Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, Memory by David Bathrick, Brad Prager, Michael D. Richardson
2010; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 105; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2010.0255
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Tópico(s)Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism
Resumo606 Reviews to the truth is reserved to a select few in Landmann's theorywhile it is open to everyone in Spann's. The antagonism is perhaps overstated, given that Spann is concerned with principles and Landmann with pragmatics. Schiewer argues that there is a political philosophy inherent in Edith Landmann's theory of emotion. Informed by Gestalt theory, itpostulates that things can never be separated from values; and that the value inherent in something can be determined objectively (which isnot to say rationally). The state is called upon to safeguard spiritual values determined to be of particular significance by the 'rightperson'. Duke University Christophe Fricker Visualizing theHolocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, Memory. Ed. by David Bath rick, Brad Prager, and Michael D. Richardson. (Screen Cultures: Ger man Film and theVisual) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2008. ix+336 pp. ?40. ISBN 978-1-57113-383-0. In the last ten or fifteenyears the question of the ethics and epistemology of visual representation has come to the forefrontofHolocaust studies. Marianne Hirsch's much-discussed paradigm of postmemory, the debate surrounding Schindlers List, and the use of photographs in the fiction of writers such as Sebald are merely some of the factors that have reignited interest in the permissibility of the aes thetic stylization of atrocity. This new volume seeks to explore recent debate in the field, bringing together a range of essays on the theory and practice of visual representation of the Shoah. At the heart of the collection is inevitably the vexed issue of the Bilderverbot, themuch-spoken-about 'unspeakability' of theHolocaust. To adapt the cinematic terms of Jean-Luc Godard, the debate oscillates between the two poles of juste une image and une image juste: to what extent is it even theoretically possible for an image to do justice to Vunivers concentrationnaire7. The best essays in this collection all revolve around this fundamental problem. Particularly noteworthy in this respect are those by Sven-Erik Rose on Auschwitz as Hermeneutic Rupture, Differend, and Image malgre tout' and Michael D'Arcy on 'Claude Lanzmann's Shoah and the Intentionality of the Image*. Rose criticizes the differing, but (he argues) equally reductive rhetoric of Fredric Jameson and Jean-Francois Lyotard, both ofwhom tend ultimately towards a quasi-theological pathos of Auschwitz* (p. 124); against this, he sets Georges Didi-Huberman's rejection of'the logic of all-or-nothing* (p. 129), whereby theHolocaust would be unrepresentable, since even themost revealing photographs can only portray a tinyportion of the experi ence. Didi-Huberman*s insistence on the importance of Tacunary images' (p. 130) resonates intoD'Arcy's essay on Lanzmann's Shoah. Tracing its roots in 'post-war phenomenological film theory' (p. 150), D'Arcy turns aesthetics against ethics, arguing against Lanzmann's own insistence on theunrepresentability of the Shoah: 'while Lanzmann rejects iconic or representational evidence, his film embraces indexical signs' (p. 152). This combination of close reading with theoretical meditation is characteristic MLR, 105.2, 2010 607 of the best essays in this volume. Many of the contributions, as David Bathrick writes inhis introduction, discuss aesthetic representations that call into question the extravagant reverence commanded by [the] icon [of theHolocaust] and [. . .] reread it atmultiple levels of indexical contingency' (p. 16). Much play ismade in particular of Roland Barthes's distinction between the punctum and the stu dium. Brad Prager discusses Sebald's reluctance to use perpetrator photographs', arguing in a manner reminiscent of Didi-Huberman that the images in Sebald's work are both evidence and allegories of absence, both knowledge and its lack' (p. 32). Daniel H. Magilow looks at Heinrich Jost's photographs of theWarsaw ghetto (which firstemerged in the 1980s), taking issue with their initial reception as Victim photographs', inwhich aesthetic conventions typically take a back seat to authenticating functions' (p. 44): over the course of the book theWehrmacht officer Jost's attitude shifts, soMagilow argues, moving towards something much closer to the voyeuristic perspective of a perpetrator. The second half of the volume is concerned primarily with cinematic represen tation. Karyn Ball uses Freudian notions of trauma and narcissism to reinterpret the reception of Schindlers List: many German critics, she argues, clung towhat she terms (with reference to Freud...
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