Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century
2004; Wiley; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1756-1183
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
ResumoPostone, Moishe, and Eric Santner, eds. Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 274 pp. $25.00 paperback. This volume is a collection of essays by many of the top scholars in an area now widely referred to as Holocaust Studies. The work of many of the contributors is already well known, yet it is worthwhile to see their positions further articulated and developed here. While some have suggested, in public or in private, that there is too much research presently being done on this topic, the high quality of this book and its contributions makes it clear that the dimensions of the field's various literary, philosophical, and historical debates have only broadened and generated more compelling scholarship over time. The essays by historians Saul Friedlander and Shulamit Volkov are quite interesting. Friedlander examines the difference between Hitler's particular redemptive anti-Semitism and historical anti-Semitism, as and others have depicted it. His essay studies how Hitler's self-image as a messiah influenced his rhetoric as well as his public reception. Volkov's essay is particularly engaging insofar as it raises a significant methodological question as to the relationship between Nazi ideology and practice. She adduces that the movement between the two is subtle, not lending itself to any monocausal explanation, and her intention is to avoid any kind of reductionism. For obvious reasons, these essays turn into a whipping boy of sorts. While both contributions are well considered and fascinating. I was prompted to wonder about the demonization of Goldhagen. If there was nothing to Goldhagen's book, he might not have aroused so much continuing attention and produced so much worthwhile secondary literature ( see Robert Shandley's Unwilling Germans? The Debate and Geoff Eley's The Goldhagen Effect, as examples). A number of the subsequent chapters are excellent as well. Anson Rabinbach's essay provides the opportunity to rethink Zygmunt Bauman's position on the relationship between modernity and the Holocaust, shedding quite a bit of light on various positions, especially those of Emil Ludwig and Thomas Mann. Rabinbach offers insight into Hannah Arendt's relationship to the tradition, noting how she and other emigres wanted to salvage the history of Western (and German) ideas, rather than throwing the baby out with the Holocaust bathwater. …
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