The Witness for Peace Hotline is a newsletter, released weekly, that lists the tragedies occurring in Nicaragua and later around Central America. In simple and clear prose, the one- to two-page newsletters list attacks, injuries, kidnappings, deaths, etc., and comments on who from the organization was there or heard about and reported on the events. Rarely, it includes commentary, asking readers to consider the place of US aid in these events, and occasionally even imploring them to contact their representatives and demand a change in policy.
Witness for Peace, as is evident from the name and the content of the Hotline newsletters, is committed to bearing witness to atrocities that the US government had interest in keeping quiet. This is a very useful resource that I have found, however, I wish I had access to the group members' personal papers, because I want to know how witnessing these events affected the people personally. In other words, were these events traumatic for the witnesses?
I really like testimonial literature. But what was the effect of this particular dry, regimented testimony, directed at a US audience? I want to know more about this. I also want access to a mission statement - their work is obviously involved with bearing witness, but what is the goal? I have access, in addition to the hotline transcripts, to the WFP newsletter, however, the archive does not have the earliest copies of the newsletter where perhaps the goals of the organization could have been stated.
**It turns out that I was confused of the actual format of the WFP hotline. Actually, it is a recorded message that interested people could call and listen to, updated weekly. Either way, it is accessible in written form, however, it should not be called a "newsletter" (as it is at the beginning of this post).
Would a section about the Nicaragua contra affair be applicable to the course? Or a section on testimony? I know we had talked about Anne Frank and her place within Holocaust literature, and that is also spoken to in The Texture of Memory. Maybe I'm just getting excited about all the material I'm finding...
Friday, July 23, 2010
Swarthmore College update
*An email to Professor Haviland about my research in the Friends Historical Library and the Swarthmore College Peace Collection
Dear Professor Haviland-
I want to update you about how everything is going here in the archive: everything is going great!!
I was in Friends Historical Library all day yesterday looking at sources related to Restorative Justice - I found a position paper written by members of the New York Yearly Meeting Prison Committee that I think would be a great reading to assign to the class, along with a lot of newsletters from that committee. I also made copies of newsletters from the Quaker Project on Community Conflict, and the New York Yearly Meeting's Incest Committee. I got a lot of raw material that I still need to process once I'm up in Providence, but the library was great about letting me make copies and even take some documents of which they had duplicates, which I was really excited about.
Today I am in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection (same library, one floor down) looking at the periodicals for a program called Witness for Peace, which did work in the 1980s and 1990s around bearing witness to the atrocities in Nicaragua. Their aim, from what I've read, seems to be to bring details of the Contras' actions to a wide American audience, for example, their "hotline" is a weekly update of Contra attacks, delineated simply and accessibly. I am going to get copies of some good examples from the hotline.
A lot of the material that the librarians are suggesting to me when I try to explain our project deals with antiwar work, specifically groups that worked for mediation between governments. To me, this does not seem like something that applies to our work, other than possibly speaking to the memorials section. I don't think that direction is a good use of my limited time here.
I hope this sounds all good to you, and that you're having a nice week up in Providence. Is it still raining? The drive down to Philadelphia was absurd; it was raining so much I felt like I only had safe visibility for driving about 60% of the time! But we made it, no accidents this time, what a relief.
Please let me know when you would like to meet - you had said Wednesday before, which absolutely works. Would you be able to meet around 1 or 2? Wednesday is my 21st birthday so I feel like I might be out late the night before!
Best,
Sopheya
Dear Professor Haviland-
I want to update you about how everything is going here in the archive: everything is going great!!
I was in Friends Historical Library all day yesterday looking at sources related to Restorative Justice - I found a position paper written by members of the New York Yearly Meeting Prison Committee that I think would be a great reading to assign to the class, along with a lot of newsletters from that committee. I also made copies of newsletters from the Quaker Project on Community Conflict, and the New York Yearly Meeting's Incest Committee. I got a lot of raw material that I still need to process once I'm up in Providence, but the library was great about letting me make copies and even take some documents of which they had duplicates, which I was really excited about.
Today I am in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection (same library, one floor down) looking at the periodicals for a program called Witness for Peace, which did work in the 1980s and 1990s around bearing witness to the atrocities in Nicaragua. Their aim, from what I've read, seems to be to bring details of the Contras' actions to a wide American audience, for example, their "hotline" is a weekly update of Contra attacks, delineated simply and accessibly. I am going to get copies of some good examples from the hotline.
A lot of the material that the librarians are suggesting to me when I try to explain our project deals with antiwar work, specifically groups that worked for mediation between governments. To me, this does not seem like something that applies to our work, other than possibly speaking to the memorials section. I don't think that direction is a good use of my limited time here.
I hope this sounds all good to you, and that you're having a nice week up in Providence. Is it still raining? The drive down to Philadelphia was absurd; it was raining so much I felt like I only had safe visibility for driving about 60% of the time! But we made it, no accidents this time, what a relief.
Please let me know when you would like to meet - you had said Wednesday before, which absolutely works. Would you be able to meet around 1 or 2? Wednesday is my 21st birthday so I feel like I might be out late the night before!
Best,
Sopheya
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Drowned and the Saved
Primo Levi
While I have already posted about Chapter 3 of this book, "Shame," I will do a quick overview of the other chapters in one post, as they were all assigned together. Following will be a reaction to the book as a whole.
Chapter 1
"The Memory of the Offense"
Although The Drowned and the Saved does have a preface, this first chapter functions almost as an introduction, with a discussion of memory of the Holocaust from the point of view of the victims, the perpetrators, and everyone else. At the close of the chapter, Levi apologizes for the great influence of memory on his book, calling it "drenched in memory." However, he continues, stating that while the book draws heavily from memory, the memories are true, useful, and should be taken as such.
This chapter is largely a philosophical discussion of memory as a concept, and the ways in which it is mutated based on who is remembering, and what the memory is. For example, he points to the justifications characteristic of Nazi memories - "I was forced to," "I was brainwashed," etc.
Significantly, Levi makes sure to emphasize the traumatic nature of memory - remembering a traumatic memory reinscribes the trauma, and the act of remembering is in itself traumatic.
Chapter 2
"The Gray Zone"
This chapter discusses the moral ambiguities that occurred out of necessity in the camp environment. Specifically, the "gray zone" refers to a state in which moral rectitude becomes impossible due to dire conditions, and as such feelings such as solidarity diminish in favor of pure survival.
The aim of this chapter seems to be to emphasize the ease at which moral ambiguity arises. Levi explores the intersections of destitution and power by using the examples of the camp kapos, prisoners who kept order with violence towards other prisoners, the "Special Squads" of prisoners charged with maintaining the crematoria, but rewarded with better clothing and nourishment, and Chaim Rumkowski, the president of the Lodz ghetto in Poland.
Many times in the chapter, he implores the reader to "forgive" those who acted in the gray zone, highlighting the dehumanizing nature of the Holocaust.
Chapter 4
"Communicating"
In this chapter, which highlights the language barriers in the Lagers as well as the language specific to them, Levi uses the example of communication to comment on human relationships within the camp.
The inability to understand German could be fatal in Auschwitz, the camp Levi was interred, because of the violence the SS guards used against the prisoners who did not immediately follow their commands, even if it was because they did not understand them. Further, the guards and even the prisoners developed a kind of German (called LTI) that was far cruder, full of curse words and referring to the prisoners with words that in traditional German would refer only to animals. Because he entered the camp speaking some German as a chemist, Levi writes that he had the "treasure of words."
Further, knowledge of Yiddish was a currency in the camp environment. As an Italian Jew, Levi did not know Yiddish, and there was a sort of hierarchy based on the knowledge of this traditionally Jewish tongue that from which Levi was initially rejected.
Closing his chapter on communication, Levi discusses how access to the news became a priority and a source of solidarity in the camp. Isolation from communication with and knowledge of the outside world were traumatic experiences for the prisoners.
Chapter 5
"Useless Violence"
In this chapter, Levi differentiates interestingly between "useless" and "useful" forms of violence. With extermination of the Jews as a Nazi aim, Levi says that the gassing and burning of the victims was useful, because it furthered their goal. However, actions like the mandatory military-style making of the prisoners' moldy camp beds, and the defilement of the homes of displaced Jews do not fall into this rational framework, and as such should be considered useless violences.
Again and again his book, Levi points to the totalitarian system as being responsible for the proliferation of this level of atrocity.
In this section Levi also discusses dignity. Despite the knowledge that the work they were doing was for the Nazi cause, the prisoners worked hard in order to preserve the dignity of a job well done.
Chapter 6
"The Intellectual in Auschwitz"
This chapter is based on a discussion of the philosopher Jean Améry, an intellectual who was also imprisoned in a concentration camp and eventually committed suicide. Levi discusses in this chapter the dynamics of being an intellectual, and further, a "believer" in the camps.
As an intellectual, Levi writes, he was unaccustomed to the manual labor and physical fighting so characteristic of the camps. Further, he writes that he was more humiliated by these, and by the camp in general, than the non-educated prisoners were. Finally, Levi says he lacked the sort of simple acceptance of a horrible situation that some of the working-class prisoners displayed.
However, Levi was granted privilege in the camp based on his knowledge of chemistry, indeed, it led to better rations and protection for him. Further, Levi writes that his memory of his life before was a valuable link to preserve his identity in the camps, even as he felt himself become more and more dehumanized.
Levi writes that those who were "believers" had an even stronger link to this identity-confirming memory function. Judaism, Zionism, and even Marxism, he writes, acted as guiding forces to many of the prisoners, allowing them to keep hoping for freedom.
Chapter 7
"Stereotypes"
Levi takes this discussion of identity into his next chapter, beginning this chapter on stereotypes with a discussion of the way imprisonment comes to define one's identity.
Levi writes that he is most frequently asked three questions when he discusses his imprisonment, and in this chapter, he responds to them.
The first question is, "Why did you not escape?" Levi responds that escape was nearly impossible, especially given the weakened state of the prisoners, and also, that once one had escaped the camp, they would be lost and friendless in enemy territory. Further, an escaped prisoner could put the whole camp at risk of the SS guards' rage and efforts to find the escaped.
The second question is, "Why did you not rebel?" Levi's answer mirrors that of before - everyone was too weak to rebel. However, he also writes that it would inevitably fail to lead to mass escape, which would be its goal, and that the camp environment was not a place to cultivate leaders. Extremely oppressed people, Levi writes, are usually led to rebellion by someone with the strength to lead.
The final question is, "Why did you not flee before?" Pragmatically, he writes that it was extremely hard to emigrate in Europe at the time, and that people were attached to their homelands. But more importantly, he writes, in a time of mounting nuclear power (the book was first published in 1988), why aren't people fleeing now?
Chapter 8
"Letters from Germans"
In his introduction to the German translation of Survival in Auschwitz, his famous memoir about his time at the camp, Levi tells his German readers that he still cannot understand them. In this chapter he places some of their responses, as well as his replies. This chapter goes in many directions, and while I thought it was useful, I do not know if it necessarily relates to the material we will be looking at in this course.
Having individually summarized all the chapters of this book, I want to relate it back to the course we are creating. I think that this book is too long and heavy for it to be assigned for one class period, even though it is clearly written. I think it is unlikely that anyone will read the whole book. I think perhaps after chapter 5, the rest of the book could be made optional, or encouraged reading.
While I have already posted about Chapter 3 of this book, "Shame," I will do a quick overview of the other chapters in one post, as they were all assigned together. Following will be a reaction to the book as a whole.
Chapter 1
"The Memory of the Offense"
Although The Drowned and the Saved does have a preface, this first chapter functions almost as an introduction, with a discussion of memory of the Holocaust from the point of view of the victims, the perpetrators, and everyone else. At the close of the chapter, Levi apologizes for the great influence of memory on his book, calling it "drenched in memory." However, he continues, stating that while the book draws heavily from memory, the memories are true, useful, and should be taken as such.
This chapter is largely a philosophical discussion of memory as a concept, and the ways in which it is mutated based on who is remembering, and what the memory is. For example, he points to the justifications characteristic of Nazi memories - "I was forced to," "I was brainwashed," etc.
Significantly, Levi makes sure to emphasize the traumatic nature of memory - remembering a traumatic memory reinscribes the trauma, and the act of remembering is in itself traumatic.
Chapter 2
"The Gray Zone"
This chapter discusses the moral ambiguities that occurred out of necessity in the camp environment. Specifically, the "gray zone" refers to a state in which moral rectitude becomes impossible due to dire conditions, and as such feelings such as solidarity diminish in favor of pure survival.
The aim of this chapter seems to be to emphasize the ease at which moral ambiguity arises. Levi explores the intersections of destitution and power by using the examples of the camp kapos, prisoners who kept order with violence towards other prisoners, the "Special Squads" of prisoners charged with maintaining the crematoria, but rewarded with better clothing and nourishment, and Chaim Rumkowski, the president of the Lodz ghetto in Poland.
Many times in the chapter, he implores the reader to "forgive" those who acted in the gray zone, highlighting the dehumanizing nature of the Holocaust.
Chapter 4
"Communicating"
In this chapter, which highlights the language barriers in the Lagers as well as the language specific to them, Levi uses the example of communication to comment on human relationships within the camp.
The inability to understand German could be fatal in Auschwitz, the camp Levi was interred, because of the violence the SS guards used against the prisoners who did not immediately follow their commands, even if it was because they did not understand them. Further, the guards and even the prisoners developed a kind of German (called LTI) that was far cruder, full of curse words and referring to the prisoners with words that in traditional German would refer only to animals. Because he entered the camp speaking some German as a chemist, Levi writes that he had the "treasure of words."
Further, knowledge of Yiddish was a currency in the camp environment. As an Italian Jew, Levi did not know Yiddish, and there was a sort of hierarchy based on the knowledge of this traditionally Jewish tongue that from which Levi was initially rejected.
Closing his chapter on communication, Levi discusses how access to the news became a priority and a source of solidarity in the camp. Isolation from communication with and knowledge of the outside world were traumatic experiences for the prisoners.
Chapter 5
"Useless Violence"
In this chapter, Levi differentiates interestingly between "useless" and "useful" forms of violence. With extermination of the Jews as a Nazi aim, Levi says that the gassing and burning of the victims was useful, because it furthered their goal. However, actions like the mandatory military-style making of the prisoners' moldy camp beds, and the defilement of the homes of displaced Jews do not fall into this rational framework, and as such should be considered useless violences.
Again and again his book, Levi points to the totalitarian system as being responsible for the proliferation of this level of atrocity.
In this section Levi also discusses dignity. Despite the knowledge that the work they were doing was for the Nazi cause, the prisoners worked hard in order to preserve the dignity of a job well done.
Chapter 6
"The Intellectual in Auschwitz"
This chapter is based on a discussion of the philosopher Jean Améry, an intellectual who was also imprisoned in a concentration camp and eventually committed suicide. Levi discusses in this chapter the dynamics of being an intellectual, and further, a "believer" in the camps.
As an intellectual, Levi writes, he was unaccustomed to the manual labor and physical fighting so characteristic of the camps. Further, he writes that he was more humiliated by these, and by the camp in general, than the non-educated prisoners were. Finally, Levi says he lacked the sort of simple acceptance of a horrible situation that some of the working-class prisoners displayed.
However, Levi was granted privilege in the camp based on his knowledge of chemistry, indeed, it led to better rations and protection for him. Further, Levi writes that his memory of his life before was a valuable link to preserve his identity in the camps, even as he felt himself become more and more dehumanized.
Levi writes that those who were "believers" had an even stronger link to this identity-confirming memory function. Judaism, Zionism, and even Marxism, he writes, acted as guiding forces to many of the prisoners, allowing them to keep hoping for freedom.
Chapter 7
"Stereotypes"
Levi takes this discussion of identity into his next chapter, beginning this chapter on stereotypes with a discussion of the way imprisonment comes to define one's identity.
Levi writes that he is most frequently asked three questions when he discusses his imprisonment, and in this chapter, he responds to them.
The first question is, "Why did you not escape?" Levi responds that escape was nearly impossible, especially given the weakened state of the prisoners, and also, that once one had escaped the camp, they would be lost and friendless in enemy territory. Further, an escaped prisoner could put the whole camp at risk of the SS guards' rage and efforts to find the escaped.
The second question is, "Why did you not rebel?" Levi's answer mirrors that of before - everyone was too weak to rebel. However, he also writes that it would inevitably fail to lead to mass escape, which would be its goal, and that the camp environment was not a place to cultivate leaders. Extremely oppressed people, Levi writes, are usually led to rebellion by someone with the strength to lead.
The final question is, "Why did you not flee before?" Pragmatically, he writes that it was extremely hard to emigrate in Europe at the time, and that people were attached to their homelands. But more importantly, he writes, in a time of mounting nuclear power (the book was first published in 1988), why aren't people fleeing now?
Chapter 8
"Letters from Germans"
In his introduction to the German translation of Survival in Auschwitz, his famous memoir about his time at the camp, Levi tells his German readers that he still cannot understand them. In this chapter he places some of their responses, as well as his replies. This chapter goes in many directions, and while I thought it was useful, I do not know if it necessarily relates to the material we will be looking at in this course.
Having individually summarized all the chapters of this book, I want to relate it back to the course we are creating. I think that this book is too long and heavy for it to be assigned for one class period, even though it is clearly written. I think it is unlikely that anyone will read the whole book. I think perhaps after chapter 5, the rest of the book could be made optional, or encouraged reading.
Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity Chapter 6
"On the Social Construction of Moral Universals"
Jeffrey C. Alexander
This is a long chapter. It is also my favorite chapter that I have read in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity thus far.
"On the Social Construction of Moral Universals" grapples with the constructions of the Holocaust among those directly, indirectly, and not involved in the event. This includes the perpetrators, the victims, contemporary Europeans and Americans, as well as the "heirs" to the event - later generations who, despite not living through World War II and the Holocaust, nevertheless have to encounter and construct meaning from the traumatic and confusing events.
The chapter deals primarily with the consumption of the myriad Holocaust narratives in the United States, although its scope is intended to be, and to a degree is, further reaching than simply the US.
Alexander's thesis in this chapter posits the Holocaust narrative as changing over time, from a "progressive narrative" to a tragedy. In other words, immediately following the Allied victory in WWII, the Nazis were accused of war crimes, and the collective focus was on the liberation of the concentration camps and on the heroic action of the Allied forces.
With this construction of the narrative, there was no specific focus on the murdered Jews. Rather, Nazi violence was coded, weighted, and narrated as a simply evil force, with less of a focus on the specifics. For example, when the news of Kristallnacht reached the US, public outrage was directed at the Hitler's obvious irrationality and violence, especially in the wake of the Munich Agreements, rather than at the treatment of the German Jews. The Jews, interestingly, are referred to as "defenseless people," rather than as a specifically targeted group.
At this point in the construction of the post-WWII narrative, Alexander writes, the Holocaust is not seen as a collective trauma, that is, as traumatic worldwide, even for those not directly affected. This can be attributed to a lack of psychological identification with the victims on the part of the American people, who, despite work to diminish antisemitism in US culture (what Alexander calls anti-antisemitism), continued to focus on broad Nazi atrocities, or Nazi "evil," as opposed to the real experiences of the victims.
With a break in the chapter, Alexander moves to how the "Holocaust" as a term to describe the killing of European Jews emerged, transforming what was a progressive narrative of moving beyond to the acceptance of real collective trauma, and the mass murder of the Jews as a symbol of incomprehensible tragedy, or a "sacred-evil," the term Alexander uses to describe the newly-constructed perception of the events.
Significantally, it was with this recasting of memory that the Holocaust became such a defining event of the twentieth century. In constructing the event as a tragedy, its inexplicable nature became an "archetype" for evil, cementing the process of identification that transformed the mass murders as a collective trauma.
Alexander attributes the myriad media representations of the events as facilitating identification with the victims, especially as the focus of films and television series shifted from military victory to the horrors of everyday life for the individuals involved. In recasting WWII as the mundane and horrifying survival of camp victims, rather than the heroics of the military, those not directly involve with the European war gained the ability to identify with its victims. Additionally, the release of testimonial works, such as Anne Frank's Diary, further personalized the events, especially for young people who had little memory of the war years themselves.
Significantly, Alexander also points out an increasing tendency to identify with the perpetrators of the events, calling it a "massive universalization of Nazi evil" (235). Together with the growing awareness of Allied appeasement of Hitler, failure to act despite knowledge of the camps, the fire bombings of Europe, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later with American racism and the war in Vietnam, the evil of the Holocaust once so neatly assigned to the National Socialists seeped into the public imaginary as a collective trauma.
The combination of psychological identification with the both victims and the perpetrators led to guilt, hyper-awareness of the "evil" connotations of the political tensions of the Cold War, and a collective understanding of the Holocaust as a floating signifier of the greatest evil, used as a barometer for contemporary evils. Here Alexander identifies the "dilemma of uniqueness," or the tricky nature of comparing the Holocaust to modern events. Does comparing a modern event to the Holocaust always already diminish the experience of the victims of the Holocaust?
Jeffrey C. Alexander
This is a long chapter. It is also my favorite chapter that I have read in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity thus far.
"On the Social Construction of Moral Universals" grapples with the constructions of the Holocaust among those directly, indirectly, and not involved in the event. This includes the perpetrators, the victims, contemporary Europeans and Americans, as well as the "heirs" to the event - later generations who, despite not living through World War II and the Holocaust, nevertheless have to encounter and construct meaning from the traumatic and confusing events.
The chapter deals primarily with the consumption of the myriad Holocaust narratives in the United States, although its scope is intended to be, and to a degree is, further reaching than simply the US.
Alexander's thesis in this chapter posits the Holocaust narrative as changing over time, from a "progressive narrative" to a tragedy. In other words, immediately following the Allied victory in WWII, the Nazis were accused of war crimes, and the collective focus was on the liberation of the concentration camps and on the heroic action of the Allied forces.
With this construction of the narrative, there was no specific focus on the murdered Jews. Rather, Nazi violence was coded, weighted, and narrated as a simply evil force, with less of a focus on the specifics. For example, when the news of Kristallnacht reached the US, public outrage was directed at the Hitler's obvious irrationality and violence, especially in the wake of the Munich Agreements, rather than at the treatment of the German Jews. The Jews, interestingly, are referred to as "defenseless people," rather than as a specifically targeted group.
At this point in the construction of the post-WWII narrative, Alexander writes, the Holocaust is not seen as a collective trauma, that is, as traumatic worldwide, even for those not directly affected. This can be attributed to a lack of psychological identification with the victims on the part of the American people, who, despite work to diminish antisemitism in US culture (what Alexander calls anti-antisemitism), continued to focus on broad Nazi atrocities, or Nazi "evil," as opposed to the real experiences of the victims.
With a break in the chapter, Alexander moves to how the "Holocaust" as a term to describe the killing of European Jews emerged, transforming what was a progressive narrative of moving beyond to the acceptance of real collective trauma, and the mass murder of the Jews as a symbol of incomprehensible tragedy, or a "sacred-evil," the term Alexander uses to describe the newly-constructed perception of the events.
Significantally, it was with this recasting of memory that the Holocaust became such a defining event of the twentieth century. In constructing the event as a tragedy, its inexplicable nature became an "archetype" for evil, cementing the process of identification that transformed the mass murders as a collective trauma.
Alexander attributes the myriad media representations of the events as facilitating identification with the victims, especially as the focus of films and television series shifted from military victory to the horrors of everyday life for the individuals involved. In recasting WWII as the mundane and horrifying survival of camp victims, rather than the heroics of the military, those not directly involve with the European war gained the ability to identify with its victims. Additionally, the release of testimonial works, such as Anne Frank's Diary, further personalized the events, especially for young people who had little memory of the war years themselves.
Significantly, Alexander also points out an increasing tendency to identify with the perpetrators of the events, calling it a "massive universalization of Nazi evil" (235). Together with the growing awareness of Allied appeasement of Hitler, failure to act despite knowledge of the camps, the fire bombings of Europe, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later with American racism and the war in Vietnam, the evil of the Holocaust once so neatly assigned to the National Socialists seeped into the public imaginary as a collective trauma.
The combination of psychological identification with the both victims and the perpetrators led to guilt, hyper-awareness of the "evil" connotations of the political tensions of the Cold War, and a collective understanding of the Holocaust as a floating signifier of the greatest evil, used as a barometer for contemporary evils. Here Alexander identifies the "dilemma of uniqueness," or the tricky nature of comparing the Holocaust to modern events. Does comparing a modern event to the Holocaust always already diminish the experience of the victims of the Holocaust?
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The Drowned and the Saved Chapter 3
Primo Levi
"Shame"
This chapter, which is the third in the book but is the first of the book I have read, delineates Levi's brief reflections on his time in Auschwitz in the context of shame.
Levi frames the chapter by explanations of his time at the death camp as a time in which his humanity, and indeed humanity in general, was suspended for the animalistic goal of survival. This suspension is a great source of shame for Levi, and further, in its inability to be clearly or rationally explained, constitutes a defining trauma for the writer.
The real lack of humanity is demonstrated in a change in the "moral yardstick" of the prisoners, and with that change an accompanying lack of solidarity so essential for survival in extreme circumstances. Indeed, Levi includes a few personal anecdotes in which the act of sharing, or even lending a listening ear, became completely impossible due to the challenges of survival.
Further defining the trauma for Levi is the coincidental nature of survival. Told by a friend that he must have survived to write, to bear witness, Levi stated that it was not the good or true people who survived. Rather, Levi felt those people were more likely to die, while the worse ones survived. This seems to be an obvious expression of survivor guilt.
Significantly, Levi ends the chapter with a prediction that events like those in the Holocaust could still occur in the postmodern contemporary world, specifically in the non-Western world.
Something to think about: trauma and postmodernity
"Shame"
This chapter, which is the third in the book but is the first of the book I have read, delineates Levi's brief reflections on his time in Auschwitz in the context of shame.
Levi frames the chapter by explanations of his time at the death camp as a time in which his humanity, and indeed humanity in general, was suspended for the animalistic goal of survival. This suspension is a great source of shame for Levi, and further, in its inability to be clearly or rationally explained, constitutes a defining trauma for the writer.
The real lack of humanity is demonstrated in a change in the "moral yardstick" of the prisoners, and with that change an accompanying lack of solidarity so essential for survival in extreme circumstances. Indeed, Levi includes a few personal anecdotes in which the act of sharing, or even lending a listening ear, became completely impossible due to the challenges of survival.
Further defining the trauma for Levi is the coincidental nature of survival. Told by a friend that he must have survived to write, to bear witness, Levi stated that it was not the good or true people who survived. Rather, Levi felt those people were more likely to die, while the worse ones survived. This seems to be an obvious expression of survivor guilt.
Significantly, Levi ends the chapter with a prediction that events like those in the Holocaust could still occur in the postmodern contemporary world, specifically in the non-Western world.
Something to think about: trauma and postmodernity
Writing History, Writing Trauma Chapter 5
Dominick La Capra
“Interview for Yad Vashem (June 9, 1998)”
I will start this with a note, that Yad Veshem, from the title of this chapter, is the official Israeli memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. I read this chapter before looking up the name, so in hindsight it is important to consider the context and form of this chapter. It is an interview with a representative who at least some degree works for the Israeli government, and is presumably Israeli. This is the first chapter I have read of Writing History, Writing Trauma, however, it will be interesting to see if La Capra was particularly careful or intentional with his words given the context in which it occurred.
With that as an introduction, I will discuss the themes of “Interview for Yad Vashem.” Broken into subheaded sections, the chapter explores trauma theory as well as its applications to the Holocaust, and to a lesser degree to American slavery and genocide of native people.
The chapter begins with a discussion of two trauma mechanisms, classified by La Capra as “acting out” and “working through” trauma. Acting out refers loosely to Freud’s “compulsion to repeat,” or “transference.” La Capra defines transference as the tendency to become implicated in the problems one is involved with – either in treatment or simple communication.
This transference, La Capra writes, occurs in many types of human relationships. Its connection to the compulsion to repeat, from what I understand, occurs in the person implicated in a victim’s trauma’s repetition of that trauma upon herself. A preoccupation with another’s trauma, La Capra seems to posit, is a repetition of that trauma. The further tendency to dwell repeatedly upon this empathetic experience is evidence of a transference, even, of the compulsion to repeat. La Capra does not specifically state this point in his work, rather, this is my effort to understand his theory.
La Capra posits “working through,” on the other hand, as a process of coming to terms with trauma and moving beyond it. He emphasizes that this does not mean the simple abandoning of an event, and further, that even if a victim has “worked through” their problem, further work may be required.
It is important to note that there is “working through” and “acting out” should not be considered binarily opposed. Rather, La Capra asserts, they are “distinct.”
In what seems like a nod to Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, La Capra highlights “processes of working through that are not simply therapeutic for the individual but also have political and ethical implications” (152). From this context, he touches upon the idea of trauma in politics, specifically from the point of view of identity politics.
La Capra’s discussion of identity, again, ties into Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity by emphasizing the ways in which trauma are internalized into one’s identity, and further, into a greater cultural identity. Internalization of the Holocaust into the global Jewish identity can be problematic for a number of reasons, he writes.
To close this rather lengthy write-up, I want to touch on La Capra’s discussion of the “redemptive narrative,” or the contemporary narrative structure that follows the Bible: paradise, fall, history, and redemption. These narratives obviously do not have to be biblical in their connection, indeed, the same structure is assigned in elementary school creative writing assignments – you must have a beginning, a problem, a solution, and an ending.
Closing his chapter, La Capra calls for a narrative structure that moves beyond this form, writing that the redemptive narrative has as a shortcoming a tendency to deny trauma. Indeed, in the idea of a complete solution at the conclusion, this structure denies the repetitive and pervasive effects of trauma. A narrative structure that takes into account post-traumatic reactions, including the processes of acting out and working through, represent a further-reaching contemporary model.
“Interview for Yad Vashem (June 9, 1998)”
I will start this with a note, that Yad Veshem, from the title of this chapter, is the official Israeli memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. I read this chapter before looking up the name, so in hindsight it is important to consider the context and form of this chapter. It is an interview with a representative who at least some degree works for the Israeli government, and is presumably Israeli. This is the first chapter I have read of Writing History, Writing Trauma, however, it will be interesting to see if La Capra was particularly careful or intentional with his words given the context in which it occurred.
With that as an introduction, I will discuss the themes of “Interview for Yad Vashem.” Broken into subheaded sections, the chapter explores trauma theory as well as its applications to the Holocaust, and to a lesser degree to American slavery and genocide of native people.
The chapter begins with a discussion of two trauma mechanisms, classified by La Capra as “acting out” and “working through” trauma. Acting out refers loosely to Freud’s “compulsion to repeat,” or “transference.” La Capra defines transference as the tendency to become implicated in the problems one is involved with – either in treatment or simple communication.
This transference, La Capra writes, occurs in many types of human relationships. Its connection to the compulsion to repeat, from what I understand, occurs in the person implicated in a victim’s trauma’s repetition of that trauma upon herself. A preoccupation with another’s trauma, La Capra seems to posit, is a repetition of that trauma. The further tendency to dwell repeatedly upon this empathetic experience is evidence of a transference, even, of the compulsion to repeat. La Capra does not specifically state this point in his work, rather, this is my effort to understand his theory.
La Capra posits “working through,” on the other hand, as a process of coming to terms with trauma and moving beyond it. He emphasizes that this does not mean the simple abandoning of an event, and further, that even if a victim has “worked through” their problem, further work may be required.
It is important to note that there is “working through” and “acting out” should not be considered binarily opposed. Rather, La Capra asserts, they are “distinct.”
In what seems like a nod to Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, La Capra highlights “processes of working through that are not simply therapeutic for the individual but also have political and ethical implications” (152). From this context, he touches upon the idea of trauma in politics, specifically from the point of view of identity politics.
La Capra’s discussion of identity, again, ties into Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity by emphasizing the ways in which trauma are internalized into one’s identity, and further, into a greater cultural identity. Internalization of the Holocaust into the global Jewish identity can be problematic for a number of reasons, he writes.
To close this rather lengthy write-up, I want to touch on La Capra’s discussion of the “redemptive narrative,” or the contemporary narrative structure that follows the Bible: paradise, fall, history, and redemption. These narratives obviously do not have to be biblical in their connection, indeed, the same structure is assigned in elementary school creative writing assignments – you must have a beginning, a problem, a solution, and an ending.
Closing his chapter, La Capra calls for a narrative structure that moves beyond this form, writing that the redemptive narrative has as a shortcoming a tendency to deny trauma. Indeed, in the idea of a complete solution at the conclusion, this structure denies the repetitive and pervasive effects of trauma. A narrative structure that takes into account post-traumatic reactions, including the processes of acting out and working through, represent a further-reaching contemporary model.
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