Renegotiating Postmemory: The Holocaust in Contemporary German-Language Jewish Literature (Dialogue and Disjunction: Studies in Jewish German)
Synopsis "Renegotiating Postmemory: The Holocaust in Contemporary German-Language Jewish Literature (Dialogue and Disjunction: Studies in Jewish German)"
In the shifting media landscape of the twenty-first century, the second and third generations of German-language Jewish authors are grappling with the disappearance of the eyewitness generation and the hyper-mediation and globalization of Holocaust memory. Benjamin Stein, Maxim Biller, Vladmir Vertlib, and Eva Menasse each experiment with new approaches towards Holocaust representation and the Nazi past. This book investigates major shifts in Holocaust memory since the turn of the millennium, and argues that the works of these authors call for a much-needed reassessment of key concepts and terms in Holocaust discourse such as authenticity, empathy, normalization, representation, traumatic unspeakability, and postmemory.Drawing on current research in media, memory, cultural, and literary studies, Maria Roca Lizarazu develops a fresh approach which challenges the dominant focus on traumatic unspeakability by engaging with the culturally mediated travels of transgenerational and transnational contemporary Holocaust memory. Roca Lizarazu pays special attention to ethical and aesthetic challenges of contemporary Holocaust memory and how these are addressed in the medium of contemporary German-language literature. This book offers a critical new perspective on the central paradigms informing recent Holocaust and trauma studies scholarship and, in doing so, provides novel insights into a new generational approach towards Holocaust remembrance and representation.Maria Roca Lizarazu is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, UK.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Holocaust Memory in the New Millennium-Between Continuity and ChangeRethinking Testimony: Authenticity, Travelling Memories, and Post-Holocaust Jewish Identities in Benjamin Stein's Die Leinwand"Im Land der Väter und Verräter": Intertextuality, Influence, and the Problem of Symbiosis in Maxim Biller's WritingContrapuntal Memory, Dialogism, and Irony: Challenges to Transnationalism in Vladimir Vertlib's Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa MasurFrom the Family to the Meta-Memorial Novel: Eva Menasse's FictionConclusion: The Critique of the Critique of Representation: Self- and Metareflexivity in Contemporary Holocaust Fiction
