'Accept the Virus': Trauma, Mimetic Violence, and the Paradox of Cultural Memory on the Move in Peter Verhelst's Zwerm

This article analyses the 2015 novel Zwerm by Peter Verhelst and its contribution to recent fictions of meta-memory about the Second World War, which combine personally engaged memories with perspectives on the functioning of memory, with key political, ethical, and poetological implications. A dystopian narrative, Zwerm presents Western history as a vicious cycle of trauma and mimetic violence, dissecting mechanisms of retribution and the political abuse of cultural memory. The novel endorses an alternative view of cultural memory as disembodied, denationalized, and determined by the logic of today's global, digitalized culture, while also demonstrating its continuing vulnerability.