The Nameless Library is one of many Holocaust memorials created during a postmodern era when Europe and the United States were fixated on collective memory and commemoration (Widrich, 2013). Specifically located in downtown Vienna on Judenplatz square, this memorial is site specific and worthy of study since it represents a tragic event in a public space by counteracting an incoherent narrative that Austria hid under for years. Designed by artist Rachel Whiteread, the library re-focuses Austrian collective memory as guilty of Nazi crimes against their own people instead of the narrative of heroism or Hitler’s first victim. This thesis explores two conflicting narratives juxtaposed during its production period, illuminating how Austria’s Holocaust past is remembered and represented (Hansen-Glucklich, 2014) in order to understand contemporary memory. A postmodern visual analysis (Blair, et al., 1991; Finnegan, 2010; Jameson, 1991; Lyotard, 1984) is applied to The Nameless Library, focusing on the memorial’s compositional elements and discourse produced during its construction. This thesis concludes by suggesting that The Nameless Library has successfully aided Austrians and Austrian Jews to ‘work through the past’ by accurately representing the unrepresentable through a postmodern memorial.
