Mourning and Storytelling in Walter Benjamin: A Reading from the Country of the Lost Ones

Abstract

In “Excavation and Memory” Walter Benjamin approaches the subject of remembering from a specific metaphor: excavation. But far from being only a metaphoric activity, excavation is sometimes the literal action withewhich to find clues to solve contemporary mysteries. In Mexico, country where since 2007 there are more than thirty thousand lost people, men and women have become recently excavators who, through loose soil, search without rest for footprints or traces of their loved ones. What is to be done witheso much barbarity? Perhaps through the Benjamin’s notion of storytelling we could think of remembering in terms of unearthing as a possibility for mourning in the country of the lost ones.