Encrypting the Past: The German-Jewish Holocaust novel of the first generation
Kirstin Gwyer
Abstract
Encrypting the Past puts forward the interpretative category of the first-generation German-Jewish Holocaust novel and examines its representational strategies. With reference to works by H. G. Adler, Jenny Aloni, Elisabeth Augustin, Erich Fried, and Wolfgang Hildesheimer, it shows how Holocaust literature was being written decades before post-war authors such as Sebald (discussed in the Conclusion) were credited with having found new ways of reflecting the unspeakable. It demonstrates that, before the theoretical debate over the fundamental representability of the Holocaust was even fully und ... More
Encrypting the Past puts forward the interpretative category of the first-generation German-Jewish Holocaust novel and examines its representational strategies. With reference to works by H. G. Adler, Jenny Aloni, Elisabeth Augustin, Erich Fried, and Wolfgang Hildesheimer, it shows how Holocaust literature was being written decades before post-war authors such as Sebald (discussed in the Conclusion) were credited with having found new ways of reflecting the unspeakable. It demonstrates that, before the theoretical debate over the fundamental representability of the Holocaust was even fully under way, first-generation authors were already translating unnarratable trauma into a literary strategy of unnarrating: a strategy of encrypting the Holocaust into the form and structure of their texts. The implications of treating these writers as a set, and their body of work as a hitherto unacknowledged category of Holocaust fiction, go well beyond drawing attention to a number of important but critically neglected authors. This study frames the analysis of first-generation narrative strategies in the broader debate on the ethics and aesthetics of Holocaust writing. In revealing how certain kinds of testimony have been privileged above others in international Holocaust studies, it raises questions of a more general nature concerning canon formation and our theoretical responses to the Holocaust. In considering foremost among these responses the theory of deconstruction and trauma theory, it finally invites a re-examination of the relationship between the (post)modern and trauma.
Keywords:
Holocaust novel,
German-Jewish,
postmodernism,
deconstruction,
trauma theory,
postmemory,
encryption
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198709930 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198709930.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Kirstin Gwyer, author
Lecturer in German, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford
More
Less
