Poetry of the Ruins and the Memory

Reading as Survival

Abstract

This work on the book Esparsas: viagem aos papéis do gueto de Varsóvia by Georges Didi-Huberman seeks to explore the way in which the author uses the fragments of papers found in the Warsaw ghetto as a form of resistance and memory in the face of the Holocaust. The research also reflects on the ethics of reading, questioning the role of the reader in the face of these fragmented vestiges, which challenge the linear narrative and offer multiple interpretations. The fragility of memory, addressed in the work, is directly connected with the impossibility of reconstructing the past in an integral way. However, the research highlights that the fragments, far from representing a “flaw”, serve, above all, as a way of giving voice to those who have been silenced, offering, paradoxically, a resignification of the past through incompleteness. Therefore, this study explores the complexity of these elements—fragment, memory, resistance, and ethics – and how they intertwine to give new meaning to reading and writing in the context of the human tragedy of the Warsaw Ghetto. To do so, it is based on the theoretical-critical postulations of Walter Benjamin (2020), Jacques Derrida (2001), Giorgio Agamben (2008).