Constructing the Holocaust A Study in Historiography

by Stone, Dan; Webber, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780853034780
• ISBN10: 0853034788
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Vallentine Mitchell

Summary

Constructing the Holocaust examines the development of Holocaust historiography in the light of recent critical philosophy of history. It argues that the Holocaust provides both the occasion for, and the ultimate test of, new ways of giving meaning to the past. It also shows that examining our representations of the past is as important as archival research for understanding history. The problem under investigation is the paradox of using tools and methods inherited from western civilization in order to write about a set of events - the Holocaust - that impugn fundamental tenets of that very civilization. This paradox, though historians of the Holocaust increasingly acknowledge it, has not been investigated in detail before. This book explains how the paradox arose and why it remains largely unchallenged. It also points to ways of overcoming it.

Author Biography

Dan Stone is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century European History at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Preface	xii
Acknowledgements	xix
Introduction	1	(12)
Part I
1 The Holocaust and the Philosophy of History	13	(39)
2 Nazism	52	(30)
3 An Aggressive Silence	82	(49)
4 Memory and Historicization	131	(52)
Part II
5 The Uniqueness of the Holocaust: A Historiographical Case Study	183	(28)
6 Narrative Theory and Holocaust Historiography	211	(28)
7 Modernity and the Origins of the Holocaust	239	(23)
Conclusion	262	(6)
Bibliography	268	(35)
Index	303