The Historical Uncanny: Disability, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Holocaust Memory
The Historical Uncanny: Disability, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Holocaust Memory
Susanne C. Knittel
Copyright Date: 2015
Published by: Fordham University Press
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n
Pages: 364
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qds7n
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Book Info
The Historical Uncanny: Disability, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Holocaust Memory
Book Description:

The Historical Uncanny explores how certain memories become inscribed into the heritage of a country or region while others are suppressed or forgotten. In response to the erasure of historical memories that discomfit a public's self-understanding, this book proposes the historical uncanny as that which resists reification precisely because it cannot be assimilated to dominant discourses of commemoration. Focusing on the problems of representation and reception, the book explores memorials for two marginalized aspects of Holocaust: the Nazi euthanasia program directed against the mentally ill and disabled and the Fascist persecution of Slovenes, Croats, and Jews in and around Trieste. Reading these memorials together with literary and artistic texts, Knittel redefines "sites of memory" as assemblages of cultural artifacts and discourses that accumulate over time; they emerge as a physical and a cultural space that is continually redefined, rewritten, and re-presented. In bringing perspectives from disability studies and postcolonialism to the question of memory, Knittel unsettles our understanding of the Holocaust and its place in the culture of contemporary Europe.

eISBN: 978-0-8232-6281-6
Subjects: History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. I-VI)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.1
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. VII-VIII)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.2
  3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. IX-XII)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.3
  4. Introduction
    Introduction (pp. 1-30)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.4

    On 19 February 2011, theNew York Timesreported that efforts were under way to update the memorial at the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau for the twenty-first century. The memorial, originally conceived in the 1950s by camp survivors, has always relied on the auratic force of the original structures and the personal belongings of the victims, which were presented with very little contextual information. With the passing of time, however, the site has become less self-explanatory, as successive generations of visitors grow further and further removed from the events commemorated there. As the article’s author observes, “People increasingly see...

  5. PART ONE
    • CHAPTER ONE Remembering Euthanasia: Grafeneck as Heterotopia
      CHAPTER ONE Remembering Euthanasia: Grafeneck as Heterotopia (pp. 33-71)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.5

      I can’t remember exactly when I first heard about Castle Grafeneck or what happened there. As a landmark in the geography and history of the area it is almost as if the place has always been there. In high school I remember going on excursions to Grafeneck and listening to in-class presentations by fellow students on the place and its history. I remember going to theSchlosskonzerteand listening to jazz or classical music on the castle’s terrace. I remember a party that was thrown for the residents one summer. These are pleasant memories, joyful and alive, but the memories...

    • CHAPTER TWO Bridging the Silence, Part I: The Disabled Enabler
      CHAPTER TWO Bridging the Silence, Part I: The Disabled Enabler (pp. 72-105)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.6

      In January 1979 the American TV seriesHolocaustwas shown in West Germany. This event has since come to be regarded as a pivotal moment in the history of Germany’s attempts to come to terms with its Nazi past. When it was broadcast in April 1978 in the United States, the four-part miniseries attracted around 120 million viewers and caused heated debate as to whether it had done justice to its delicate topic. Critics in Germany dismissed it even before its broadcast as a cheap trivialization and commercialization of the fate of the Jews in the Third Reich. A sentimentalized,...

    • CHAPTER THREE Bridging the Silence, Part II: The Vicarious Witness
      CHAPTER THREE Bridging the Silence, Part II: The Vicarious Witness (pp. 106-134)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.7

      In this chapter we move from exclusively fictional narratives to a set of more hybrid texts, most of which were written in the past two decades. These texts present a significant change in the literary depictions of Nazi euthanasia and its memory, as they not only focus on the life stories of actual victims but also participate in more general discussions about adequate forms of commemoration of the victims of Nazi persecution and acknowledge the topic’s relevance for contemporary issues such as mercy killing and genetic engineering or for discussions about the status of people with mental disabilities in society...

  6. INTERLUDE
    • CHAPTER FOUR Lethal Trajectories: Perpetrators from Grafeneck to the Risiera
      CHAPTER FOUR Lethal Trajectories: Perpetrators from Grafeneck to the Risiera (pp. 137-172)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.8

      His dark, piercing eyes peer out from under thick eyebrows. Beneath his broad nose, a dark moustache worn in a style similar to the Führer. The oval dome of his bald head occupies a good two-thirds of the photograph. He is wearing a white shirt and a diagonally striped tie, and pinned to the chest of his dark single-breasted suit are an Iron Cross and below that a Nazi swastika. His face, although stern, is otherwise unremarkable. The photo, taken indoors, has the appearance of an official portrait, possibly for an ID or personal file of some sort (fig. 8)....

  7. PART TWO
    • CHAPTER FIVE Black Holes and Revelations: The Risiera, the Foibe, and the Making of an “Italian Tragedy”
      CHAPTER FIVE Black Holes and Revelations: The Risiera, the Foibe, and the Making of an “Italian Tragedy” (pp. 175-216)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.9

      The first time I visited Trieste to research its World War II history and memory was in the summer of 2007. Driving on the Autostrada 4 that leads from Venice to Trieste, I passed signs pointing visitors to all the major sights in and around the city: landmarks such as the Grotta Gigante, the world’s largest tourist-accessible stalactite cave; the small coastal town of Duino with its castle and steep cliffs that inspired the poet Rainer Maria Rilke to write hisDuino Elegies; the romantic Miramare Castle built directly on the Gulf of Trieste; and of course the many attractions...

    • CHAPTER SIX A Severed Branch: The Memory of Fascism on Stage and Screen
      CHAPTER SIX A Severed Branch: The Memory of Fascism on Stage and Screen (pp. 217-249)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.10

      With the institution of a multitude of new memorial days, including the Giorno della memoria and the Giorno del ricordo, and the planning and establishment of a large number of new memorials, the memory industry in Italy is booming. As the historian Giovanni de Luna writes in his portrait of Italy as a “republic of pain,” the commemorative calendar is growing more crowded by the day, almost. Since 2000, countless laws have been passed instituting days of memory for the victims of the Holocaust, thefoibe, and terrorism, for military and civilian personnel killed on international peacekeeping missions, for sailors...

    • CHAPTER SEVEN Bridging the Silence, Part III: Trieste and the Language of Belonging
      CHAPTER SEVEN Bridging the Silence, Part III: Trieste and the Language of Belonging (pp. 250-282)
      https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.11

      Trieste is a city defined by its proximity to the border. As we have seen, the city and the surrounding region are liminal and interstitial not only geographically but also linguistically, culturally, ethnically, politically, and, not least, historically. At the beginning of the twentieth century Trieste was located at the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; then it became one of the bastions of Fascist Italy, before being annexed to the Third Reich, until it was liberated by the Yugoslav army and then again by the Allies and became a focal point of the nascent Cold War. Thus, even those inhabitants...

  8. Conclusion
    Conclusion (pp. 283-294)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.12

    The oscillation between commemoration and civic engagement described in chapter 6 with respect to Renato Sarti’sI me ciamava per nome: 44.787can be traced also through his more recent plays. Whether he is breaking the silence surrounding the incident in December 1996, in which 283 illegal immigrants drowned in the Mediterranean just off the coast of Sicily, with his playLa nave fantasma(2004), a play that is still relevant given the recent deaths of hundreds of illegal immigrants off the coast of Lampedusa in the fall of 2013, or taking on the economic exploitation of disaster-shocked people and...

  9. NOTES
    NOTES (pp. 295-316)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.13
  10. BIBLIOGRAPHY
    BIBLIOGRAPHY (pp. 317-346)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.14
  11. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 347-352)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qds7n.15
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