Representations of the nuclear holocaust and the problem of testimony: Japanese accounts of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and the Nuclear Age in the fiction of Stanisław Lem

This article deals with the problem of representation of the nuclear holocaust in literary theory (in the context of deconstruction theory) and in some literary works (usually dubbed Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic fiction), i.e. John Hersey's Hiroshima, Hara Tamiki's Summer Flowers, Ibuse Masuji's The Crazy Iris, and Stanisław Lem's novel His Master's Voice and his short story Man from Hiroshima. The problem of representing a calamitous event is discussed here in connection with recent debates on the nature and status of testimony (especially Dori Laub's witness and testimony studies).