A Topography of Memory

Isabelle Engelhardt

ISBN 10: 9052019576 / ISBN 13: 9789052019574

Verlag: Peter Lang, 2002

Beschreibung

This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -There is a paradox inherent in any attempt to memorialize the Holocaust. On the one hand, it can be argued that the Holocaust is fundamentally unrepresentable, indeed unimaginable, and that no human means of communication can adequately convey its enormity. On the other hand, any memorial devoted to the Holocaust is predicated on the notion that the only way to ensure that such a thing does not happen again is to bear witness and thereby 'bring the living and the dead together'. But how can something that cannot be represented be remembered or witnessed This book is an analysis of the history of various sorts of representation, chiefly memorials, on the site of the concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald in comparison with Auschwitz, Yad Vashem and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. By providing a reconstruction of the history and debates surrounding the question of memorializing and forgetting, it interrogates the question of how to represent the unrepresentable. It is a study of how the boundaries of representation and the rhetoric of artifacts changed during the transformation of these places. It draws on Freudian analysis, the literature on sites of memory, and the debate about writing about the Holocaust, showing clearly how the camps have been and still remain highly contested places of memory and arguing that these debates and their physical embodiment on the sites have to be incorporated in our understanding of what these places represent. 237 pp. Englisch.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 9789052019574

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: A Topography of Memory
• Verlag: Peter Lang
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 9052019576
• ISBN-13: 9789052019574
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Zustand: Neu
• Abmessungen: 220B x 150 H x 33 T Millimeter Breite: 220 mm, Höhe: 150 mm, Tiefe: 33 mm
• Gewicht: 390 Gramm

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

There is a paradox inherent in any attempt to memorialize the Holocaust. On the one hand, it can be argued that the Holocaust is fundamentally unrepresentable, indeed unimaginable, and that no human means of communication can adequately convey its enormity. On the other hand, any memorial devoted to the Holocaust is predicated on the notion that the only way to ensure that such a thing does not happen again is to bear witness and thereby "bring the living and the dead together". But how can something that cannot be represented be remembered or witnessed ? This book is an analysis of the history of various sorts of representation, chiefly memorials, on the site of the concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald in comparison with Auschwitz, Yad Vashem and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. By providing a reconstruction of the history and debates surrounding the question of memorializing and forgetting, it interrogates the question of how to represent the unrepresentable. It is a study of how the boundaries of representation and the rhetoric of artifacts changed during the transformation of these places. It draws on Freudian analysis, the literature on sites of memory, and the debate about writing about the Holocaust, showing clearly how the camps have been and still remain highly contested places of memory and arguing that these debates and their physical embodiment on the sites have to be incorporated in our understanding of what these places represent.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The Author: Isabelle Engelhardt received her Ph.D. in history at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and holds an M.A. in history from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. She is currently working at the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Museum of Contemporary History) in Bonn, Germany.