Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust
Examines the role of forgetfulness in our understanding of the Holocaust.

Much of the discussion surrounding the Holocaust and how it can be depicted sixty years later has focused on memory. In Forgetful Memory, Michael Bernard-Donals focuses on the relation between memory and forgetfulness, arguing that memory and forgetfulness cannot be separated but must be examined as they complicate our understanding of the Shoah. Drawing on the work of Josef Yerushalmi, Maurice Blanchot, David Roskies, and especially Emmanuel Levinas, Bernard-Donals explores contemporary representations of the Holocaust in memoirs, novels, and poetry; films and photographs; in museums; and in our contemporary political discourse concerning the Middle East. Ultimately, Forgetful Memory makes the case that we should give up on the idea of memory as a kind of representation, and that we should see it instead as an intersection of remembrance and oblivion, as a kind of writing, where what remains at its margins-what is left unwritten-is at least as important as what is given voice.

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Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust
Examines the role of forgetfulness in our understanding of the Holocaust.

Much of the discussion surrounding the Holocaust and how it can be depicted sixty years later has focused on memory. In Forgetful Memory, Michael Bernard-Donals focuses on the relation between memory and forgetfulness, arguing that memory and forgetfulness cannot be separated but must be examined as they complicate our understanding of the Shoah. Drawing on the work of Josef Yerushalmi, Maurice Blanchot, David Roskies, and especially Emmanuel Levinas, Bernard-Donals explores contemporary representations of the Holocaust in memoirs, novels, and poetry; films and photographs; in museums; and in our contemporary political discourse concerning the Middle East. Ultimately, Forgetful Memory makes the case that we should give up on the idea of memory as a kind of representation, and that we should see it instead as an intersection of remembrance and oblivion, as a kind of writing, where what remains at its margins-what is left unwritten-is at least as important as what is given voice.

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Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust

Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust

by Michael Bernard-Donals
Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust

Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust

by Michael Bernard-Donals

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$34.95 
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Overview

Examines the role of forgetfulness in our understanding of the Holocaust.

Much of the discussion surrounding the Holocaust and how it can be depicted sixty years later has focused on memory. In Forgetful Memory, Michael Bernard-Donals focuses on the relation between memory and forgetfulness, arguing that memory and forgetfulness cannot be separated but must be examined as they complicate our understanding of the Shoah. Drawing on the work of Josef Yerushalmi, Maurice Blanchot, David Roskies, and especially Emmanuel Levinas, Bernard-Donals explores contemporary representations of the Holocaust in memoirs, novels, and poetry; films and photographs; in museums; and in our contemporary political discourse concerning the Middle East. Ultimately, Forgetful Memory makes the case that we should give up on the idea of memory as a kind of representation, and that we should see it instead as an intersection of remembrance and oblivion, as a kind of writing, where what remains at its margins-what is left unwritten-is at least as important as what is given voice.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780791476727
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Publication date: 01/01/2010
Pages: 212
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Michael Bernard-Donals is Nancy Hoefs Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has written and edited several books, including (with Richard Glejzer) Between Witness and Testimony: The Holocaust and the Limits of Representation, also published by SUNY Press, and An Introduction to Holocaust Studies.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgment

PART I. MEMORY AND FORGETTING

1. On the Verge of History and Memory

2. Ethics, the Immemorial, and Writing

PART II. WRITING AND THE DISASTER

3. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem": The Poetry of Forgetful Memory in Palestine

4. Memory and the Image in Visual Representations of the Holocaust

5. "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness": Witnessand Testimony in the FragmentsControversy

PART III. MEMORY AND THE EVENT

6. Denials of Memory

7. Conflations of Memory; or, What They Saw at the Holocaust Museum after 9/11

8. "Difficult Freedom": Levinas, Memory, and Politics

9. Conclusion: Forgetful Memory and the Disaster

Notes
Bibliography
Index

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