Representation, melancholy and resistance: W. G. Sebald’s spectral materialism

Abstract

The complex constellation of historical events, personal experiences and poetic presentation of facts and experiences, pose memory and performance as a central concern of W.G. Sebald's literary project. The author believes that there are many forms of writing, but only literature can undertake an attempt to restitution. As for Walter Benjamin's historian, the question is not only recover the past, but to save it. The writing of history is founded precisely in its lagoon, the deads it speaks about. That task is embarking Sebald in his work of remembrance.