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Argues that Holocaust representation has ethical implications fundamentally linked to questions of good and evil.
Many books focus on issues of Holocaust representation, but few address why the Holocaust in particular poses such a representational problem. David Patterson draws from Emmanuel Levinas's contention that the Good cannot be represented. He argues that the assault on the Good is equally nonrepresentable and this nonrepresentable aspect of the Holocaust is its distinguishing feature. Utilizing Jewish religious thought, Patterson examines how the literary word expresses the ineffable and how the photographic image manifests the invisible. Where the Holocaust is concerned, representation is a matter not of imagination but of ethical implication, not of what it was like but of what must be done. Ultimately Patterson provides a deeper understanding of why the Holocaust itself is indefinable-not only as an evil but also as a fundamental assault on the very categories of good and evil affirmed over centuries of Jewish teaching and testimony.
"This book commands respect, both for the author's immense and intimate knowledge of what has become a vast body of work and for his unconditional commitment to the subject. I am in awe of what I have just read." — Dorota Glowacka, coeditor of Between Ethics and Aesthetics: Crossing the Boundaries
List of Photographs
Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I. Reflections on Holocaust Representation and the Nonrepresentable: Theoretical Considerations
By Way of a Prologue
Naming It
Naming Auschwitz
Post-Auschwitz Implications for an Understanding of Language
The Nonrepresentable and the Murder of the Mother
The Silent Scream
The Nonrepresentable Site of Silence
Naming the Name, the Nameless, and the Assault on the Name
The Nonrepresentable Assault on the Nonrepresentable Good
The Assault on Time, the Death of Death, and Holocaust Representation
A Memory and a Name
Part II. The Literary Transcendence of Holocaust Representation: Speaking the Ineffable
Opening Thoughts: Epiphany and the Ultimate
A Word about Method: Substitution and the Transcendent
The Extermination of the Eternal
The Annihilation of the Father
The Obliteration of the Mother
The Collapse of Human Relation
The Disintegration of Knowledge
The Devastation of the Word
The Demolition of Meaning
The Desolation of the Soul
The Death of Death
The Eradication of the Child
Part III. The Photographic Transcendence of Holocaust Representation: Revealing the Invisible
The Legacy of Lot’s Wife
Footprints
The Glory under Assault
The Mothers of Israel
The Child
The Face
The Edge of the Anti-World
The Grave without a Cemetery
The Muselmann
Selection: No Judge and No Judgment
A View from the Gas Chambers
Notes
Bibliography
Index