ABSTRACT
The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures is a collection of essays by literary scholars from Germany, the US, and Central Eastern Europe offering insight into the specific ways of representing the Shoah and its aftereffects as well as its entanglement with other catastrophic events in the region.
Introducing the conceptual frame of postcatastrophe, the collected essays explore the discursive and artistic space the Shoah occupies in the countries between Moscow and Berlin. Postcatastrophe is informed by the knowledge of other concepts of "post" and shares their insight into forms of transmission and latency; in contrast to them, explores the after-effects of extreme events on a collective, aesthetic, and political rather than a personal level. The articles use the concept of postcatastrophe as a key to understanding the entangled and conflicted cultures of remembrance in postsocialist literatures and the arts dealing with events, phenomena, and developments that refuse to remain in the past and still continue to shape perceptions of today’s societies in Eastern Europe.
As a contribution to memory studies as well as to literary criticism with a special focus on Shoah remembrance after socialism, this book is of great interest to students and scholars of European history, and those interested in historical memory more broadly.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |35 pages
Introduction: Living and Writing in Postcatastrophic Times
part I|95 pages
The Afterlife of Holocaust Objects and Spaces
chapter 4|21 pages
The Post-Jewish Today. Tracing Material Culture in the Postcatastrophic Polish Poetry
chapter 6|16 pages
Globalization, Universalization, and Forensic Turn: Postcatastrophic Memorial Museums ☆
part II|88 pages
Contested and Entangled Memories
chapter 11|13 pages
Explaining German Expulsions through the Lens of Postcatastrophe: New Discussions Concerning the Shoah and the Expulsions
chapter 12|16 pages
The Silence Cartel. Representations of the Genocide of Roma in Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Literature
part III|58 pages
Postcatastrophic Aesthetics and Re-Readings
chapter 14|14 pages
“There's No Such Thing as an Innocent Eye”: Acts of Seeing and Ethical Aspects in Postmemorial Aesthetics
chapter 15|16 pages
Who's Afraid of Walter Benjamin? Dealing with the Problem of “Universalization” of Shoah Narration in Czech Literature
chapter 16|14 pages
Postcatastrophic Approaches to the Shoah in Contemporary Czech Poetry: Radek Malý';s Collection Little Darkness
part IV|71 pages
Re-Mediating Catastrophes in Contemporary (Pop-)Culture