Description
Book SynopsisAt the end of a century of unfathomable suffering, societies are facing anew the question of how events that shock, resist assimilation, and evoke contradictory and complex responses should be remembered. Between Hope and Despair specifically examines the pedagogical problem of how remembrance is to proceed when what is to be remembered is underscored by a logic difficult to comprehend and subversive of the humane character of existence. This pedagogical attention to practices of remembrance reflects the growing cognizance that hope for a just and compassionate future lies in the sustained, if troubled, working through of these issues.
Trade ReviewThis is a book that is at once masterful, disturbing, and passionate. The scholarship is meticulous and the analysis penetrating and insightful. The writers challenge us all to confront the enormity of evil as well as to celebrate the profoundly human impulse for redemption. -- David E. Purpel, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
These wide-ranging, courageous essays on the impact of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and other instances of political terror and mass violence, acknowledge the limits of the social and psychological remedies that can be drawn from remembering the past. At the same time, through a close and intensive study of testimonies, memoirs, fiction (including second-generation witness), and other modes of story telling they scrupulously analyze the possibility of working-through recent trauma. The essayists jointly advocate a new direction, which they call the pedagogical rather than strategic practice of memorialization. -- Geoffrey Hartman, Project Director, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University
Between Hope and Despair is a well-documented, scholarly work. . . . The editors of [the book] should indeed be commended for offering us such a wonderful collection. * Journal Of Curriculum Studies *
An exceptionally smart collection of essays. * Jac *
Shoshana Felman observed that the unprecedented teaching possibilities opened up by the 'revolutionary pedagogy of psychoanalysis' have never been fully grasped or utilized in the classroom. The contributors to this collection and other educators now exploring the relations between history, trauma, and teaching, have begun that work. Their efforts lay the groundwork for nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of 'multicultural education' and teaching about and across social and cultural difference. -- Elizabeth Ellsworth, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: Between Hope and Despair: The Pedagogical Encounter of Historical Rememberance Chapter 2 1 The Paradoxical Practice of Zakhor: “Memories of That Which Has Never My Fault” Chapter 3 2 If the Story Cannot End: Deferred Action, Ambivalence and Difficult Knowledge Chapter 4 3 Anxiety and Contact in Attending to a Play about Landmines Chapter 5 4 Standing in a Circle of Stone: Rupturing the Binds of Emblamatic Memory Chapter 6 5 Never to Forget: Pedagogical Memory and Second Generation Witness Chapter 7 6 Artifactual Testimonies and the Staging of Holocaust Memories Chapter 8 7 Pedagogy and Trauma: The Middle Passage, Slavery, and the Problem of Creolization Chapter 9 8 Loss in Present Terms: Reading the Limits of Post-dictatorship Argentina's National Conciliation Chapter 10 9 Beyond Reconciliation: Memory and Allerity in Post-Genocide Rwanda Chapter 11 10 Re-Learning Questions: Responses to the Ethical Address of the Past and Present of Others Chapter 12 Bibliography Chapter 13 Index Chapter 14 About the Editors and Contributors
