‘Where Men and Gods Command’: the monument, the crypt, and the magic word

Derrida Today ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-98
Author(s):  
Thomas Houlton
Keyword(s):  
The Holocaust ◽  
Memory Power ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Exquisite Corpse ◽  
Physical Manifestation

This paper examines the relationships between monumental commemoration and memory, placing Rachel Whiteread's Memorial to the Austrian Jewish Victims of the Shoah (2000) as the physical manifestation of Derrida's archive as a place where memory, power, writing and representation intersect. I consider the context and characteristics of Whiteread's memorial alongside the concept of the crypt, formulated by Derrida in his ‘Fors’ to Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's The Wolf Man's Magic Word (1976). I propose that the archive, formed as it as around the crypt, is a place where death and desire co-habit, and that the Holocaust, the subject of Whiteread's sculpture, is itself an archive that has been constructed around what Maria Torok terms the ‘exquisite corpse’. This exquisite corpse of the Holocaust encrypts, even in its own commemoration, the erotics and desires of the ‘Nazi father’ or ‘Hitler in uns’, what Derrida terms ‘the tombstone of the illicit’. This paper poses the question that we are, even as we remember the Jewish dead, simultaneously re-encrypting the forgetful, murderous Nazi father, and advocates that we maintain a watchfulness on the threshold of the archive, the monument, the text, in order to resist total resolution, complete meaning, the forgetful re-inscription of acts of atrocity.

“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

The Drama of the Holocaust: Issues of Choice and Survival

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. 337-348
Author(s):  
Robert Skloot
Keyword(s):  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Bruno Bettelheim ◽  
The University

One of the ways in which Jews and others have sought somehow to assimilate the knowledge of the Nazi Holocaust has been through the theatrical expression of the appalling dilemmas it posed. Implicitly or explicitly, however, the process of ‘shaping’ that this involves forces an attitude to be taken by the dramatist towards the meaning of ‘choice’ in such circumstances, and the ‘acceptable’ price of possible survival. In his anthology The Theatre of the Holocaust (1982), Robert Skloot assembled four plays which exemplified the possible ‘attitudes to survival’, and here he relates them to the ideas of Bruno Bettelheim, Terrence Des Pres, and other writers on the subject, in an attempt to assess how fully and honestly theatre is able to reflect the issues involved. Robert Skloot is Professor of Theatre and Drama at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and was Fulbright Lecturer in Israel in 1980–81. He has also edited a collection of essays, ‘The Darkness We Carry’: the Drama of the Holocaust, due for publication in the spring of 1988.

Holocaust Film before the Holocaust: DEFA, Antifascism and the Camps

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-134
Author(s):  
David Bathrick
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Diary Of Anne Frank

AbstractThe period prior to the 1970s has frequently been portrayed internationally as one of public disavowal of the Jewish catastrophe politically and cinematically and as one in which there was a dearth of filmic representations of the Holocaust. In addition to the Hollywood productionsThe Diary of Anne Frank(1960), Stanley Kramer’sJudgment at Nuremberg(1961) and Sidney Lumet’sThe Pawnbroker(1965), one often spoke of just a few East and West European films emerging within a political and cultural landscape that was viewed by many as unable or unwilling to address the subject. This article takes issue with these assumptions by focusing on feature films made by DEFA between 1946 and 1963 in East Berlin’s Soviet Zone and in East Germany which had as their subject matter the persecution of Jews during the Third Reich.

Specters of Heidegger

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Chaouat
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Literature ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Postmodern Thought ◽  
The U.S

My first chapter is dedicated to post-Heideggerian thought, and to the unbearable legacy of Heidegger in France and beyond. The decentering of the subject, the recoding of Heideggerian ontology as an ethics of the other, the idealization of the Jews as diasporic beings and ontological strangers (grounded in an operation of Judaization of Dasein), the metaphysical reading of the Holocaust as an event outside of history, the celebration of nomadism and deterritorialization—all that have made it difficult if not downright impossible to think of Jewish national sovereignty and Jewish normalcy. Likewise, French postmodern thought has not been able or willing to engage with the resurgence of antisemitism—an antisemitism that does not fit its theoretical, ideological and metaphysical framework. Derrida's disciples continue to speak the language of existential ontology, albeit with a critical distance, or with serious distortions—a language that is no longer in use except in national literature and cultural studies departments in the U.S. and is now employed to nurture the new antisemitism.

The Eclipse

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-130
Author(s):  
Samy Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Gaza Strip

2006-2010: during these four decisive years in the history of the peace movement, the movement experienced a dramatic eclipse. Within an Israeli society that had grown increasingly nationalist, more attached to symbols of Jewish identity and the memory of the Holocaust, more concerned than ever about security, and less interested in making peace with the Palestinians, the movement was incapable both of promoting a message of peace and taking a stance on the subject of human rights. It seemed apathetic, paralyzed, almost non-existent in the face of the terrible events that marked the period. This chapter shows how and why this eclipse occurred. These years were punctuated by two large-scale military operations, the war in Lebanon in July 2006 and Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip from late 2008 to early 2009. These hostilities caused turmoil in the Israeli collective psychology and the perception of war and peace.

Emmanuel Levinas and the Problem of Meaningless Suffering: the Holocaust as a Test Case

Horizons ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
Marie L. Baird
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Christian Spirituality ◽  
Johann Baptist Metz ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

AbstractJohann Baptist Metz has exhorted Christian theologians to discard “system concepts” in favor of “subject concepts” in their theologizing. This revisioning of Christian theology recovers the primacy of the uniqueness and irreplaceability of the individual from totalizing doctrinal formulations and systems that function, for Metz, without reference to the subject. In short, a revisionist Christian theology in light of the Holocaust recovers the preeminence of the inviolability of individual human life.How can such a revisioning be accomplished in the realm of Christian spirituality? This article will utilize the thought of Emmanuel Levinas to assert the primacy of ethics as “first philosophy” replacing ontology, and by implication the ontological foundations undergirding Christian spirituality, with the ethical relation. Such a relation is the basis for a new Christian spirituality that posits the primacy of merciful and compasionate action in the face of conditions of life in extremity.

scholarly journals Sexualization of Female Perpetration in Fictional Holocaust Films: A Case Study of The Reader (2008)

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Sabine Elisabeth Aretz
Keyword(s):  
Female Victims ◽  
Female Perpetration ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Female Perpetrators ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Holocaust Films ◽  
The One

The publication of Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader (1995) sparked conversation and controversy about sexuality, female perpetrators and the complexity of guilt regarding the Holocaust. The screen adaptation of the book (Daldry 2008) amplified these discussions on an international scale. Fictional Holocaust films have a history of being met with skepticism or even reject on the one hand and great acclaim on the other hand. As this paper will outline, the focus has often been on male perpetrators and female victims. The portrayal of female perpetration reveals dichotomous stereotypes, often neglecting the complexity of the subject matter. This paper focuses on the ways in which sexualization is used specifically to portray female perpetrators in The Reader, as a fictional Holocaust film. An assessment of Hanna’s relationship to Michael and her autonomous sexuality and her later inferior, victimized portrayal as an ambiguous perpetrator is the focus of my paper. Hanna’s sexuality is structurally separated from her role as a perpetrator. Hanna’s perpetration is, through the dichotomous motif of sexuality throughout the film, characterized by a feminization. However, this feminization entails a relativization of Hanna’s culpability, revealing a pejorative of her depiction as a perpetrator. Consequently, I argue that Hanna’s sexualized female body is constructed as a central part of the revelation of her perpetration.

scholarly journals Obrazy wojny i holocaustu w muzyce i sztuce. Szkic do edukacji interdyscyplinarnej / The Images of War and the Holocaust in Music and Art. A Sketch for Interdisciplinary Education

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Gozdecka
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
Core Curriculum ◽  
Interdisciplinary Education ◽  
World War ◽  
Subject Knowledge ◽  
Steve Reich ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe main premise of the presented study is to show the impact of World War Two events on the creative achievements of selected artists who treated these dramatic events as the direct source of inspiration. The primary object of interest are selected musical pieces composed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, analyzed at the same time from the perspective of their correspondence with other domains of art: painting, sculpture, poetry, and partly with film. The article discussed Arthur Honegger’s Second and Third Symphony, compositions: Diffrent Trains by Steve Reich, and Diaries of Hope by Zbigniew Preisner, and in the field of fine art: inter alia the painting works by Izaak Celnikier, Xawery Dunikowski, Bronisław Wojciech Linke, and Andrzej Wróblewski, selected monument sculptures (e.g. in the Majdanek Concentration Camp in Lublin), and with special emphasis on works devoted to the tragedy of the Holocaust.An important aim of the paper is to show the possibility of utilizing the presented content in interdisciplinary teaching provided for in the Ministry of National Education’s core curriculum for general education in art subjects and the subject Knowledge of Culture.

scholarly journals Spóźniona odpowiedź? Literackie kontrnarracje o wsi i Zagładzie

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 423-440
Author(s):  
Karolina Koprowska
Keyword(s):  
Historical Research ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Village ◽  
Literary Phenomenon

Przedmiotem artykułu są formułowane w ramach najnowszej literatury o wsi konceptualizacje doświadczenia zagłady Żydów oraz wojny i okupacji (z perspektywy polskiej), a także relacji polsko-żydowskich (i chłopsko-żydowskich) zawiązujących się w polu przemocy. Znamienny wydaje się fakt, że w ostatnim czasie na polskim rynku czytelniczym pojawia się coraz więcej pozycji podejmujących problematykę wsi, w tym utworów, w których istotne miejsce zajmuje Zagłada dziejąca się na „obrzeżach”. Dlatego też punktem wyjścia zawartych w artykule rozważań jest pytanie o możliwe przyczyny dzisiejszego zwrotu ku wsi uwikłanej w Zagładę. Autorka sytuuje ten literacki fenomen w kontekście obecnych badań historycznych dotyczących tak zwanej trzeciej fali Holokaustu. Koncentruje się na analizie dwóch książek Sońki Ignacego Karpowicza i Małej Zagłady Anny Janko, które wydają się szczególnie reprezentatywne dla strategii formułowania literackich odpowiedzi na ustalenia historyków. Delayed Answer? Literary Counter-Narratives of the Village and the Holocaust The subject of the article are conceptualisations of the experiences of Holocaust, war and occupation (from the Polish perspective) as well as Polish-Jewish (and peasant-Jewish) relationships that were formed in the context of violence that were formulated as a part of the most recent village literature. Seemingly telling is the fact that more and more publications appearing on the Polish book market discuss the issue of the village, amongst which are works where the Holocaust happening on the „outskirts” plays a central role. Therefore the starting point for the considerations presented in the article is the question about the possible causes of the current turn towards the village being embroiled in the Holocaust. The author places this literary phenomenon in the context of current historical research concerning the so-called third wave of the Holocaust and concentrates on the analysis of two books: Sońka by Ignacy Karpowicz and A Little Annihilation by Anna Janko which seem to be particularly representative for the strategies of formulating literary responses to the findings of the historians.

scholarly journals Marzenie o zmianie narodowego imaginarium. Uwagi o książce Andrzeja Ledera

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-213
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Motyka
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Moral Reflection ◽  
The Public ◽  
Major Point ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
The Subject

In connection with Andrzej Leder’s book Prześniona rewolucja. Ćwiczenie z logiki historycznej [The Missed Revolution: Exercise in Historical Logic] (2014), the author of the article considers the question of examining difficult areas of the past, which he believes has still not been accomplished in Poland. The issue has been addressed in regard to the Holocaust only to become a major point in the public dispute between the conservative right and leftist and liberal camps. The author decidedly supports the need for historical and moral reflection in this regard, yet he also expresses reservations about excessive concentration on the economic consequences of the Holocaust and on the postwar agricultural reforms and nationalization (which largely form the subject of Leder’s reflections). He points out that all settling of accounts in regard to history are extraordinarily complicated. In his opinion, the equally — if not more — important sphere of “unconscious and denied guilt” in Polish society is its general and conformist engagement on the side of the Polish communist party (PZPR).

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