La Capra focused his talk on Jonathan Littell’s novel The Kindly Ones, and Saul Friedlander’s combined works Nazi Germany and the Jews. Because I had not read either book, and because La Capra is a dense speaker even without his footnotes, I am certain that I did not understand the lecture in its entirety. However, having read up on both works and gone through my notes a couple of times, I do see themes and lines of argument that I find compelling in relation to the subject of trauma and the Holocaust.
Beginning with a critique of The Kindly Ones, La Capra notes the “radical ambiguity” presented in the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. As a fictional “autobiography” of “passive homosexual” SS officer Maxamillian Aeu, La Capra asserted that The Kindly Ones could have taken a better look into perpetrator motivation. Part of Littell’s aim, La Capra said, was to cause the reader to identify with Aeu as a perpetrator.
Likening Littell’s literary ambiguity to Primo Levi’s “grey zone,” La Capra pointed out that in many cases, historical documentation is not the way to illuminate questions about the Holocaust. Poorly paraphrased, La Capra stated that historical documentation taken to excess darkens the darkness surrounding questions about the genocide, and that in many cases the more one knows, the more that darkness becomes impenetrable. La Capra suggested that Littell have taken more of an inquiry into Himmler’s closing speech to the SS generals, which he pointed to as the most intimate look into the perpetrator motivation in the Holocaust.
La Capra used the second part of his talk to discuss Saul Friedlander’s work around victims, trauma, and posttrauma. Discussing Friedlander’s concept of “redemptive anti-Semitism,” La Capra situated the Nazis’ hatred in a narrative that posits all history as related to the Jews as a negative force, with the idea that their extermination will eradicate that force.
Interestingly, La Capra pointed to Friedlander’s use of accessible language as a useful tool in evoking sentiments of disbelief in the reader, thus facilitating her identification with the victim. In the face of such horror, La Capra said, there is no point in using exaggerated language – the role of the inexplicable and the excessive are already clear in the story of the Holocaust.
La Capra critiques Friedlander, however, for failing to make use of oral testimony and video archives despite his stated concern for and focus on the voice. La Capra points out that there are many aspects of testimony that are not verbal – the pause, the sign, the emotional breakdown – that are invaluable literary and historical resources in the study of trauma. Further, Friedlander’s failure to address Palestine in a discussion of memory and its aftermath is a real shortcoming La Capra points to in his work on the Holocaust.
Closing his speech with these critiques of Friedlander’s work, La Capra calls for Friedlander’s concept of “redemptive anti-Semitism” to be situated in terms of a mood of excess surrounding the Nazi party. Emphasizing a “carnivalesque glee,” the quasi-divine leader, and the idea of purification and regimentation of a community through the extermination of outsiders, La Capra effectively commented on the environment of transgressive excess characterizing the period. However, as the talk came to a close I felt he could have said more about what that excess meant, especially in the context of current affairs. His nod to Palestine was compelling, but truncated, lacking any real accompanying commentary about what Friedlander’s focus on Palestine might look like, or even his own.
I have been limited in the past by a real inability to understand what La Capra is saying. He made a funny comment in his talk, that this particular lecture did need to be footnoted before it could be published. I think because I had not read the works he referred to, I was limited in my complete comprehension of the talk, but what I was able to understand I found to be very interesting. La Capra’s overall point was that more personalization needs to be done when looking into the Holocaust, to avoid looking at the period as a contained era of illegible horror. By putting the effort in to read the horror, and personalize both the victims and the perpetrator, a useful process of identification can begin to take place. What I would like La Capra to build on are the outlets for that identification – what would that project bring to contemporary historical studies, and specifically to the academy of Holocaust interpretation?
Friday, November 5, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Proposed Cuts: an email
Professor H.,
I'm looking through our updated syllabus in hopes of figuring out where/how to cut Caruth (I think I might decide we shouldn't cut anything -- is this ok??). Reading back through her introduction, it is clear to me that we should have covered our little bits that we're including of Pleasure Principle before we come to Caruth, because she refers to it a lot. So I looked at the syllabus and I don't think we even have a spot in there for the Pleasure Principle terms!
We decided that the Pleasure Principle terms should be the Death Instinct and the Pleasure Principle, however I think adding the compulsion to repeat would be appropriate and helpful also. So with those three terms assigned, we have about 13 pages, copied into Word, from LaPlanche. This is really not very much to read. I was thinking maybe we could just put those couple of terms on the syllabus, or else hand it out as a packet the first day, and tell students that they should read it by week 3 in order to fully grasp Caruth. Alternatively we could just put it on MyCourses, although I think that it's likely that if we hand it out the first day, students will read it right after they shop the class and it will help them decide that our class is really interesting and that they should take it.
So on to Caruth. We have assigned in total 52 pages of Caruth. The pages are small, with not that much text on them. I really feel that we could assign all of it, although when I look at the week to which we have assigned it - 2 chapters of Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, assigned on the same day as one Primo Levi chapter, I feel less sure about that. So maybe we could cut chapter 5, "Traumatic Awakenings," because it works with Lacan and Dreams, two subjects that I think can (should?) be avoided in the context of our course. That cuts that page count down to 40.
And finally for this email, Levi. In my blog I suggested that we make everything after chapter 5 optional. That leaves us assigning around 109 pages (including the preface) of this book, if we consider that the students will have already read the chapter on Shame. So I think we should assign either chapters 1-5 excluding chapter 3 (Shame), or that, plus chapter 7 (Stereotypes) which deals with the questions of why concentration camp prisoners did not rebel or try to escape. I don't think this chapter is necessary, however, if you feel I have cut too much we can definitely add it. That would bump the page count up to 126.
I'm going to crosspost this email in my blog because it includes a lot of speculative thinking. I'm going to tackle cutting Savage tomorrow and this afternoon. La Capra still needs work (OBVIOUSLY!!) so I will bring my ideas and beg your input on Wednesday.
Excuse the long email. I bolded the subjects of the paragraphs for ease in browsing.
Hope you had a great weekend!!
-s
I'm looking through our updated syllabus in hopes of figuring out where/how to cut Caruth (I think I might decide we shouldn't cut anything -- is this ok??). Reading back through her introduction, it is clear to me that we should have covered our little bits that we're including of Pleasure Principle before we come to Caruth, because she refers to it a lot. So I looked at the syllabus and I don't think we even have a spot in there for the Pleasure Principle terms!
We decided that the Pleasure Principle terms should be the Death Instinct and the Pleasure Principle, however I think adding the compulsion to repeat would be appropriate and helpful also. So with those three terms assigned, we have about 13 pages, copied into Word, from LaPlanche. This is really not very much to read. I was thinking maybe we could just put those couple of terms on the syllabus, or else hand it out as a packet the first day, and tell students that they should read it by week 3 in order to fully grasp Caruth. Alternatively we could just put it on MyCourses, although I think that it's likely that if we hand it out the first day, students will read it right after they shop the class and it will help them decide that our class is really interesting and that they should take it.
So on to Caruth. We have assigned in total 52 pages of Caruth. The pages are small, with not that much text on them. I really feel that we could assign all of it, although when I look at the week to which we have assigned it - 2 chapters of Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, assigned on the same day as one Primo Levi chapter, I feel less sure about that. So maybe we could cut chapter 5, "Traumatic Awakenings," because it works with Lacan and Dreams, two subjects that I think can (should?) be avoided in the context of our course. That cuts that page count down to 40.
And finally for this email, Levi. In my blog I suggested that we make everything after chapter 5 optional. That leaves us assigning around 109 pages (including the preface) of this book, if we consider that the students will have already read the chapter on Shame. So I think we should assign either chapters 1-5 excluding chapter 3 (Shame), or that, plus chapter 7 (Stereotypes) which deals with the questions of why concentration camp prisoners did not rebel or try to escape. I don't think this chapter is necessary, however, if you feel I have cut too much we can definitely add it. That would bump the page count up to 126.
I'm going to crosspost this email in my blog because it includes a lot of speculative thinking. I'm going to tackle cutting Savage tomorrow and this afternoon. La Capra still needs work (OBVIOUSLY!!) so I will bring my ideas and beg your input on Wednesday.
Excuse the long email. I bolded the subjects of the paragraphs for ease in browsing.
Hope you had a great weekend!!
-s
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Historical Text as a Literary Artifact
Hayden White
This is a really interesting article about the connections between history and literature. It is also very dense, and does not deal directly with shame, trauma, or the events covered in the course. I will go through a couple of the article's main points, then speak to its place within Trauma and the Shame of the Unspeakable.
Beginning by exploring various philosophers' analyses of the historical narrative, including Northrop Frye, R.G. Collingwood, and Claude Levi-Strauss. Through a rather repetitive style, White stresses that while history is traditionally thought of as a representation of true facts, as opposed to fictional literature, it is in fact also a constructed narrative.
Historians, White writes, work to fit history into a number of pre-existing plot paradigms, highlighting some facts while suppressing others to create a narrative that is, for example, romantic, or tragic. There is, White writes, no event that is intrinsically tragic, in keeping with the similar claim about trauma that is a theme in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity.
This process is called "emplotment," according to White. This name is easy to understand - it is a process of assigning a plot to a chronicle, or series of events on a time line.
At one point, White makes the very interesting comparison from this process of historical emplotment to the work of psychotherapy. In psychotherapy, the afflicted patient has "overemplotted" their life events, causing them to obsess over or repress them. It is the job of the therapist to guide the patient towards reemplotting these events, changing their meaning and significance to better support the patient's wellbeing.
Going into a more dense discussion of mimesis on historical narrative, White points out that the historical narrative is not just a reproduction of events, but it is also a set of symbols that allows us to consume the history and find the icon of those symbols in our literary tradition.
I would recommend "The Historical Text as a Literary Artifact" be assigned as reccommended reading, but also that we are sure to discuss the main points in class or in section (I could do that, I took EXTENSIVE notes) because White's points are not referred to or explained in any other reading for the course.
I think that especially as an American Civilization class, a discussion of the connections, indeed the bridge between history and literature is really important. Especially because of our focus on trauma, a place where history and literature converge and facts become confused and difficult to navigate, White's claim that "there is an element of the historical in all poetry, [and] there is an element of poetry in every historical account of the world" is especially important to keep in mind.
That said, the reading is repetitive and difficult to get through. I think that if it was assigned as a required reading, it would take a lot of a 50-minute class period to really work through all the questions that would arise from it.
This is a really interesting article about the connections between history and literature. It is also very dense, and does not deal directly with shame, trauma, or the events covered in the course. I will go through a couple of the article's main points, then speak to its place within Trauma and the Shame of the Unspeakable.
Beginning by exploring various philosophers' analyses of the historical narrative, including Northrop Frye, R.G. Collingwood, and Claude Levi-Strauss. Through a rather repetitive style, White stresses that while history is traditionally thought of as a representation of true facts, as opposed to fictional literature, it is in fact also a constructed narrative.
Historians, White writes, work to fit history into a number of pre-existing plot paradigms, highlighting some facts while suppressing others to create a narrative that is, for example, romantic, or tragic. There is, White writes, no event that is intrinsically tragic, in keeping with the similar claim about trauma that is a theme in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity.
This process is called "emplotment," according to White. This name is easy to understand - it is a process of assigning a plot to a chronicle, or series of events on a time line.
At one point, White makes the very interesting comparison from this process of historical emplotment to the work of psychotherapy. In psychotherapy, the afflicted patient has "overemplotted" their life events, causing them to obsess over or repress them. It is the job of the therapist to guide the patient towards reemplotting these events, changing their meaning and significance to better support the patient's wellbeing.
Going into a more dense discussion of mimesis on historical narrative, White points out that the historical narrative is not just a reproduction of events, but it is also a set of symbols that allows us to consume the history and find the icon of those symbols in our literary tradition.
I would recommend "The Historical Text as a Literary Artifact" be assigned as reccommended reading, but also that we are sure to discuss the main points in class or in section (I could do that, I took EXTENSIVE notes) because White's points are not referred to or explained in any other reading for the course.
I think that especially as an American Civilization class, a discussion of the connections, indeed the bridge between history and literature is really important. Especially because of our focus on trauma, a place where history and literature converge and facts become confused and difficult to navigate, White's claim that "there is an element of the historical in all poetry, [and] there is an element of poetry in every historical account of the world" is especially important to keep in mind.
That said, the reading is repetitive and difficult to get through. I think that if it was assigned as a required reading, it would take a lot of a 50-minute class period to really work through all the questions that would arise from it.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Justice from the Victim's Perspective
Judith Herman
This piece is based on a set of interviews with 22 people, mostly victims but some witnesses, of sexual assault. In it, Herman explores the role of our legal system in sexual assault proceedings, pointing to the dissatisfaction that most victims interviewed expressed about their experience with the justice system.
Beyond her discussion of the legal system, Herman explores alternatives to the system, taking into account existing paradigms such as restorative justice, as well as the complicated priorities of victims themselves.
Herman focuses on the ways in which victims are shamed in any case of sexual assault. Pointing out the strength of power dynamics, she reminds readers that even in a court of law the tendency is for the victim to have to explain herself and prove the guilt of her assaulter, while in many cases that person is protected by her family and/or community. In other words, the victim is from the outset ostracized, despite her experience of trauma that necessitates support from her community.
Throughout her exploration of two justice paradigms, redemptive and restorative justice, Herman makes the interesting point that both systems are directed at the offenders - the first focuses on punishing them, while the second on reintegrating them. Because neither focuses on the wants of the victim, neither system truly functions to redeem the victim. Indeed, many victims in the study, instead of expressing a desire to see their offender locked up, simply want him to acknowledge his crime, and thus to experience the pervasive shame felt by victims of sexual assault. Further, they hope for the perpetrator's privileged place in the community to be taken from him, both as a symbolic punishment and as a preventative measure against further abuse.
This article was really interesting, especially when read in conversation with the documents I found at FHL, which are heavily influenced by a religious understanding of the goodness of forgiving. Herman argues that expecting a victim to forgive is not necessarily a useful or fair idea. Rather, she posits it as something to make society comfortable - once the victim has forgiven the perpetrator, society feels that it has closure, but who benefits from this closure, and the ultimate forgetting that it can lead to?
I unequivocally feel that this article should be added to the syllabus. It has really made me question the idea of restorative justice with which, if you look at my previous post, I was feeling rather enamored yesterday. I think it fits into the alternatives section, which, the more I think about, I think should be given some time for discussion and thought in this course. I think that after all of the really challenging sections of this course, both academically and emotionally, a time to really engage with debate over how to improve and change the system would be empowering and uplifting. I also feel that a series of shorter articles outlining firm positions (the Quaker piece on restorative justice, versus this article, for example) will allow for engagement that really includes students' own thinking and opinions.
This piece is based on a set of interviews with 22 people, mostly victims but some witnesses, of sexual assault. In it, Herman explores the role of our legal system in sexual assault proceedings, pointing to the dissatisfaction that most victims interviewed expressed about their experience with the justice system.
Beyond her discussion of the legal system, Herman explores alternatives to the system, taking into account existing paradigms such as restorative justice, as well as the complicated priorities of victims themselves.
Herman focuses on the ways in which victims are shamed in any case of sexual assault. Pointing out the strength of power dynamics, she reminds readers that even in a court of law the tendency is for the victim to have to explain herself and prove the guilt of her assaulter, while in many cases that person is protected by her family and/or community. In other words, the victim is from the outset ostracized, despite her experience of trauma that necessitates support from her community.
Throughout her exploration of two justice paradigms, redemptive and restorative justice, Herman makes the interesting point that both systems are directed at the offenders - the first focuses on punishing them, while the second on reintegrating them. Because neither focuses on the wants of the victim, neither system truly functions to redeem the victim. Indeed, many victims in the study, instead of expressing a desire to see their offender locked up, simply want him to acknowledge his crime, and thus to experience the pervasive shame felt by victims of sexual assault. Further, they hope for the perpetrator's privileged place in the community to be taken from him, both as a symbolic punishment and as a preventative measure against further abuse.
This article was really interesting, especially when read in conversation with the documents I found at FHL, which are heavily influenced by a religious understanding of the goodness of forgiving. Herman argues that expecting a victim to forgive is not necessarily a useful or fair idea. Rather, she posits it as something to make society comfortable - once the victim has forgiven the perpetrator, society feels that it has closure, but who benefits from this closure, and the ultimate forgetting that it can lead to?
I unequivocally feel that this article should be added to the syllabus. It has really made me question the idea of restorative justice with which, if you look at my previous post, I was feeling rather enamored yesterday. I think it fits into the alternatives section, which, the more I think about, I think should be given some time for discussion and thought in this course. I think that after all of the really challenging sections of this course, both academically and emotionally, a time to really engage with debate over how to improve and change the system would be empowering and uplifting. I also feel that a series of shorter articles outlining firm positions (the Quaker piece on restorative justice, versus this article, for example) will allow for engagement that really includes students' own thinking and opinions.
Monday, August 2, 2010
NYYM: Incest Survivors Resource Network International documents
We have three documents from the Incest Survivor's Resource Network: one introduction to the group that presumably preceded a talk given by one of the network's representatives, one such talk requesting meeting space from a community college, and, most interestingly, a letter from an inmate to the network, asking if it accepts incest perpetrators who were also victims themselves.
Founded in 1983, the focus of the network is to break the generational cycle of incest. Through a victim sponsorship program, the network, which is entirely staffed by incest survivors, hopes to spread awareness of incest as a pervasive phenomenon in communities.
Obviously these documents fit into the already existing section on childhood sexual assault.
Founded in 1983, the focus of the network is to break the generational cycle of incest. Through a victim sponsorship program, the network, which is entirely staffed by incest survivors, hopes to spread awareness of incest as a pervasive phenomenon in communities.
Obviously these documents fit into the already existing section on childhood sexual assault.
Other New York Yearly Meeting prison transition projects
We have a couple of documents from the New York Yearly Meeting detailing various inmate transition projects. The two I will discuss in this post are the Home Free Project, founded in 1979, and two assistance funds meant to loan or grant money to aid prisoners both incarcerated and recently released. These documents are from 1984. Obviously these two sets of sources fit into the previously discussed section on prison transitions that includes RECONSTRUCTION.
We have one mailing from the New York Yearly Meeting Prisons Committee detailing the Home Free Project, as well as an illustration detailing the goals of the project. It stemmed from a project of putting meetings for worship in prisons, and aims to then assist those prisoners active in the Quaker community during their incarceration.
Home Free is based in employment and education, as well as counseling inmates and their families. I think this program is particularly interesting because of its focus on Quakers or meeting participants. Other programs I have looked out do not have this specific focus, indeed, seem to be more open and willing to give support regardless of religion. However, I think with its Quaker focus Home Free was probably able to more sharply direct its aid, and perhaps to attract its previous charges to work within the organization.
The two assistance funds have a similarly Quaker slant, specifying that recipients of aid must at least have been in contact with a reputable Friend who will vouch for them. While this is certainly pragmatic, it does not seem in keeping with some of the blanket idealism expressed in other sources, such as the paper on Restorative Justice. I find this interesting.
What I think is most useful to take away from the two documents on assistance funds is the idea of solidarity over charity. In other words, the drafters of both documents are careful to point out that this aid is given in the hopes of a better community and a better world, and that that is the duty of those with privilege. They do not pass judgement in the documents for the crimes committed, and in doing work to reduce a hierarchy that obviously exists between a religious donor and an ex-inmate recipient.
We have one mailing from the New York Yearly Meeting Prisons Committee detailing the Home Free Project, as well as an illustration detailing the goals of the project. It stemmed from a project of putting meetings for worship in prisons, and aims to then assist those prisoners active in the Quaker community during their incarceration.
Home Free is based in employment and education, as well as counseling inmates and their families. I think this program is particularly interesting because of its focus on Quakers or meeting participants. Other programs I have looked out do not have this specific focus, indeed, seem to be more open and willing to give support regardless of religion. However, I think with its Quaker focus Home Free was probably able to more sharply direct its aid, and perhaps to attract its previous charges to work within the organization.
The two assistance funds have a similarly Quaker slant, specifying that recipients of aid must at least have been in contact with a reputable Friend who will vouch for them. While this is certainly pragmatic, it does not seem in keeping with some of the blanket idealism expressed in other sources, such as the paper on Restorative Justice. I find this interesting.
What I think is most useful to take away from the two documents on assistance funds is the idea of solidarity over charity. In other words, the drafters of both documents are careful to point out that this aid is given in the hopes of a better community and a better world, and that that is the duty of those with privilege. They do not pass judgement in the documents for the crimes committed, and in doing work to reduce a hierarchy that obviously exists between a religious donor and an ex-inmate recipient.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
PYM: Child Abuse at Taxpayers' Expense: V. Are There Other Ways?
This is a segment from a collaborative work by the Friends Suburban Project, the Pennsylvania Program for Woman and Girl Offenders, and Youth Advocates, Inc., supported by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, published in 1974.
The entire piece, entitled "Child Abuse at Taxpayers' Expense: A Citizen's Report on Training Schools in Southeastern Pennsylvania," attacks the juvenile delinquency program in southeastern PA, focusing especially on the fact that the rate of incarceration of juveniles was at the time increasing in PA. It bases its information on what seems to be a hearing, or a series of hearings, including lengthy segments of transcribed testimony from people who had been in "training schools" or "institutions," in addition to various other critics.
The chapter self-consciously points out that while throughout the rest of the piece it is obvious that the institution system is flawed and needs to be changed, actual imagined alternatives are still limited in their scope and variety.
For example, many people take foe granted that juvenile rehabilitation needs to occur in a residential setting, a fact which the anonymous narrator states with subtle criticism. Group homes, or homes for delinquents in their own community, where they would live together under the eye of a guiding adult (in the example given, this person is a priest), are praised. However, they already exist and do not serve as the innovative the authors seek.
One significant roadblock to group homes is rejection from the community. In many cases a community objects to the placement of a house full of juvenile delinquents on their doorstep. The narrators, and people quoted in the chapter, advocate for a kind of political force in this regard, pointing out that while no community is going to be excited at this prospect, sending delinquents away and ignoring their existence is beneficial neither to the delinquents nor the community itself, which is framed in this argument as "taking the easy way out," to a degree.
I think this is a particularly interesting conundrum, especially given that at no point do the writers explicitly state where these homes would exist. How beneficial is reintroducing delinquent minors into a community that rejects them? How could this hurt an already suffering community?
Other suggestions in this chapter are reimbursement programs, directed either at counties who keep minors out of institutions, or at families who take delinquent minors back into their homes. I feel that this could easily lead to a fraudulent use of funds intended to help the minors, both at an individual and bureaucratic level.
While I think this paper carries a patronizing tone, I also think it serves as a thoughtful look into alternatives, to fit in the section discussed in the previous post.
The entire piece, entitled "Child Abuse at Taxpayers' Expense: A Citizen's Report on Training Schools in Southeastern Pennsylvania," attacks the juvenile delinquency program in southeastern PA, focusing especially on the fact that the rate of incarceration of juveniles was at the time increasing in PA. It bases its information on what seems to be a hearing, or a series of hearings, including lengthy segments of transcribed testimony from people who had been in "training schools" or "institutions," in addition to various other critics.
The chapter self-consciously points out that while throughout the rest of the piece it is obvious that the institution system is flawed and needs to be changed, actual imagined alternatives are still limited in their scope and variety.
For example, many people take foe granted that juvenile rehabilitation needs to occur in a residential setting, a fact which the anonymous narrator states with subtle criticism. Group homes, or homes for delinquents in their own community, where they would live together under the eye of a guiding adult (in the example given, this person is a priest), are praised. However, they already exist and do not serve as the innovative the authors seek.
One significant roadblock to group homes is rejection from the community. In many cases a community objects to the placement of a house full of juvenile delinquents on their doorstep. The narrators, and people quoted in the chapter, advocate for a kind of political force in this regard, pointing out that while no community is going to be excited at this prospect, sending delinquents away and ignoring their existence is beneficial neither to the delinquents nor the community itself, which is framed in this argument as "taking the easy way out," to a degree.
I think this is a particularly interesting conundrum, especially given that at no point do the writers explicitly state where these homes would exist. How beneficial is reintroducing delinquent minors into a community that rejects them? How could this hurt an already suffering community?
Other suggestions in this chapter are reimbursement programs, directed either at counties who keep minors out of institutions, or at families who take delinquent minors back into their homes. I feel that this could easily lead to a fraudulent use of funds intended to help the minors, both at an individual and bureaucratic level.
While I think this paper carries a patronizing tone, I also think it serves as a thoughtful look into alternatives, to fit in the section discussed in the previous post.
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