Vigilant memory : Emmanuel Levinas, the Holocaust, and the unjust death / R. Clifton Spargo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spargo, R. Clifton.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Grief.

Bereavement.

Elegiac poetry.

Ethics.

Conduct of life.

Lévinas, Emmanuel.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (328 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this original and magisterial study, Spargo uses Levinas's work to approach our understanding of the suffering and death of others, and in doing so reintroduces an essential ethical element to the reading of literature, culture, and everyday life.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Re-Theorizing Ethics

The Language of the Other

Ethics as Critique

Post-1945 Memory

1 Ethics as Unquieted Memory

Facing Death

Mourning the Other Who Dies

To Whom Do Our Funerary Emotions Refer?

Reading Grief's Excess in the Phaedo

The Death of Every Other

The Universal Relevance of the Unjust Death

The Holocaust-Not Just Anybody's Injustice

2 The Unpleasure of Conscience

Is Sorry Really the Hardest Word?

Unpleasure, Revisited

The Bad Conscience in History

The Bad Conscience and the Holocaust

Coda

3 Where There Are No Victorious Victims

Accountability in the Name of the Victim

Not Just Any Victim

Levinas and the Question of Victim-Subjectivity

Just Who Substitutes for Another?

Victim of Circumstances

Questionably Useful Suffering

4 Of the Others Who Are Stranger than Neighbors

The Stranger, Metaphorically Speaking

The Memory of the Stranger

Somebody's Knocking at the Door . . .

Lest We Forget-the Neighbor

The Community of Neighbors-Is It a Good Thing?

How Well Do I Know My Neighbor? The Exigency of Israel and the Holocaust

Afterword. Ethics versus History: Is There Still an Ought in Our Remembrance?

The Memory of Injustice

Nobody Has to Remember

Why Should I Care?

Notes

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-304) and index.

ISBN:

0-8018-8884-0

OCLC:

229431540