Abstract
This article aims to seek in the novel Dora Bruder (1997), by Patrick Modiano, the meaning and relevance of visual erasure as a narrative resource, materialized in the absence of photographic images and in the use of ekphrasis, to deal with the trauma inflicted by the persecution and murder of Jews during World War II. The author's choice to deny the reader the exposure of the Jewish girl who disappeared in Paris during the German occupation is a metaphor for the elimination, erasure, silencing and death of the social memory of a people. In response to this imposed amnesia, memory is used as a means to interrogate a past that is transformed into a narrative to allow the re-elaboration of painful experiences made more comprehensible because they can be told.
Keywords:
photography; memory; ekphrasis; erasure; Patrick Modiano