graphically visualized as an unfinished history and the process the children of the survivors construct their postmemory of the Holocaust. In Maus, the Holocaust is not dead in the past but still alive in the present to the survivors (Vladek), and the memories of the Holocaust are transferred to the second generation (Artie) of the survivors and help them form the postmemory of the traumatic history. Focusing on fragmented images, panels representing singular or plural temporality, gutters in which time and motion continue or stop, etc, this paper argues that these formal properties of comics efficiently and intimately visualize the aesthetics of traumatic memories.