Using and Abusing the Holocaust, livre ebook

Examines a range of important issues in the study of Holocaust history, literature, and memory

"Langer, by the force of scholarship and literary precision rather than dogmatic affirmation and pathos, is one of the few writers, with the exception of significant poets and novelists, who unsettles both our customary language and conceptual instruments. His book is a moral as well as an intellectual act of a very high order." —Geoffrey Hartman, author of The Longest Shadow

In this new volume, Langer—one of the most distinguished scholars writing on Holocaust literature and representation—assesses various literary efforts to establish a place in modern consciousness for the ordeal of those victimized by Nazi Germany's crimes against humanity. Essays discuss the film Life Is Beautiful, the uncritical acclaim of Fragments, the fake memoir by Benjamin Wilkomirski, reasons for the exaggerated importance still given to Anne Frank's Diary, and a recent cycle of paintings on the Old Testament by Holocaust artist Samuel Bak.

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments

1. The Pursuit of Death in Holocaust Narrative
2. Anne Frank Revisited
3. Life Is Not Beautiful
4. Fragments of Memory: A Myth of Past Time
5. Wounded Families in Holocaust Discourse
6. Memory and Justice after the Holocaust and Apartheid
7. Witnessing Atrocity: The Testimonial Evidence
8. Moralizing and Demoralizing the Holocaust
9. Representing the Holocaust
10. The Book of Genesis in the Art of Samuel Bak

Notes
Index