Beyond the Conceivable

by Diner, Dan

• ISBN13: 9780520213456
• ISBN10: 0520213459
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

The major essays of Dan Diner, who is widely read and quoted in Germany and Israel, are finally collected in an English edition. They reflect the author's belief that the Holocaust transcends traditional patterns of historical understanding and requires an epistemologically distinct approach. One can no longer assume that actors as well as historians are operating in the same conceptual universe, sharing the same criteria of rational discourse. This is particularly true of victims and perpetrators, whose memories shape the distortions of historical narrative in ways often diametrically opposed. The essays are divided into three groups. The first group talks about anti-Semitism in the context of the 1930s and the ideologies that drove the Nazi regime. The second group concentrates on the almost unbelievably different perceptions of the "Final Solution," with particularly illuminating discussions of the Judenrat, or Jewish council. The third group considers the Holocaust as the subject of narrative and historical memory. Diner focuses above all on perspectives: the very notions of rationality and irrationality are seen to be changeable, depending on who is applying them. And because neither rational nor irrational motives can be universally assigned to participants in the Holocaust, Diner proposes, from the perspective of the victims, the idea of the counterrational. His work is directed toward developing a theory of Holocaust historiography and offers, clearly and coherently, the highest level of reflection on these problems.

Author Biography

Dan Diner is Professor at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, and Director of the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at Leipzig University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(10)
PART I POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT
On the Brink of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and the Weimar Constitution	11	(15)
Knowledge of Expansion: On the Geopolitics of Karl Haushofer	26	(23)
Norms for Domination: Nazi Legal Concepts of World Order	49	(29)
The Catastrophe before the Catastrophe: 1938 in Historical Context	78	(19)
PART II PERCEPTIONS OF THE HOLOCAUST
The Limits of Reason: Max Horkheimer on Anti-Semitism and Extermination	97	(20)
Beyond the Conceivable: The Judenrat as Borderline Experience	117	(13)
Historical Understanding and Counterrationality: The Judenrat as Epistemological Vantage	130	(8)
On Rationality and Rationalization: An Economistic Explanation of the Final Solution	138	(22)
Historical Experience and Cognition: Juxtaposing Perspectives on National Socialism	160	(13)
PART III HOLOCAUST NARRATIVES
Varieties of Narration: The Holocaust in Historical Memory	173	(14)
Nazism and Stalinism: On Memory, Arbitrariness, Labor, and Death	187	(14)
Cumulative Contingency: Historicizing Legitimacy in Israeli Discourse	201	(17)
On Guilt Discourse and Other Narrations: German Questions and Universal Answers	218	(13)
Notes	231	(42)
Index	273