scholarly journals Critical History and its ‘Shadow Cabinet’. Polish Historiography and the Holocaust during 2003–2013

2017 ◽  
pp. 350-398
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Krupa
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Rural Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Special Place ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One ◽  
Year 2000

The author discusses the most important phenomena in Polish historiography and the selected publications about the Holocaust released during 2003–2013. Similarly to ‘narrativists’, Krupa is interested in the shape, the language, the storytelling manner, and the metaphors used. Having indicated the most important scholarly centres and publications of sources, the author concentrates on the camp monographs, syntheses and regional studies produced during that period, and then concludes that most of them are written in a very traditional way. The year 2000, when [the Polish edition] of Jan Tomasz Gross’s book Neighbours was released, proved to be a breakthrough year for [Polish] historiography. Before analysing the far-reaching consequences of this publication, Krupa briefly discusses the polemics surrounding the other books by that author. On the one hand, they led to the birth of the historiographical ‘shadow cabinet’ – a mobilisation of the milieu concentrated mostly around the IPN and directed at disparaging the significance of Gross’s publications. On the other hand, the most important consequence of Gross’s critical thinking about the Polish stances was the birth of the ‘peasant trend’ in [Polish] historiography. The books by Andrzej Żbikowski, Barbara Engelking, Jan Grabowski, as well as the collective works such as Prowincja noc and Zarys krajobrazu described, in a committed and interdisciplinary way, the shameful stances of the rural community – the denunciations, rapes, and even murders of Jews, with Tadeusz Markiel’s shocking testimony holding a special place among these publications. The works that acclaim the Polish stances and stress the Polish engagement in the rescuing of Jews (particularly those published within the framework of the IPN project „INDEX – In memory of Poles murdered or prosecuted by the Nazis because of their assistance to Jews”) are to constitute a counteroffer to the critical “peasant trend” within the framework of the “shadow cabinet.” At the end of the article Krupa discusses the books that regard the unknown pages of the Holocaust history in Warsaw written by Agnieszka Haska, Barbara Engelking, Dariusz Libionka, or Libionka’s collaboration with Laurence Weinbaum, which are not revolutionary in the sphere of language but nonetheless broaden the knowledge on the Holocaust. The author ends his discussion with a reference to the monumental work Jewish Presence in Absence. The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944–2010, without which, just as without reflecting on the consequences of the Holocaust in general, it is impossible to understand Poles and the situation in Poland.

scholarly journals Muzyka jako teofania? Pytania do George’a Steinera

Principia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Trzęsiok
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Philosophy Of Music ◽  
Rhetorical Question ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Special Place ◽  
The One ◽  
Name Of God

Music occupies a special place in George Steiner’s thinking: “Three areas: the essence and name of God, higher mathematics and music (what is the connection between them?) are located at the limits of language” (Steiner, Errata). The seemingly rhetorical question in parentheses turns out to be a source of deep controversy, the essence of which is revealed in historical-genealogical reflection. Steiner attempts to incorporate Romantic metaphysics within the traditional scholastic symbiosis of Biblical creationism and Pythagoreanism, which reveals his philosophy of music to be entangled in a range of contradictions. On the one hand, a critical reading of Steiner's works uncovers the difficulties posed by the attempt to reconcile pre- and post-Enlightenment culture; on the other hand, the still unused opportunities offered by Romanticism and its modernist continuations are clearly visible. Musical aesthetics, rooted in the idea of infinity, plays a crucial role in these divagations.

A Hyper-Ethics of Irreconcilable Contradictions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Banki
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One

This chapter is a reading of Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Forgiveness (Le Pardon (1967)) in relation to what he wrote elsewhere on the topic of forgiveness and the Holocaust. The interest of Jankélévitch’s work is that he recognizes an irreconcilable contradiction between, on the one hand, the sacred absolute of love from which comes the duty to forgive even the unforgivable and, on the other hand, crimes against humanity, which attack “the very essence, the humanness of the human and constitute the most sacrilegious of all faults.” As early as 1948, Jankélévitch spoke of the possibility of forgiveness for Nazi crimes. Twenty-three years later, however, he declared forgiveness to be impossible and immoral, when he affirmed: “Forgiveness died in the death camps.” Jankélévitch is unable to maintain a coherent position with regard to forgiveness and the Holocaust. However, this should not be considered to be simply a fault, a lack of moral and/or intellectual probity. This chapter also raises the question of the ‘privilege’ given to the Holocaust over other comparable crimes against humanity.

The Holocaust, Second-Generation Witness, and the Voluntary Covenant in American Judaism

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
American Judaism ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One

Widespread discourse about the Holocaust entered American popular culture in the seventies in two main ways: a series of television shows that purportedly focused on the destruction of European Judaism and two books that dealt specifically with the children of survivors. The television miniseries, Gerald Green's Holocaust (1978), suited the national need for simplified history and melodrama. Moreover, given the American penchant for ethnic identifiers, Holocaust became known as the Jewish Roots. The networks soon aired other Holocaust programs, including Herman Wouk's far less commercially successful The Winds of War. The resultant Holocaust discourse was frequently poorly informed and historically naive. On the one hand, it reflected a tendency in Western culture to think that the Holocaust ended definitively in 1945. On the other hand, this discourse frequently neutralized the evil of nazism.

Atoning for the Sins of the Fatherland

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 246-268
Author(s):  
George Ellis Faithful
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The People ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One ◽  
Holding Back

Germany’s Ecumenical Sisterhood of Mary and its resident theologian, Mother Basilea Schlink, sought to intercede in repentance on behalf of their nation for its sins in the Holocaust. This vision of intercessory repentance had its foundations in both their reading of the Hebrew Bible and in German nationalism. However, whatever resemblance between Schlink’s language and style and that of German nationalism, she utterly inverted its priorities, placing the people (Volk) of Israel above all other peoples. This inversion was part of the sisters’ self-empowerment as women, part of a paradoxical rhetoric which, on the one hand, professed their weakness and sinfulness while, on the other hand, emphasizing their worthiness and strength. Although they were sinful as Christians and as Germans, they represented a spiritual elite, among the few worthy to stand between Germany and God, holding back God's wrath. The gendered nationalism of Schlink and the sisters was defined by deference to God and to Israel, and by counter-cultural elevation of their roles as women.

scholarly journals Levinas and the Anticolonial

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-181
Author(s):  
Patrick D. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Dividing Line

Over the last two decades, the various attempts to “radicalize” Levinas have resulted in two interesting and often separated debates: one the one hand, there is the debate regarding the relationship between Levinas and colonialism and racism, and on the other hand, there is the debate regarding the relationship between Levinas and Judaism. Whether scholars interested in issues of colonialism disregard Levinas's Judaism or use his "subaltern" identity to challenge European hegemony, they do not take seriously the Jewish content of Levinas's thought. In this essay, I challenge the prevailing postcolonial orinetation of the Levinas-colonialism conversation, approaching Levinas's phenomenology from an anticolonial perspective. I will use Frantz Fanon’s dualistic understanding of the colonial world to evaluate the adequacy of Levinas’s phenomenology in describing the ontological structure of the colony and the historical experience of the colonized within it. Levinas’s incomplete understanding of the Holocaust as colonialism contributes to his failure to recognize the dividing line of colonial ontology, the zone of nonbeing, the non-human status of the colonized, and ultimately contributes to the insufficiency of his phenomenology to describe the colony. Because my purpose is not to reject Levinas’s thought in general but to encourage a new approach to his work, in the conclusion I will gesture toward the need for an anticolonial reading of Levinas’s project for Jewish education. 

scholarly journals Post-national belongings, cosmopolitan becomings and mediating mobilities

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332098763
Author(s):  
Noel B Salazar
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In this commentary piece, I combine insights gained from the various contributions to this special issue with my own research and understanding to trace the (dis)connections between, on the one hand, (post-)nationalism and its underlying concept of belonging and, on the other hand, cosmopolitanism and its underlying concept of becoming. I pay special attention to the human (im)mobilities mediating these processes. This critical thinking exercise confirms that the relationship between place, collective identity and socio-cultural processes of identification is a contested aspect of social theory. In the discussion, I suggest four points to be addressed in the future if we want to make existing theories about post-national formations and processes of cosmopolitanization more robust against the huge and complex challenges humankind is facing.

scholarly journals The Jew and the Funny in Latvian Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-166
Author(s):  
Elina Vasiljeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Jewish Text ◽  
The One

The aim of the present research is to consider one of the aspects of the Jewish text in Latvian literature: the connection of Jewish images with the category of the funny and the comic. A significant part of the Jewish text in Latvian literature is associated with the genre of comedy, within the framework of which a typical image of a Jew begins to form: the first landmark texts (the 17th– 19th centuries) are comedies in which it is the Jew who plays a central role in the system of characters. At the same time, the genre of comedy brings to the fore two functions of the category of the comic: laughter is associated with the situation of the character (funny, sometimes miserable) or it is caused by a comic situation in which other characters are involved. On the one hand, the Jew is the object of laughter (comical depiction of the manner of speech, appearance, behavior); on the other hand, in some texts it is the Jew who maintains the intrigue. The article examines the historical logic of the development of the Jewish text: a Jew as an object of ridicule – a Jew as a component of a comic plot – a Jew as a carrier of vice. Since the 1940s, the Jewish text actually loses its connection with the category of the comic, which is associated with the intensification of the flow of anti-Semitic literature in the interwar and war periods and the dominance of the theme of the Holocaust in the literature of the second half of the 20th century.

Translating Survival, Translation as Survival in Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Arnds
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One

By way of Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo (If this is a Man) this article discusses the challenges in translating Holocaust literature. On the one hand, the translation of witnessing ‘limit events’ such as the Holocaust into testimony is propelled by attempts to find forms of representation which push their own limits. Here myth often appears as a vehicle of representation, as is the case with Levi's use of the Tantalus myth and of Dante's Inferno. On the other hand, this article shows how the challenges of translating Holocaust literature into other languages can be facilitated by an acute awareness of debates and cultural theories surrounding genocide, such as Giorgio Agamben's theory of the homo sacer and of nuda vita. Such translation into other languages may reveal dimensions of the original that would remain dormant, buried, if the original were not translated. It is especially in the comparison of two or more translations that these deeper layers of the original are revealed.

scholarly journals Art in the Holocaust: On Josef Bor’s Novella Terezínské rekviem and its Reception

2017 ◽  
pp. 167-179
Author(s):  
Reinhard Ibler
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The One

The name of the Czech writer Josef Bor (1906–1979) is nearly forgotten today, although he was very successful with two works in the sixties. Both works deal with the Holocaust. The novel Opuštěná panenka (1961) is inspired by the author’s own horrible experiences at Terezín, Auschwitz and other places of the Holocaust. In 1963, the novella Terezínské rekviem followed which is subject of this paper. Bor’s novella is about the Jewish musician Rafael Schächter and his staging of Verdi’s Requiem at Terezín. From the viewpoint of reception, this work is interesting on two counts: on the one hand, in the story the reception and interpretation of art play a crucial role, on the other hand, there are some special features in the reception of the novella itself, as the work has mostly been read in the light of the real events the story is referring to, whereas the text’s literary character has often been neglected.

scholarly journals La traición a la democracia. Ensayo sobre las relaciones entre universidad, democracia y ciudadanía desde la idea de traición

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1 Mar-Jun) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
David Luque
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
The Other ◽  
University Education ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

A partir de los sesenta, los alumnos que comenzaron a acudir a las universidades creció exponencialmente. Esto modificó la forma de pensar esta institución en su relación con la democracia. Su razón de ser ya no se encontraba únicamente en el conocimiento, sino que se deducía del papel que debía jugar en la construcción de la ciudadanía. Esta modificación dio lugar a una serie de discusiones sobre el papel de la universidad en relación a los nuevosretos que les planteaba la ciudadanía. Y esas discusiones giraban casi siempre en torno a una misma idea: que cualquier tesis sobre la universidad suponía una traición. Y es justamente eso lo que estudia este artículo. Se concluye que, en la construcción de una ciudadanía democrática, han de combinarse dos consideraciones. La necesidad irrenunciable de la extensión de la formación universitaria como elemento sustancial de una ciudadanía y la necesidad de que esta formación esté presidida por un pensamiento crítico y una vocación de servicio político. From the 1960s, the number of students who began to attend universities grew exponentially. This changed the way of thinking about this institution in terms of its relationship with democracy. Its reason for being did not only lie in the articulation of knowledge but also in the role it should play in the construction of citizenship. This modification led to a series of discussions about the role of universities regarding the new challenges posed by citizens. And these discussions almost always revolved around the same idea: any argument about universities was a betrayal. And that is precisely what this article studies. It is concluded that, in the construction of democratic citizenships, two  considerations must be combined. On the one hand, the unrenounceable need for the extension of university education as a substantial element of citizenship and, on the other hand, the need for this type of education to bepresided over by critical thinking and a vocation for political service.

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