Memory, Uncanny, and Spectrality in Joseph Skibell’s A Blessing on the Moon

Abstract: The dialectics of memory and spectrality in American Jewish novelist Joseph Skibell’s A Blessing on the Moon (1997) reveals Holocaust’s traumatic memory having an afterlife in the descendants of the survivors. Viewed through the lens of spectrality and hauntology, the author’s engagement with a personal, familial memory comes dense with collective trauma. Being a revenant, Skibell’s protagonist Chaim Skibelski takes upon himself the ethical responsibility of educating the contemporary reader about the brutalities of the Holocaust. Significantly, Skibell’s novel retraces and reframes the memory of the mass murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust era through the phenomenon of the uncanny and the presence of spectral figures.