Memory Archivists at Work: Nora Krug’s and Guida Joseph’s Life Writings as Postmemorial Scrapbooks

Abstract

This article analyses two contemporary graphic memoirs that engage with inherited wartime histories through materially driven, multimodal storytelling: Nora Krug’s Belonging/Heimat (2018) and Guida Joseph’s Enkele reis Sobibor. De postkaarten van mijn grootmoeder (2025). Both authors use life writing to confront difficult family pasts: the Nazi involvement of Krug’s relatives and the deportation of Joseph’s grandmother to Sobibor. At the same time, they reflect on their own identities. Combining Hirsch’s concept of postmemory with theories of comics and multimodal narrative, the article argues that scrapbook assemblages provide a particularly effective medium for expressing the tensions central to postmemory. Special attention is paid to the semiotic significance of gaps, blanks, and fragmented archival traces, as well as to shifts between visual registers that intensify the ethical and affective dimensions of remembrance. The study demonstrates that material mediation is constitutive rather than merely supportive of postmemory. Objects function as dialogic agents that enable intergenerational engagement while resisting narrative closure. Ultimately, it shows how postmemory emerges through the collection, arrangement, and redesign of archival materials in visually layered page compositions. The memoirs not only recount the past but actively perform remembrance, revealing the enduring entanglements of trauma, identity, accountability, and belonging across generations.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Life Writing, 2026 · DOI ↗