Probing the Limits of Representation

by Friedlander, Saul

• ISBN13: 9780674707665
• ISBN10: 0674707664
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-05-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Can 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. These essays expose to scrutiny questions that have a pressing claim on our attention, our conscience, and our cultural memory. First presented at a conference organized by Saul Friedlander, they are now made available for the wide consideration and discussion they merit. Christopher Browning, Hayden White, Carlo Ginzburg, Martin Jay, Dominick LaCapra, and others focus first on the general question: can the record of his historical event be established objectively through documents and witnesses, or is every historical interpretation informed by the perspective of its narrator? The suggestion that all historical accounts are determined by a preestablished narrative choice raises the ethical and intellectual issues of various forms of relativization. In more specific terms, what are the possibilities of historicizing National Socialism without minimizing the historical place of the Holocaust. Also at issue are the problems related to an artistic representation, particularly the dilemmas posed by aestheticization. John Felstiners, Yael S. Feldman, Sidra Ezahi, Eric Santner, and Anton Kaes grapple with these questions and confront the inadequacy of words in the face of the Holocaust. Others address the problem of fitting Nazi policies and atrocities into the history of Western thought and science. The book concludes with Geoffrey Hartmans's evocative meditation on memory.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(21)
Saul Frielander
German Memory, Judicial Interrogation, and Historical Reconstruction: Writing Perpetrator History from Postwar Testimony	22	(15)
Christopher R. Browning
Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth	37	(17)
Hayden White
On Emplotment: Two Kinds of Ruin	54	(12)
Perry Anderson
History, Counterhistory, and Narrative	66	(16)
Amos Funkenstein
Just One Witness	82	(15)
Carlo Ginzburg
Of Plots, Witnesses, and Judgments	97	(11)
Martin Jay
Representing the Holocaust: Reflections on the Historians' Debate	108	(20)
Dominick LaCapra
Historical Understanding and Counterrationality: The Judenrat as Epistemological Vantage	128	(15)
Dan Diner
History beyond the Pleasure Principle: Some Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma	143	(12)
Eric L. Santner
Habermas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism	155	(16)
Vincent P. Pecora
Between Image and Phrase: Progressive History and the ``Final Solution'' as Dispossession	171	(14)
Sande Cohen
Science, Modernity, and the ``Final Solution''	185	(21)
Mario Biagioli
Holocaust and the End of History: Postmodern Historiography in Cinema	206	(17)
Anton Kaes
Whose Story Is It, Anyway? Ideology and Psychology in the Representation of the Shoah in Israeli Liteature	223	(17)
Yael S. Feldman
Translating Paul Celan's ``Todesfuge'': Rhythm and Repetition as Metaphor	240	(19)
John Felstiner
``The Grave in the Air'': Unbound Metaphors in Post-Holocaust Poetry	259	(18)
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi
The Dialectics of Unspeakability: Language, Silence, and the Narratives of Desubjectification	277	(23)
Peter Haidu
The Representation of Limits	300	(18)
Berel Lang
The Book of the Destruction	318	(19)
Geoffrey H. Hartman
Notes	337	(62)
Contributors	399	(2)
Index	401