Witnessing the disaster : essays on representation and the Holocaust / edited by Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bernard-Donals, Michael F.

Glejzer, Richard R.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature--Study and teaching.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) in literature.

Physical Description:

vi, 317 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, [2003]

Summary:

Histories, films, stories and novels, memorials and museums, and survivor testimonies involve problems of witnessing: how do those who survived, and those who lived long after the Holocaust, make clear to us what happened? How can we distinguish between more and less authentic accounts? Are histories more adequate descriptors of the horror than narrative? Does the susceptibility of survivor accounts to faulty memory and the vestiges of trauma of their experiences make them any less useful as instruments of witness? And how do we authenticate their accuracy without giving those who deny the Holocaust a small but dangerous foothold?

The essayists in Witnessing the Disaster aim to move past the notion that the Holocaust as an event defies representation. They look at specific cases of Holocaust representation and consider their effect, their structure, their authenticity, and the kind of knowledge they produce. Taken together they consider the tension between history and memory, the vexed problem of eyewitness testimony and its status as evidence, and the ethical imperatives of Holocaust representation.

Contents:

Introduction : Representations of the Holocaust and the end of memory / Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer

I. The epistemology of witness

The Holocaust as vicarious past : Art Spiegelman's Maus and the afterimages of history / James E. Young

"The language of dollars" : Multilingualism and the claims of English in Hasidic tales of the Holocaust / Alan Rosen

A pedagogy of trauma (or a crisis of cynicism) : Teaching, writing, and the Holocaust / Janet Alsup

The "erotics of Auschwitz" : Coming of age in The painted bird and Sophie's choice / Sharon Oster

Maus and the epistemology of witness / Richard Glejzer

II. Memory, authenticity, and the "Jewish question"

Promiscuous reading : The problem of indentification and Anne Frank's Diary / Susan David Bernstein

Humboldt's gift and Jewish American self-fashioning "after Auschwitz" / Elizabeth Jane Bellamy

Mormon literature and the irreducible other : Writing the unspeakable in Holocaust literature / Reinhold Hill

Beyond the question of authenticity : Witness and testimony in the Fragments controversy / Michael Bernard-Donals

III. Ethical imperative

Maurice Blanchot : Fighting spirit / Geoffrey Hartman

Shoah and the origins of teaching / David Metzger

Teaching (after) Auschwitz : Pedagogy between redemption and sublimity / Michael Bernard-Donls and Richard Glejzer

Approaching limit events : siting Agamben / Dominick LaCapra.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0299183602

0299183645

OCLC:

50090063