Aesthetics of Postmemory

Two Regimes: A Mother’s Memoir of Wartime Survival (2011), co-created by the Ukrainian woman Teodora Verbitskya and her daughter Nadia Werbitzky, exhibits a unique convergence of testimony and imaginative interpretation of a generation that has inherited the trauma indirectly. Rooted in Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory and an interdisciplinary approach that combines narrative analysis and visual semiotics, this research analyzes how the text functions as an aesthetic and affective archive of postmemory. The primary text links personal testimony of the Holodomor and the Holocaust with visual imagination to represent the transmission and preservation of memory across generations. The research has two core objectives: primarily, to critically examine the postmemorial reflections in the memoir’s textual and visual narrative; secondly, to evaluate the role of postmemory in resisting and contesting historical denial. Methodologically, it employs narrative analysis for examining the literary representation of trauma, focusing on language, metaphors, structures, and tone in Teodora’s memoir. Furthermore, the research integrates a visual semiotic analysis to study Nadia’s paintings that illuminate her mother’s memoir. The reading is categorized into three themes—Precarious Space, Maternal Gaze, and Songs of Survival—to explore the layered aspects of memory, loss, and survival. The discussion reveals that Two Regimes is not only an archival record of traumatic memory but also a tool of cultural resistance that preserves the ethical transmission of memory. The significance of the research lies in its contribution to the contemporary discussions on the preservation and transmission of marginalized histories through contested memory cultures.