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number of possible identities in circulation, because being different from the
French in general does not make her unique. She must conform to some already
established image. Spiegelman determines that Francoise is not like “them” but
like him (and therefore like “us”).
Indeed, the text also does not solve—although it asks—^the question of
wiiether these identities are chosen or imposed. In two scenes in Book Two,
Spiegelman draws himself and others wearing masks, rather than as
anthropomorphized animals. In Book One, he is able to slip in and out of the
city streets by wearing masks. In these moments Spiegelman raises the
possibility of identity’s fluidity and malleability. Nazi propaganda with its fixed
notions of beauty, idealism, and essentialism, the seduction of which made
Auschwitz possible, denies exactly such a possibility. What is of interest in these
scenes is not that a real human might exist underneath the mask but rather that
the wearing of one mask implies the possibility of wearing others. Or that
identity, clearly evoked in the psychoanalytic scene between Spiegelman and his
psychologist, is a series of masks—^not only those that one is forced to wear but,
perhaps, those that one can choose to wear. Thus, through satirical irony the text
exposes and inscribes the contradictory logic on wliich generalizations rest. On
the one hand, generalizations elide difference by emphasizing homogeneity
where heterogeneity should thrive. They relegate the individual to the collective.
On the other hand, generalizations are a way of making sense of the world by
conceiving of individuals not as atomistic but as connected to something larger
than themselves. Indeed, what would Maus be like if every character was drawn
as a different animal?
One of the lessons of the satirical-ironic mode may very well be that it
allows for conscious reflection on its own limits. It is a way of responding to the
changes and chances in life, not a means for defining or delineating the causes.
In Maus^ the satirical-ironic mode is used not only to raise significant questions
about the nature of individual and collective identity but also to highlight the
problematic nature of both representational forms and the processes of telling
stories about the self and about others.^®
Independent Scholar
Kevin A. Morrison
Notes
Translations include “work brings freedom” or “work liberates.” These quotations
function ironically, o f course, because they refer not to the condition o f the Jews but
rather to German National-Socialist Work Programs, seeking to remind citizens o f the
high rates o f imemployment in the 1920s until the work programs created jobs and thus
reduced poverty and hunger.
2
V
The notion o f the Holocaust as a “gigantic joke” is consistent with Z iiek ’s aim o f
subjecting the Holocaust to a psychoanalytic reading. He is concerned with the way in
which the violence o f the Holocaust exceeds rational and political cause.