scholarly journals Trans-Generational Trauma: The Zone of Indistinction After Auschwitz

Elements ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Children Of Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The Real ◽  
Generational Trauma

Giorgio Agamben talks about the concentration camp as a zone of indistinction where the exception was the rule, the illicit licit, and the extreme normalized. This paper seeks to extend Agamben's theory to understand the trauma of the concentration camp. If the real horror of the camp was indeed this zone of indistinction, then can we understand the trauma as the continued experience of the traces of this zone of indistinction? While the survivors were in the camps, it was a barbaric world built on normality; in their later lives, it was a normal world laced with traces of barbarism. Abraham and Torok's theory of the phantom is applied to discuss how this trauma of indistinction is transferred to the children of Holocaust survivors. Finally, Art Spiegelman's <em>Maus</em> and Melvin Jules Bukiet's <em>After</em> are examined through the lense of these combined theories to discuss the form of second generation Holocaust literature in relation to the trans-generational trauma experienced by its authors.

Ari Folman’s Other War

2017 ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Giulia Miller
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Children Of Holocaust Survivors ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Israeli Cinema ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Second World

This chapter looks at Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir within the context of the Holocaust. It recounts the 1980s and 1990s that marked the emergence of second-generation Israeli cinema that was specifically produced by the children of Holocaust survivors. It also reviews the second-generation Israel films that address the subject of war and critique the Zionist project, which intimates that it had simply replaced the trauma of the Holocaust with a new and different kind of Israeli trauma. It also mentions Ari Folman, a child of survivors, who began making films during the period of second-generation Israeli cinema. The chapter describes Waltz with Bashir as an example of second-generation film-making and as a film that explicitly deals with Lebanon, but implicitly engages with events of the Second World War. It analyzes the function of the Holocaust in greater detail within the context of Israeli cinema of the early millennium and the cinema of second-generation film-makers.

To Murder the Internal Mother or to Commit Suicide? Anti-Group in a Group of Second-Generation Holocaust Survivors whose Children Committed Suicide

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-393
Author(s):  
Tova Yedidia ◽  
Hassia Yerushalmi
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Projective Identification ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Children Of Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Commit Suicide

This article presents the development of an anti-group among a group of parents whose children committed suicide. All the participants but two were children of Holocaust survivors (i.e. second-generation Holocaust survivors); these two were married to second-generation Holocaust survivors, so that in all cases, the son who committed suicide had at least one parent who was a second-generation Holocaust survivor. The article explains the transference, countertransference and projective identification that developed in the group.

“It all boils down to a question of words”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McNaughton
Keyword(s):  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Authoritarian Politics ◽  
Hayden White

The Unnamable confronts inherited narrative and linguistic forms with the incommensurability of recent genocide. Initially, the book performs this inadequacy by confronting novel tropes with distorted images cribbed from memoirs of Mauthausen concentration camp. Then it updates surrealist treatments of Parisian abattoirs, asking whether industrialized slaughter is also the sign and fulfillment of modern genocide. The Unnamable also confuses literary production and the biopolitical aspirations of authoritarian politics: Beckett’s narrator writes from a conviction that language can become wholly performative and has the capacity to incarnate and to kill. The narrator attempts to deconstruct language, but doing so ironically transcends literary and philosophical problems to reveal historiographical problems as well, the missing voices of those killed without trace. The chapter ends with a theoretical coda that productively contextualizes Beckett’s strategy with historiographical debate about narrative and genocide by Paul Ricoeur, Giorgio Agamben, Hayden White, and others.

Remediation and hypermediacy: Ezekiel’s World as a case in point

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-229
Author(s):  
Ayelet Kohn ◽  
Rachel Weissbrod
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
World War ◽  
Graphic Narrative ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Graphic Narratives ◽  
Jewish Resistance ◽  
Resistance Movement

This article deals with Kovner’s graphic narrative Ezekiel’s World (2015) as a case of remediation and hypermediacy. The term ‘remediation’ refers to adaptations which involve the transformation of the original work into another medium. While some adaptations strive to eliminate the marks of the previous medium, others highlight the interplay between different media, resulting in ‘hypermediacy’. The latter approach characterizes Ezekiel’s World due to its unique blend of artistic materials adapted from different media. The author, Michael Kovner, uses his paintings to depict the story of Ezekiel – an imaginary figure based on his father, the poet Abba Kovner who was one of the leaders of the Jewish resistance movement during World War II. While employing the conventions of comics and graphic narratives, the author also makes use of readymade objects such as maps and photos, simulates the works of famous artists and quotes Abba Kovner’s poems. These are indirect ways of confronting the traumas of Holocaust survivors and ‘the second generation’. Dealing with the Holocaust in comics and graphic narratives (as in Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, 1986) is no longer an innovation, nor is their use as a means to deal with trauma; what makes this graphic narrative unique is the encounter between the works of the poet and the painter, which combine to create an exceptionally complex work integrating poetry, art and graphic narration.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document