Arhive Uitate: O Lectură În Cheie Mnemonică a Prozei Lui Paul Goma

This article examines the ways in which Paul Goma’s literature becomes a mnemonic instrument whereby the image of the prison, excluded from the official discourse of the totalitarian system, is recovered, thus creating a space for the negotiation between forgetting and remembering a collective trauma. The novels Gherla and Patimile după Pitești are part of a series of texts that not only document a historical and political episode but also contribute to a process of completing the perspective on a period interpreted and represented in various forms depending on social, ethical and ideological implications. The functionality of the concept of “collective memory” or “cultural memory”, defined by Jan Assmann and Aleida Assman is essential in understanding memory as a dynamic phenomenon, mediated by certain factors and which remains, regardless of the historical period we refer to, integrated in a rapport of force with the power. In this sense, Paul Goma’s prose does not stop at depicting fragments of individual memory, on the contrary, it encourages the conscious activation, through diverse narrative forms, of a political history and the solidarity of a community that shares a collective memory, the main consequence being the creation of a resistance framework before an ideological selections of memory.