SUNY Press Catalog - Spring 2009 - (Page 54) holocaust studies ForgetFul MeMory representation and remembrance in the wake of the Holocaust FORGETFuL MEMORy Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust Michael Bernard-Donals Examines the role of forgetfulness in our understanding of the Holocaust. THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL AND THE SHOAH The Democratic Ideal and the Shoah The Unthought in Political Modernity The unthought in Political Modernity Shmuel Trigano Translated by Gila Walker An original and revolutionary interpretation of the Jews’ destiny in modern politics. Much of the discussion surrounding the Holocaust and how it can be depicted sixty years later has focused on memory. In Forgetful Memory, Michael Bernard-Donals focuses on the relation between memory and forgetfulness, arguing that memory and forgetfulness cannot be separated but must be examined as they complicate our understanding of the Shoah. Drawing on the work of Josef Yerushalmi, Maurice Blanchot, David Roskies, and especially Emmanuel Levinas, Bernard-Donals explores contemporary representations of the Holocaust in memoirs, novels, and poetry; films and photographs; in museums; and in our contemporary political discourse concerning the Middle East. Ultimately, Forgetful Memory makes the case that we should give up on the idea of memory as a kind of representation, and that we should see it instead as an intersection of remembrance and oblivion, as a kind of writing, where what remains at its margins—what is left unwritten—is at least as important as what is given voice. MicHael Bernard-donals Shmuel Trigano Translated by Gila Walker www.sunypress.edu “This is a lucid and eloquent and consistently perceptive book. Exploring the vexed relationship between memory and forgetting, Bernard-Donals makes a powerfully persuasive case that the memory texts of the Holocaust are not—and cannot ever be—entirely credible…” — Paul Eisenstein, author of Traumatic Encounters: Holocaust Representation and the Hegelian Subject Michael Bernard-Donals is Nancy Hoefs Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has written and edited several books, including (with Richard Glejzer) Between Witness and Testimony:The Holocaust and the Limits of Representation, also published by SUNY Press, and An Introduction to Holocaust Studies. JANuARy • 208 pp • 8 b/w photographs $60.00 jacketed hc 978-0-7914-7671-0 Is the Shoah a unique event or just one of the many genocides that have occurred (and continue to occur) in modern history? In The Democratic Ideal and the Shoah, Shmuel Trigano begins with the hypothesis that the Shoah must be understood in both universal and singular terms: insofar as it addresses the meaning and value of modernity, it is solely because the singular experience of the Jews is at its center. Drawing on history, political philosophy, hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis, Trigano argues that the attitude of democracy towards the Jews is key to understanding the very nature of democracy and the democratic ideal, and he postulates that the anti-Semitism that has haunted modern times is the same spectre that has haunted democracy throughout history in the form of nationalism, totalitarianism, and now multiculturalism. Can democratic theory rid itself of the dilemma between universality and particularity, between collectivity and individuality? This is the ultimate question addressed by this book. Shmuel Trigano is Professor of Sociology at the Université of Paris X Nanterre. He is the author of many books, including L’avenir des Juifs de France and Les Frontières d’Auschwitz: Les ravages du devoir de mémoire. This is the first of his works to be translated into English. A volume in the SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Thought Richard A. Cohen, editor MAy • 352 pp $85.00 jacketed hc 978-1-4384-2629-7 54 e directtext dt P e http://www.sunypress.edu http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61810 http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61733
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