Triumph And Trauma

by Giesen,Bernhard

• ISBN13: 9781594510397
• ISBN10: 1594510393
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2004-07-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book deals with triumphant and tragic heroes, with victims and perpetrators as archetypes of the Western imagination. A major recent change in Western societies is that memories of triumphant heroism-for example, the revolutionary uprising of the people-are increasingly replaced by the public remembrance of collective trauma of genocide, slavery and expulsion. The first part of the book deals with the heroes and victims and explores the social construction of charisma and its inevitable decay. Part 2 focuses on a paradigm case of the collective trauma of perpetrators: German national identity between 1945 and 2000. After a time of latency, the legacy of nationalistic trauma was addressed in a public conflict between generations. The conflict took center stage in vivid public debates and became a core element of Germany's official political culture. Today public confessions of the guilt of the past have spread beyond the German case. They are part of a new post-utopian pattern of collective identity in a globalized setting.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Foreword	ix
S. N. Eisenstadt
Introduction	1	(14)
Triumphant Heroes: Between Gods and Humans	15	(30)
The social construction of heroes	15	(2)
Heroes as triumphant subjectivity	17	(5)
The sacrificial core of heroism	22	(3)
Rituals of remembrance	25	(3)
Relics: The places of heroes	28	(3)
Monuments: The face of the hero	31	(3)
Classics: the voice of the hero	34	(2)
The Hero's Dress for Everybody: Historicism	36	(4)
Places without heroes: The evanescence of the sacred	40	(2)
Notes	42	(3)
Victims: Neither subjects nor objects	45	(30)
The social construction of victims	45	(1)
Victims, perpetrators and the public perspective	46	(2)
At the fringe of moral communities	48	(6)
Remembering victims	54	(4)
Before guilt and innocence: Victims as sacred objects	58	(2)
Personal compassion: The victim as the inferior subject	60	(1)
Impartial justice: The construction of perpetrators	61	(3)
The discourse of civil society: The construction of victimhood	64	(2)
Claims and recognitions in a strong public sphere	66	(5)
Concluding remarks	71	(1)
Notes	72	(3)
The Tragic Hero: The Decapitation of the King: Triumph and Trauma in the Transfer of Political Charisma	75	(34)
Introduction	75	(2)
Reversing the perspective on the center: The master narrative of modern society	77	(3)
Personal charisma: Linking the king's two bodies	80	(5)
The rule of the law: Accusing the king	85	(6)
The public sphere of civil society: Scandal at the center	91	(7)
The public space of the people: Scapegoating the center	98	(3)
The publicity of the media: Dissolving the center	101	(4)
Concluding remarks	105	(2)
Notes	107	(2)
The Trauma of Perpetrators: The Holocaust as the Traumatic Reference of German National Identity	109	(46)
Introduction	109	(3)
Lost paradises: Germany as Naturnation	112	(3)
Failed revolutions: Democracy without a triumphant myth	115	(5)
The denial of the trauma	120	(9)
Changing sides: Public conflicts and rituals of confession	129	(6)
The objectification of the trauma: Scholarly debates and museums	135	(6)
The mythologization of the trauma: The Holocaust as an icon of evil	141	(3)
The globalization of the trauma: A new mode of universalist identity	144	(9)
Notes	153	(2)
Postscript: Modernity and Ambivalence	155	(10)
References	165	(22)
Index	187	(9)
About the Author	196