Description
Book SynopsisCan the Holocaust be compellingly described or represented? Or is there some core aspect of the extermination of the Jews of Europe which resists our powers of depiction, of theory, of narrative? In this volume, twenty scholars probe the moral, epistemological, and aesthetic limits of an account or portrayal of the Nazi horror.
Trade ReviewWhat might it mean to call the Holocaust a ’crisis in form’…the Shoah nonetheless challenges our powers to draw something like a meaning, or maybe even more than one, from this powerful sense of meaningfulness. At the same time that it renders the task of historical comprehension ethically imperative, it threatens to expose the inadequacies, or at the very least the limitations of our familiar modes of coming to understand cultural events. -- Irene Tucker * Poetics Today *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Saul Friedlander 1. German Memory, Judicial Interrogation, and Historical Reconstruction: Writing Perpetrator History from Postwar Testimony Christopher R. Browing 2. Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth Hayden White 3. On Emplotment: Two Kinds of Ruin Perry Anderson 4. History, Counterhistory and Narrative Amos Funkenstien 5. Just One Witness Carlo Ginzburg 6. Of Plots, Witness and Judgments Martin Jay 7. Representing the Holocaust: Reflections on the Historians' Debate Dominick LaCapra 8. Historical Understanding and Counterrationally: The Judenrat as Epistemological Vantage Dan Diner 9. History beyond the Pleasure Principle: Some Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma Eric L. Santner 10. Habermas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism Vincent P. Pecora 11. Between Image and Phrase: Progessive History and the "Final Solution" as Dispossession Sande Cohen 12. Science, Modernity, and the "Final Solution" Mario Biagioli 13. Holocaust and the End of History: Postmodern Historiography in Cinema Anton Kaes 14. Whose Story Is It, Anyways? Ideology and Psychology in the Representation of the Shoah in Israeli Literature Yael S. Feldman 15. Translating Paul Celan's "Todesfuge": Rhythm and Repetition as Metaphor John Felstiner 16. "The Grave in the Air": Unbound Metaphors in Post-Holocaust Poetry Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi 17. The Dialectics of Unspeakability: Language, Silence, and the Narratives of Desubjectification Peter Haidu 18. The Representation of Limits Berel Lang 19. The Book of the Destruction Geoffrey H. Hartman Notes Contributors Index
