Post-Holocaust : interpretation, misinterpretation, and the claims of history / Berel Lang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lang, Berel.

Series:

Jewish literature and culture.

Jewish literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Historiography.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Influence.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Moral and ethical aspects.

Antisemitism--History.

Antisemitism.

Physical Description:

xviii, 200 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c2005.

Summary:

"These essays are extremely well written, with the clarity and accessibility that one has come to expect from Berel Lang, one of the most respected and significant philosophers writing about the Holocaust and its impact." -- Michael L. Morgan In these trenchant essays, philosopher Berel Lang examines post-Holocaust intepretations -- and misinterpretations -- showing the ways in which rhetoric and ideology have affected historical discourse about the Holocaust and how these accounts can be deconstructed. Why didn't the Jews resist? How could the Germans have done what they did? Why didn't more bystanders join in the rescue? In Lang's view, these questions become mischievous when the circumstances in which victims, perpetrators, and bystanders played their roles are omitted or obscured. To confront such issues adequately requires comparative and contextual evidence. Post-Holocaust addresses such questions as the place of the Holocaust in the Nazi project as a whole, the roles of revenge and forgiveness in post-Holocaust Jewish thinking, Holocaust commemoration as artifice or "business," and the relationship of the Holocaust to traditional antisemitism. Lang's analysis provides an incisive and fruitful basis for confronting these critical subjects. Jewish Literature and Culture -- Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One: In the Matter of Justice

One: The Nazi as Criminal

Two: Forgiveness, Revenge, and the Limits of Holocaust Justice

Three: Evil, Suffering, and the Holocaust

Four: Comparative Evil:Measuring Numbers, Degrees, People

Part Two: Language and Lessons

Five: The Grammar of Antisemitism

Six: The Unspeakable vs. the Testimonial: Holocaust Trauma in Holocaust History

Seven: Undoing Certain Mischievous Questions about the Holocaust

Eight: From the Particular to the Universal, and Forward

Part Three: For and Against Interpretation

Nine: Oskar Rosenfeld and Historiographic Realism (in Sex, Shit, and Status)

Ten: Lachrymose without Tears: Misreading the Holocaust in American Life

Eleven: "Not Enough" vs. "Plenty" / Which Did Pius XII?

Twelve: The Evil in Genocide

Thirteen: Misinterpretation as the Author's Responsibility (Nietzsche's Fascism, for Instance)

Afterword: Philosophy and/of the Holocaust

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [183]-195) and index.

ISBN:

0-253-11052-1

OCLC:

437166191