ArticlePDF Available

Introduction: Transcultural Negotiations of Holocaust Memory

Authors:

Abstract

During the 1980s, memory emerged as an urgent topic of debate in the humanities. By now, a great deal of research has been devoted to collective memory, a term developed by Maurice Halbwachs in the 1920s to denote collectively shared representations of the past,1 or cultural memory, a related concept coined by Jan Assmann in the 1980s that stresses the role of institutionalized canons of culture in the formation and transmission of collective memories.2 Early work in memory studies focused on the ways in which memories are shared within particular communities and constitute or reinforce group identity. Very often, most notably in Pierre Nora’s monumental Lieux de mémoire project, the nation-state has been taken as paradigmatic of such “mnemonic communities.”3 However, with the aid of mass cultural technologies, it has become increasingly possible for people to take on memories of events not “their own,” to which they have no familial, ethnic, or national tie. In recent years, therefore, the transnational and even global dissemination of memory has moved to the center of attention. Arguments about the transnationalization or globalization of memory typically reference the Holocaust, still the primary, archetypal topic in memory studies. In the second half of the 1990s, for example, Alvin Rosenfeld,4 Hilene Flanzbaum,5 and Peter Novick6 called attention to the so-called Americanization of the Holocaust. While reaching back at least as far as the theatrical and cinematic versions of the Anne Frank story in the 1950s, this process of Americanization began in earnest with the enormous success of the 1978 television miniseries Holocaust, a media event that influenced popular reception and memory of the Nazi genocide across national and identitarian boundaries.7 The transnational resonance of the Holocaust did not stop there, though. According to Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, the global spread of Holocaust discourse has generated a new form of memory: “cosmopolitan memory.”8 In their view, as in Jeffrey Alexander’s, the Holocaust has escaped its spatial and temporal particularism to emerge as a common moral touchstone in the wake of the Cold War, and can thus provide the basis for an emergent universal human-rights regime.9 However, both Levy and Sznaider’s and Alexander’s studies display what Avishai Margalit has called “the danger of biased salience” accompanying the construction of a shared moral memory for humankind: because they are generally better remembered, the atrocities of Europe are perceived as morally more significant than atrocities elsewhere.10 A common critical response to the privileging of the Holocaust is to provide a counterclaim for the uniqueness or primacy of other histories of suffering. However, what Michael Rothberg has identified as the zero-sum logic structuring this debate—whereby remembering one thing must come at the cost of forgetting another—is historically problematic, as well as politically and ethically unproductive.11 Insisting on the distinctiveness and difference of one’s own history can indicate a kind of blindness, a refusal to recognize the larger historical processes of which that history is a part. As Hannah Arendt,12 Aimé Césaire,13 Paul Gilroy,14 A. Dirk Moses,15 and Dan Stone16 have argued, the Holocaust, slavery, and colonial domination are in fact interconnected, and by refusing to think them together (except in a competitive manner) we deprive ourselves of an opportunity to gain greater insight into each of these different strands of history and to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the dark underside of modernity. Moreover, claims for the uniqueness of the suffering of the particular victim group to which one belongs tend to deny the capacity for, or the effectiveness of, transcultural empathy. This is not to say, though, that a comparative approach to the study of Holocaust memory is intrinsically more correct or beneficial than a noncomparative one. As Andreas Huyssen17 and Miriam Hansen18 have pointed out, Holocaust comparisons may work as screen memories—meaning that the Holocaust is remembered in order to repress other instances of historical oppression that are closer to home—or simply block insight into specific local histories. Conversely, the comparative argument may be exploited for revisionist ends and serve to relativize, dilute, or...
Criticism
Volume 53
Issue 4 Transcultural Negotiations of Holocaust
Memory
Article 1
7-24-2012
Introduction: Transcultural Negotiations of
Holocaust Memory
Stef Craps
Ghent University,
Michael Rothberg
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
is Preface is brought to you for free and open access by the WSU Press at Digital Commons@Wayne State University. It has been accepted for
inclusion in Criticism by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Wayne State University. For more information, please contact
digitalcommons@wayne.edu.
Recommended Citation
Craps, Stef and Rothberg, Michael (2011) "Introduction: Transcultural Negotiations of Holocaust Memory," Criticism: Vol. 53: Iss. 4,
Article 1.
Available at: hp://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol53/iss4/1
517
Criticism Fall 2011, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 517–521. ISSN 0011-1589.
© 2011 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309
INTRODUCTION: TRANSCULTURAL
NEGOTIATIONS OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY
Stef Craps
Michael Rothberg
During the 1980s, memory emerged as an urgent topic of debate in the hu-
manities. By now, a great deal of research has been devoted to collective
memory, a term developed by Maurice Halbwachs in the 1920s to denote
collectively shared representations of the past,1 or cultural memory, a related
concept coined by Jan Assmann in the 1980s that stresses the role of institu-
tionalized canons of culture in the formation and transmission of collective
memories.2 Early work in memory studies focused on the ways in which
memories are shared within particular communities and constitute or rein-
force group identity. Very often, most notably in Pierre Nora’s monumental
Lieux de mémoire project, the nation-state has been taken as paradigmatic
of such “mnemonic communities.”3 However, with the aid of mass cul-
tural technologies, it has become increasingly possible for people to take on
memories of events not “their own,” to which they have no familial, ethnic,
or national tie. In recent years, therefore, the transnational and even global
dissemination of memory has moved to the center of attention.
Arguments about the transnationalization or globalization of memory
typically reference the Holocaust, still the primary, archetypal topic in
memory studies. In the second half of the 1990s, for example, Alvin Rosen-
feld,4 Hilene Flanzbaum,5 and Peter Novick6 called attention to the so-
called Americanization of the Holocaust. While reaching back at least as
far as the theatrical and cinematic versions of the Anne Frank story in the
1950s, this process of Americanization began in earnest with the enormous
success of the 1978 television miniseries Holocaust, a media event that influ-
enced popular reception and memory of the Nazi genocide across national
and identitarian boundaries.7 The transnational resonance of the Holocaust
did not stop there, though. According to Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider,
the global spread of Holocaust discourse has generated a new form of mem-
ory: “cosmopolitan memory.”8 In their view, as in Jeffrey Alexander’s, the
Holocaust has escaped its spatial and temporal particularism to emerge as
518 STEF CRAPS AND MICHAEL ROTHBERG
a common moral touchstone in the wake of the Cold War, and can thus
provide the basis for an emergent universal human-rights regime.9 How-
ever, both Levy and Sznaider’s and Alexander’s studies display what Avi-
shai Margalit has called “the danger of biased salience” accompanying the
construction of a shared moral memory for humankind: because they are
generally better remembered, the atrocities of Europe are perceived as mor-
ally more significant than atrocities elsewhere.10
A common critical response to the privileging of the Holocaust is to
provide a counterclaim for the uniqueness or primacy of other histories
of suffering. However, what Michael Rothberg has identified as the zero-
sum logic structuring this debate—whereby remembering one thing
must come at the cost of forgetting another—is historically problematic,
as well as politically and ethically unproductive.11 Insisting on the distinc-
tiveness and difference of one’s own history can indicate a kind of blind-
ness, a refusal to recognize the larger historical processes of which that
history is a part. As Hannah Arendt,12 Aimé Césaire,13 Paul Gilroy,14 A.
Dirk Moses,15 and Dan Stone16 have argued, the Holocaust, slavery, and
colonial domination are in fact interconnected, and by refusing to think
them together (except in a competitive manner) we deprive ourselves of
an opportunity to gain greater insight into each of these different strands
of history and to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the
dark underside of modernity. Moreover, claims for the uniqueness of the
suffering of the particular victim group to which one belongs tend to deny
the capacity for, or the effectiveness of, transcultural empathy.
This is not to say, though, that a comparative approach to the study
of Holocaust memory is intrinsically more correct or beneficial than a
noncomparative one. As Andreas Huyssen17 and Miriam Hansen18 have
pointed out, Holocaust comparisons may work as screen memories
meaning that the Holocaust is remembered in order to repress other in-
stances of historical oppression that are closer to home—or simply block
insight into specific local histories. Conversely, the comparative argument
may be exploited for revisionist ends and serve to relativize, dilute, or
erase the memory of the Holocaust, as in the Historikerstreit of the mid-
1980s. However, theorists of “postmemory” (Marianne Hirsch19), “pros-
thetic memory” (Alison Landsberg20), and “multidirectional memory”
(Michael Rothberg) insist on the ethical significance of remembering
traumatic histories across cultural boundaries. Allowing for the trans-
mission across society of empathy for the historical experience of others,
cross-communal remembrance has the potential, at least, to help people
understand past injustices, to generate social solidarity, and to produce
alliances between various marginalized groups.
INTRODUCTION 519
This special issue gathers a number of essays analyzing cultural arti-
facts—video testimonies, literary texts, historical accounts, and political
polemics—that thematize the problematic of transcultural Holocaust re-
membrance outlined here. They approach this topic from aesthetic, his-
torical, political, and ethical perspectives, examining the ways in which the
memory of the Holocaust is invoked, mobilized, and represented; explor-
ing the meaning of the new perspectives on the past that are opened up; and
studying the ethicopolitical stakes involved in the reconfiguration of cultur-
ally prevalent concepts and frameworks of memory. The overall objective
of this collection is to provide further insight into the value, limitations,
and pitfalls of the comparative study of Holocaust memory, with particular
attention to the central role the Holocaust has come to play in efforts to
conceptualize, legitimize, or marginalize experiences of suffering across the
globe.
Four of the five essays included in this issue have their roots in an
international collaborative research project on new directions in trauma
studies hosted and funded by the Flemish Academic Centre for Science
and the Arts (VLAC: Vlaams Academisch Centrum), a Brussels-based in-
stitute of advanced study, in the spring of 2009. We gratefully acknowl-
edge the support of VLAC, which provided an exciting and stimulating
research environment, and of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for
Science and the Arts (KVAB: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België
voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten), whose financial assistance helped to
make possible the conference (contactforum) in which the project culmi-
nated and at which preliminary versions of three of the essays gathered
here were presented as papers.
Stef Craps is a Research Professor in English Literature at Ghent University, where he directs
the Centre for Literature and Trauma. He is the author of Trauma and Ethics in the Novels
of Graham Swift: No Short-Cuts to Salvation (Sussex Academic Press, 2005) and has served
as guest editor for a special double issue of Studies in the Novel devoted to postcolonial
trauma novels (2008; with Gert Buelens).
Michael Rothberg is Professor of English and Conrad Humanities Scholar at the University
of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he is also Director of the Holocaust, Genocide, and
Memory Studies Initiative. His latest book is Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the
Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), published by Stanford University Press in its
Cultural Memory in the Present series.
520 STEF CRAPS AND MICHAEL ROTHBERG
NOTES
1. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser, Heritage of
Sociology Series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); French original La mé-
moire collective (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1950).
2. Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung, und Identität in den frühen
Hochkulturen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992).
3. Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996–98);
French original Les lieux de mémoire, 7 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–92).
4. Alvin H. Rosenfeld, “The Americanization of the Holocaust,” Commentary 99, no. 6
(1995): 35–40.
5. Hilene Flanzbaum, ed., The Americanization of the Holocaust (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1999).
6. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
7. For an account of the impact of Holocaust in Germany, see Andreas Huyssen, “The Poli-
tics of Identification: ‘Holocaust’ and West German Drama,” in After the Great Divide:
Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, Theories of Representation and Difference
series (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 94–114.
8. Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age, trans. As-
senka Oksiloff, Politics History, and Social Change series (Philadelphia: Temple Univer-
sity Press, 2006). See also the nuanced account of memory and globalization in Andreas
Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, Cultural Memory in
the Present series (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).
9. Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, Human Rights and Memory, Essays on Human Rights
Series (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010); Jeffrey C. Alexander,
“On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The ‘Holocaust’ from War Crime to
Trauma Drama,” in Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate, by Jeffrey C. Alexander, with
Martin Jay, Bernhard Giesen, Michael Rothberg, Robert Manne, Nathan Glazer, Elihu
Katz, and Ruth Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–102.
10. Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2002), 80.
11. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of De-
colonization, Cultural Memory in the Present series (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2009).
12. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951; repr., New York: Schocken, 2004).
13. Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (1972; repr., New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2000); French original Discours sur le colonialisme (Paris: Réclame,
1950).
14. Paul Gilroy, “‘Not a Story to Pass On’: Living Memory and the Slave Sublime,” in The
Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1993), 187–223; and Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond
the Color Line (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
15. A. Dirk Moses, “Conceptual Blockages and Definitional Dilemmas in the ‘Racial Cen-
tury’: Genocides of Indigenous Peoples and the Holocaust,” Patterns of Prejudice 36, no. 4
(2002): 7–36.
INTRODUCTION 521
16. Dan Stone, “The Historiography of Genocide: Beyond ‘Uniqueness’ and Ethnic Compe-
tition,” Rethinking History 8, no. 1 (2004): 127–42.
17. Andreas Huyssen, “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia,” in Present Pasts (see note 8),
11–29.
18. Miriam Hansen, “Schindler’s List Is Not Shoah: The Second Commandment, Popular
Modernism, and Public Memory,” Critical Inquiry 22, no. 2 (1996): 292–312.
19. Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
20. Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in
the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
... This framework implied the possibility to 'repair' even distant pasts by employing juridical means (Lorenz, 2014: 47). Against this backdrop, social scientists proclaimed the development of an 'international morality' (Barkan, 2001), the hope for a 'transcultural empathy' (Craps and Rothberg, 2011) or the formation of politics driven by regret (Olick, 2007) according to which perpetrators are willing to acknowledge their crimes and to comply with victims' claims. In conflict with this universalising idea to redress all past crimes, scholars have shown that the Holocaust stands out as the 'ultimate' crime against humanity which therefore defines an unattainable benchmark (Craps and Rothberg, 2011;Sznaider, 2002, 2006). ...
... Against this backdrop, social scientists proclaimed the development of an 'international morality' (Barkan, 2001), the hope for a 'transcultural empathy' (Craps and Rothberg, 2011) or the formation of politics driven by regret (Olick, 2007) according to which perpetrators are willing to acknowledge their crimes and to comply with victims' claims. In conflict with this universalising idea to redress all past crimes, scholars have shown that the Holocaust stands out as the 'ultimate' crime against humanity which therefore defines an unattainable benchmark (Craps and Rothberg, 2011;Sznaider, 2002, 2006). In the past 2 years, this benchmark has become the subject of fierce debates in Germany. ...
... Seemingly, sympathy, or empathy and regret as other scholars have suggested, became driving forces in processes of political action for reparation and reconciliation (Aschheim, 2016;Assmann and Detmers, 2016;Barkan, 2001: XI). Memory scholars therefore often hoped for the creation of a transcultural empathy (Craps and Rothberg, 2011;Landsberg, 2004) that would conclude in the global recognition of marginalised crimes. However, repeated references to the Holocaust highlight its uniqueness as a globalised memory template (Craps and Rothberg, 2011;Levy and Sznaider, 2006) that constructs the Holocaust as both a prototype for genocide as well as the 'ultimate' crime against humanity. ...
Article
Full-text available
Following the globalisation of Holocaust memory in the 1990s, references to National Socialist crimes turned into a practise initiated by postcolonial memory carriers to claim recognition and reparation for colonial crimes – often by taking legal steps to qualify colonial crime a crime against humanity. This article argues that the globalised Holocaust memory established a distinctive emotional order. Consequently, marginalised memory groups align with this order to find a voice in official memory politics. The article examines emotional discourses in the OvaHerero class actions against Germany filed in 2001. It shows how media coverage hindered the recognition of colonial crimes when compared with the Holocaust. However, a diachronic contrast with the analysis of the renewed lawsuit filed this time by representatives of the OvaHerero and the Nama in 2017 shows how emotional discourses changed over time and transformed both colonial and Holocaust memory.
... Indeed, such discourses 'insisting on the distinctiveness and difference of one's own history' can thus result in an unawareness of or 'a refusal to recognize the larger historical processes of which that history is a part'. 16 By extension, discourses confined by a national framework or which emphasise the uniqueness of the national past can tend 'to deny the capacity for, or the effectiveness of, transcultural empathy'. 17 Similarly, the Council of Europe stresses the importance of 'multiperspectival approaches' in history education, as these can contribute to the promotion of 'historical empathy' and historical understanding. ...
... According to Annette H. Storeide, the change occurred at the turn of the century as Holocaust increasingly became an important topic of public debate in Norway (2019). These debates were part of a global development, where the Holocaust has come to stand as the "ultimate" crime against humanity on a global scale (Levy andSchneider 2006, Craps andRothberg 2011). In a Norwegian context, the inclusion of the Holocaust, and especially the discussion of Norwegian participation in the deportation of Jews, has brought local and national history into conflict with global and transnational history on a least two levels. ...
Article
Full-text available
This article analyses five Norwegian novels that all incorporate German soldiers' experiences as an important part of the Norwegian story of World War II. Abandoning the strong focus on antagonistic relationships of previous narratives, the five novels analysed in this article represent a new approach to the history of the war that aims to view the enemy through what Bull and Hansen (2016) have called agonistic memory, which includes the perspective of the perpetrator to understand conflicts. Previously, when Norwegian authors included German soldiers in narratives about World War II, it was part of a general portrait of the enemy. The individual soldier has few distinct features and no independent identity. These portraits followed the hegemonic Norwegian narrative of the occupation: The good Norwegians, who were part of the home front, versus the Germans and the morally inferior Norwegians who supported them. However, in the last ten years, several novels have revisited the war narrative through representations of previously neglected groups, one of which is the German soldier. The five novels have quite different approaches, but they all question the traditional Norwegian war narrative through complex representations of the enemy. My analysis of the five texts will identify how the texts challenge the conventional history of the occupation through an agonistic perspective that aims to revisit how the war is remembered. These representations of the German soldiers are a central part of the new examination of the long shadows cast by the memories of war in Norway.
Chapter
The history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust is a history of different cultures, which explains the diverse and growing efforts to remember these phenomena. This chapter compares how the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust are studied using memory culture. Specifically, it looks at the availability of monuments in Germany and Ghana to represent the Holocaust and slave trade, how they are taught and discussed in schools, and student’s reactions to its discussion. To do this, various Holocaust and slave trade sites were visited within Ghana and Germany to elicit information on how these monuments help people learn about and embrace the past. Interviews and focus group discussions revealed that monuments allow people to provide their interpretation of the past, which promotes a discussion of the past. However, agents like tour guides, teachers, and even family can be a barrier to objectively analysing and discussing the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust. Further, though the Holocaust and Transatlantic Slave Trade are taught at lower stages in schools in Germany and Ghana, little room is given for discussion. We recommend that curators and teachers provide students with an opportunity to objectively analyse and discuss the difficult past.
Article
Purpose: A palimpsest is a parchment manuscript that has been modified or changed yet still retains traces of its original composition. Palimpsest refers to a greatly condensed rendition of an older document. In today's world, chronological remembrance is not what it used to be. It used to bind a culture's or people's relationship to its ancient era, but the border between past and present was tougher and more stable than it appears to be now. In ways that were unimaginable in previous centuries, history has become a part of the present. As a result, worldly constraints have been harmed, while the pragmatic portion of freedom has been strengthened as a result of current transportation and communication technologies. Even in modernism, literary writings have been unable to overcome their palimpsestic nature, and the philological dilemma of incompatible editions has always distinguished literature from constructions or monuments. The palimpsest genre is naturally literary and linked compositions. Design: The secondary data acquired from educational websites and written publications are used in the Review of Literature. Research sources like google scholar, research Gate, SSRN, Elsevier, Academia, and Shodhganga are used for identifying the research gap. Doctoral thesis, and websites are used in the study. To highlight the key aspects of the research, ABCD Analysis is used Qualitative research is conducted using the keywords "palimpsest, manuscript, historical memory, literature, borders" found in online articles, peer-reviewed journals, publications, and a variety of linked portals. Findings: This review of literature explores the palimpsest concept used with the landscape of Delhi, its history, and literature as a palimpsest. Many literary works represent Delhi as a location, including descriptions of the city's art, architecture, and monuments, as well as the city's historic past. This literature analysis aims to look at critical responses to the fictional portrayal of Delhi as a palimpsest. Delhi was never one city, but a collection of them. It, too, never lived in a single era, but rather in several. On these lines, not only were the numerous urban manipulations worked on this palimpsest, including the idiosyncrasies of British and imperial Delhi, discrete and special on it inhabited the space of landscape and memory, but so were the successive 'cities' of Delhi. Research implications: This research focuses on creating a fictional palimpsestic vision of Delhi. The research will also lead to an investigation of a nation's collective memory, which will pave the way for tracking the nationalistic impulses associated with the city. These nationalistic impulses are a global phenomenon that evolved in most of the world's countries in the mid-twentieth century and made their presence clear. The most powerful feelings have been nationalistic feelings. It is a set of beliefs, feelings, and passions shared by inhabitants of a given country. Originality: This Review of Literature presents a study of Delhi as a palimpsest city. Delhi is a unique metropolis that not only resists typical metanarratives but also serves as an exemplary embodiment of spatial and temporal reality as articulated in city planning. To understand a nation’s memories, one must be aware of collective memory. Its objective is a fundamental comprehension of the identity and viewpoint of their nation. Although nations do not have memories, their citizens do, and these memories frequently feature recurring themes. Paper Type: A review paper.
Article
This article argues that neither the proponents of the uniqueness of the Holocaust nor those who see other genocides as paradigmatic provide helpful ways of furthering the scholarly understanding of genocide. A new generation of genocide scholars is incorporating the findings of earlier research into a synthesis that promises to respect the extremity of the Holocaust as well as the specificities of other genocides, positioning them in a history that sees genocide as a continuum of practices throughout the modern period that must also encompass the history of racism, colonialism, imperialism and nation-building.
Article
Moses argues that the study of indigenous genocides and the Holocaust is marred by dogmatically held positions of rival scholarly communities, reflecting the genocidal traumas of the ethnic groups with which they are closely associated. In particular, those who study genocides of indigenous peoples in colonial contexts (and many others) object to the thesis of the Holocaust's 'uniqueness' or 'singularity' on the grounds that it overshadows 'lesser' or 'incomplete' indigenous genocides-if indeed they are considered genocides at all-that are considered marginal or even 'primitive', thereby reinforcing hegemonic Eurocentrism. They claim that the moral caché of indigenous survivors of colonialism is consequently diminished in comparison to that of Jews. Such scholars counter that genocide lies at the core of western civilization, and some extend its meaning to cover a wide variety of phenomena, thereby raising the issue of definition. These positions are reflected in the two schools of thought regarding genocide: liberals who emphasize intentionality and agency, and post-liberals who highlight impersonal structures and processes. The question almost raises itself: should the victim's point of view be authoritative in this regard, when different victim groups make incommensurable, indeed competing, claims? If we are to move beyond this unproductive intellectual and moral stalemate, rehearsing the now familiar arguments is insufficient. A critical perspective that transcends that of victims and perpetrators and their descendants is clearly necessary. Moses argues that laying bare the group traumas that block conceptual development and mutual recognition can aid in their being worked through, as well as in stimulating the critical reflection needed to rethink the relationship between the Holocaust and the indigenous genocides that preceded it. Such a perspective can transcend liberal and post-liberal positions if it links the colonial genocides of the 'racial century' (1850-1950) and the Holocaust to a single modernization process of accelerating violence related to nation-building that commenced in the European colonial periphery and culminated in the Holocaust.
Article
Patrick Maynard (Review of Hirsch, Family Frames) teaches philosophy at the University of Western Ontario and is the author of The Engine of Visualization: Thinking Through Photography (Cornell UP, 1997), coeditor of Aesthetics (Oxford, 1997), and guest editor of "Perspectives on the Arts and Technology," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1997). His most recent publication is an essay on children's drawing, in Philosophical Topics 25 (1998).