Never Forget Who You Are And Where You’re From:

Tracing Trauma and Postmemory in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to inspect and establish a reading of the intricacies of trauma, memory, and violence in Persepolis, a bildungsroman graphic novel that charts the transition of Marji's childhood to adulthood. The textual self of Marjane Satrapi, a ten-year-old in 1980, a year post-Iranian Revolution, narrates her experience of growing up through a graphic novel in an attempt to highlight the shortcomings of written language. Marji is a very intriguing character to analyse Marianne Hirsch’s coinage Postmemory - the tie that "generation after" has with the trauma experienced by those who came before - events that can only be recalled, "via stories, pictures, and actions in which they were raised" (Hirsch). Satrapi’s choice to end the novel at the beginning of another journey demonstrates Marji’s wish to keep searching for closure, or perhaps closure to accept that there is no closure for herself.  Through the work of theorists like Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Cathy Caruth, Marianne Hirsch, Geoffrey Hartman, Jan and Aleida Assmann and more the paper seeks an exploration of a generational flux of traumatic memories and sensitizes the reader to the magnanimity of testimonial and confessional literature as an act of survival.