Perpetrators’ Legacies

<p>The book presents Winfried Georg Sebald and Ian McEwan as paradigmatic post-imperial writers who enmeshed in the hierarchies of power inherited from their imperial times strive to disentangle themselves from that burdensome legacy. To achieve this they undertake a subtle detachment from the analogously implicated subject positions of their protagonists. In Sebald’s works these positions are closer to the historical victims of the Third Reich who used to suppress their past experiences whereas in McEwan’s works they incline toward the systemic ‘beneficiaries’ of the British Empire who used to overlook their present privileges. However in distinction to their protagonists’ denied involvements both authors recognize their implication in their protagonists’ pasts and presents. Such a detachment from familiar protagonists requires the consent of unknown and scattered readers with whom they forge a long-distance solidarity connective association or complicitous alliance. Thus to exempt themselves from one complicity they enter another one.</p>