Workshop report “Exploring Narrative Gaps in Literature: Identity, Memory, and the Absent,” Greifswald (10-11 July 2025)

Analysing what is left unsaid in a story is often more thought-provoking and insightful, than relying on an automatic interpretation. The workshop Exploring Narrative Gaps in Literature: Identity, Memory, and the Absent analysed the ways narrative gaps function not simply as absences but as deliberate aesthetic strategies that shape remembering and storytelling. Gaps are often considered as something that emerges in the plot, a product of carving the story out of the happenings. Our focus was not on perception theory and filling the gaps, but rather on their aesthetic and constructivist potential in literary texts. This workshop examined the poetical and political functions of gaps in contemporary (auto)fiction, life writing, and graphic novels. Through different frameworks and concepts, the workshop provided varied views on understanding gaps in literature as aesthetic, ethical, and affective elements. The aim of the workshop was not to impose a singular reading strategy but to offer a plural and dynamic account of how gaps function in literature across different genres, media, cultures, and historical contexts.

The workshop took place from 10 to 11 July at the University of Greifswald and was organised by Hanna Horn, Paula Friedericke Hartmann and Tim Senkbeil (all Greifswald) as part of the international research training group Baltic Peripeties. Narratives of Reformations, Revolutions and Catastrophes. Ten speakers from universities across Europe and the USA discussed the topic on the examples of various literary works. The workshop started with theoretical approaches closely connected to autofictional writing, in which gaps are present both in the author’s process of shaping the story and in the narrative itself. The second panel continued with narratives dealing with ruptures in history, times of upheaval, and collective trauma. Although there was a different thematic focus, these contributions also discussed questions of autofictional writing, which turned out to be especially fruitful for the topic of the workshop. The final panel followed previously discussed questions but turned to a different presentation of gaps and focused on graphic novels. In this form of literature, gaps appear not only in the gutter, the space between the panels, but also through the interaction of image and text, artistic choices, stylistic devices, and deliberate visual omissions. Due to diverse examples and backgrounds of the speakers and also through the active participation of the IRTG researchers from Greifswald, the workshop managed to create a interdisciplinary and inspiring setting. With that the workshop allowed exchange and dialogue between researchers of different fields as well as career and project stages.             

The first panel, Construction Site. Gaps in Identity Writing, was dedicated to theoretical approaches to narrative gaps in literature. From the very beginning, a lively discussion was sparked off by the presentation of Avril Tynan (Turku), On Not Filling Gaps: The Ethics of Narrative Absence. She elaborated on the importance of sitting with the discomfort of unknowing, both for the reading and general human experience, and advocated for “interpretative humility”. Unlearning the automatized interpretation would then be one of the ways to work with narrative gaps for literary scholars. The next presenter considered the historical (narrative) gaps of the 20th century and how they can be bridged in personal autofictional writing. Kristian Svane (New Haven) started his talk, Exploring the Narrative Gaps of History. Autofictional Historiography, by quoting Aristotle’s distinction between literature as the universal truth and historiography as the depiction of specific stories. He then elaborated on the theoretical tension regarding the autobiography’s place between history and literature by using various examples, including Laurent Binet’s HHhH (2010) and Vielleicht Esther (2014) [Maybe Esther] by Katja Petrowskaja. Narrative gaps, which are part of one’s life alongside experiences of migration and racism, were analysed by Hanna Rinderle (Berlin) in her presentation ‘Managing the Legacy’. Familial and Social Gaps in Jason Diakité’s Memoir with the example of En droppe midnatt (2016) [A Drop of Midnight]. The double absence in the author’s family story is rooted in the memory gaps on his father’s side and his personal experiences as a person of colour in today’s Swedish society. The presentation was dedicated to the analysis of aesthetic and narratological techniques which Diakité uses to make readers aware of these gaps.

The analysis of autofictional literature poses questions which also apply to narratives dealing with ruptures in history, times of upheaval, or collective trauma, such as post-GDR, post-Cold War, or post-Soviet contexts. The workshop’s second panel, Confronting the Past. Literatures after 1989, therefore, focused on literature that deals with a problematic past, historical and personal caesuras. It started with the presentation by Nina Pilz (Greifswald), ‘dieses Loch füllte jetzt der Alkohol’: Alcohol-Related Gaps in Post-Wende Narratives, in which she turned to contemporary German literature that deals with the years after 1989. By narrating their childhood and youth in the recently reunified Germany, the authors are already closing a gap and drawing attention to the experiences of violence and speechlessness of that time. She argued that prominent gaps in these texts are repeatedly formed, revealed, and emphasised through the literary portrayals of alcohol and (heavy) drinking. Pilz compiled a typology of the literary effects of alcohol that, among others, includes drunken and therefore unreliable narrators or alcohol-induced memory gaps. Nele Hempel-Lamer (Long Beach) focused in her presentation, Motherhood in Cold War Germany – Exploring Narrative Gaps in Julia Franck’s and Birgit Vanderbeke’s Prosa, on two female authors, who used their writing to overcome traumas. Both Franck and Vanderbeke fictionalise autobiographical experiences, exploring the impact of displacement, political upheaval, and family dynamics on mothers. Drawing on Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance, Hempel-Lamer analysed how shifts in narrative style and perspective create gaps that renegotiate identity and memory in post-war German literature, particularly through maternal narratives and intergenerational trauma. In the second part of the panel Anna Dziuban (Munich) analysed in her talk, Porous Memory: Gaps and Fluidity in Ukrainian and Irish Literatures, how the Great Irish Famine and the Ukrainian Holodomor are remembered in the national literatures. The concept of “porous memory”, which she introduced, is thought to not only make the analysis of the intergenerational trauma’s representation in literature more precise, but also helps detect the trans-cultural connections between certain topoi in literatures and detect the common writing strategies they might share. In her presentation, ‘I Don’t Remember…’ Narrative Gaps and the Aesthetic of Absence in Nora Ikstena’s Soviet Milk, Tatiana Kelebek (Riga) expanded on narrative gap(e) as a wide-open wound, to which the reader’s interpretation can serve as a suture. With the psychoanalytical approach, she analysed the mechanics of filling in the gaps originating in both collective and personal transgenerational traumatic experiences during the Latvian SSR. During the discussion, the participants debated whether the (reader’s) gap-inflicted desire to resolve the unknown comes naturally or not.

The workshop was concluded by the third panel, Out of the Frame. Gaps in Graphic Novels, which explored the absent and how it’s narrativised not only in the written word but also with the help of visual imagery. In her presentation, Artefacts in Two Contemporary Swedish Graphic Trauma Memoirs, Ingvild Hagen Kjørholt (Trondheim) turned to the examples of Mats Jonsson’s När vi var samer (2021) [When We Were Sámi] and Joanna Rubin Dranger’s Ihågkom oss till liv (2022) [Remember Us to Life]. Both texts intervene in Swedish memory culture as the authors explore traumatic family legacies from the perspective of two Swedish national minorities – the Sámi population and the Jewish community. Materiality of memory in post-generation memoir and the role of artefacts in the storytelling were analysed with a close-reading approach, theories of Latour and Turkle. Andreas Stuhlmann (Hamburg) explored in his presentation, Fragmented Stories, Narrative Gaps, and Deconstructed Identities in Anke Feuchtenberg’s Graphic Novel Genossin Kuckuck, how the text employs various artistic techniques, such as charcoal drawings and shifting styles, to create a palimpsestic narrative where characters’ identities are constantly in flux. By incorporating narrative gaps and surreal elements, Feuchtenberg challenges traditional storytelling structures, inviting readers to engage with the text in multifaceted ways. Stuhlmann argues that the novel’s fragmented structure mirrors the disintegration of stable identities and the traumatic effects of the past, suggesting that these gaps are not empty but essential for understanding the complexities of post-war German identity and memory.

As an addition to the panel structure, Michael Basseler (Gießen) gave a keynote lecture on the workshop’s second day. He started his talk, Narrative Gaps as Forms: Reflections on the Aesthetic and Political Affordances of the Absent, with an overview about established understandings of gaps as the texts uncertainties to be either clarified or filled in and Genette’s definition of the ellipsis as a temporal gap. With Warhol-Down’s typology of unnarratability, Basseler turned to more contemporary approaches and proposed to study gaps as essential narrative forms which have their (dis)affordances. In their relational nature, gaps have the potential to both stabilise and destabilise meaning and communication, and with such a perspective, gaps can be analysed not only aesthetically but also politically.

The public reading with Shushan Avagyan (Yerevan), Re-membering the literary landscape, was part of the evening programme and was dedicated to gaps as forms of writing and knowledge. During the event, which was moderated by Hanna Horn (Greifswald), the author answered questions about her novel A Book, Untitled (initially published in Armenian, Girq-anvernagir in 2006, translated into English by Deanna Cachoian-Schanz in 2023) and read excerpts from the original. Being a poetic exploration between authorship and erasure, this book takes a personal and inventive approach to autofiction and the act of remembering. The text combines a translator’s diary with research on two early 20th-century feminist writers, Shushanik Kurghinian and Zabel Yesayan, whose legacies were erased by both the Tsarist and Stalinist regimes. Avagyan’s literary experiment invites readers to reconsider authorship and voice, for words belong neither to the writer nor to the reader, but rather unify past, present, and future. A recording of the inspiring reading event can be viewed here:

In the months to come, the organisational team plans to foster the emerged academic communication and exchange of ideas through the workshop-based anthology publication. This will provide the opportunity to share the results of the workshop with an even broader audience.