SOURCE: Young, James E. “The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman's Maus and the Afterimages of History.” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 3 (spring 1998): 666-99.

In the following essay, Young explores how Maus illustrates the myriad dilemmas involved in representing the Holocaust, noting that Maus “succeeds brilliantly not just for the ways it side-shadows the history of the Holocaust, but for the ways it side-shadows memory itself, the ways it makes visible why such history is worth recalling in the first place.”

1. Introduction

Following Walter Benjamin's lead in his “These on the Philosophy of History,” Saul Friedlander wonders whether all historical interpretation is somehow fraught with redemptory potential. By extension, he asks whether the very act of writing Holocaust history might also redeem these events with meaning. Though as a historian Friedlander questions the adequacy of ironic and experimental responses to the Holocaust, insofar as he fears that their transgressiveness undercuts...