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Culture after auschwitz and me me me

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Tryphena Absent

14:40 / 04.10.02

One of my modules has been cancelled and I have a choice of three more. Two of them don't interest me in the slightest, the other one is called Culture after Auschwitz. The module title itself appears flawed.
My first reason is that Auschwitz still exists, specifically the concentration camp, partly as a memorial to those who died there and as, if I'm to be honest, a tourist location of sorts.

My second reason is the sheer amount of massacre that continues to happen, the very idea that the concentration camps of Nazi Germany were a unique moment separated from all other events of state sanctioned murder gets to me. Armenia, Kurdistan, all those children the UK and US have killed through sanctions these things are in their own way this type of murder. Carefully planned, considered, ways to kill people with motives that those in power view as good.

My third reason is that the concept of separating time up from the killing of Jews, gypsies, communists and others in the camps and after the time that these camps were shut: does this work?

My fourth reason is rather more personal and involves Polish Catholic grandparents... I don't like the idea of the barbaric nature of the second world war suscribed to one particular and widely publicised piece of it. It seems that this module is doing exactly that.

So what do I do? If I raise these issues I feel that I'll be stirring up controversy and will they even be accepted as viable by my lecturer? If they aren't accepted I am going to be so angry I won't know how to react. There's a Jewish girl in my group and I get on with her quite well but I've got this fear that she just won't take on what I'm trying to say at all - like she'll feel that I'm insulting her culture through bringing up issues about the way that the holocaust is treated by the west. We have this attitude towards Judaism, the concentration camps, as if they're the worst thing in history but I just can't condone it anymore though those who would refuse ideology in all its forms bend to it more than anyone else.

I'm just screwed aren't I.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:11 / 04.10.02

OK- cards on the table here. I think the Holocaust WAS the worst act of humanity in the 20th Century... it was personal, one-on-one killing enacted through bureaucracy. Hiroshima sucked, but for the guys dropping the bombs, it was no worse than your average WW2 bomber pilot. Dehumanisation EVEN WHEN LOOKING AT INDIVIDUALS was what made the Holocaust quite so unprecedented.

However, I find the school of thought that says the Holocaust was, and always shall be, unique, fairly dangerous... A) it lessens the validity of lives taken in Bosnia or wherever else, and B) it stops us thinking "this MUST never happen again", and gets us thinking "this CAN never happen again". Therefore it sanitises the whole thing- makes it a part of history, never to be repeated, rather than an illustration of what the human race is capable of and should do its utmost to avoid.

My advice? Do the course. Argue. It's people not arguing that disarms the subject to the point where wankers like David Irving can deny the whole thing as a "subjective opinion of history"...

Matthew Fluxington

15:21 / 04.10.02

Janina, I very much doubt that the main point of this course is to hammer "The Holocaust Was The WORST THING EVER" into your head. In fact, the title of the course, "Culture After Auschwitz", suggests that it will deal with a lot of the things you're talking about. How the Holocaust has changed the way we look at other atrocities, how the Holocaust influenced those who have committed subsequent atrocities, how the cultures of different countries look at the Holocaust 60 years on.

Take the course. It sounds good.

15:26 / 04.10.02

I agree with stoatie - sounds like you have a lot of interesting, valid points to make right of the bat before we even get to the specifics of the course, - I'd say go for it. If you are still unsure, talk to your tutors raise the points you've raised here and see what they would recommend. Personally i think they'd love to have someone bring your enthusiasm to the course.

Matthew Fluxington

15:28 / 04.10.02

A bit of advice, though, Janina - if you do take the course, PLEASE wait til the right times to raise questions, and try to be as specific in your questioning as possible. If you walk in on the first day of class and launch into a rant like that, you stand a lesser chance of being taken entirely seriously. Be patient. I think there's a strong possibility that what you're saying will be addressed by the professor, so don't come out with all guns a-blazing, okay?

15:53 / 04.10.02

Take it if it interests you. I can only speak for myself, but I've found most professors enjoy a good argument (well, OK, SOME of them do).

Is this to be specifically relating to Jewish culture, European culture, world culture, what? Is it more focussed on literature and first-person accounts, or is it more media-related? Might it be you want to inquire about why the prof. isn't going into pre-WW2 holocausts, of which there are many? (Not just Armenian. The Native Americans tend to get overlooked quite a bit).

16:03 / 04.10.02

What's the class being taught as? What's the professor like? And what's on the reading list?

My hunch is to agree with Stoat - you can only do good for yourself and others by being there, learning, and coming at the problem (the Holocaust) from another angle.

I also empathize with you - my mother's family were German Catholics rooted in Czechoslovakia during the war. Some, including my grandfather, never made it out of the sanitariums. But, you know, pop history doesn't have much room for their stories... feh.

I'd also be curious about the way Auschwitz - or rather the moment of the Allies' discovery of Auschwitz - made future atrocities possible. Making the unthinkable thinkable. Would Idi Amin have been possible without the horrors of the camps?

autopilot disengaged

16:52 / 04.10.02

sounds like the course title's riffing on adorno's "to write poetry after aushwitz is barbaric." as such, could it possibly just be a jumping off point? ...the actual central thrust concerning the more general role of culture in the face (and aftermath) of historical atrocity?

also: bear in mind that adorno later made a rather less famous statement: "suffering has as much right to be expressed as a martyr has to cry out. so it may have been false to say that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible."

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

17:25 / 04.10.02

clicky
the place was closed last year, but an interesting side not to the idea of culture after WW2 in the area.

09:05 / 05.10.02

Where are you studying, Janina? & what discipline is this course organized under? Most of the Auschwitzy scholarship I'm familiar with is from the hardcore philosophy (Heidegger, Lyotard) & political theory (Agamben) ends of cult. studs. so that's what I'm going to assume you're talking about... let me know if I'm talking nonsense.

I share a department with Jewish Studies (here on Gauda Prime...) and it's amazing how, by osmosis, everyone in all the various 'centres for minority interests and groovy contemporary stuff' end up working on Auschwitz, at least to some extent. (The journal I work on is also working on a Call for Papers for an Auschwitz issue, by the way.)

Your first post sounds to me exactly the right headspace for a course with this title. Thinking around/after Auschwitz tends to focus very much on why/whether one can treat the Shoah* as a unique event/break in history or whether it should just be added to the long list of genocidal atrocities.

The space of the concentration camp is also - for obvious (refugees) and not-so-obvious reasons - getting a lot of attention in recent political philosophy/theories of democracy, particularly from Giorgio Agamben, who I assume you'll be reading till you turn blue and your head falls off if you do this course.

As for the goy thing, my mother is Polish Catholic, so I'm sure a bunch of my untermenschen relatives ended up somewhere-or-other. There's a difference, though, in the specificity of Nazi policies on Jews & other nondesireables, though I haven't studied that aspect of it - but that specificity is or should be one of the things that you encounter in the course of such a course.

Good luck!

*or whatever, I can never remember what 'Shoah' means but I've been warned off the word 'holocaust' by various people...

Tryphena Absent

14:42 / 06.10.02

Is this to be specifically relating to Jewish culture, European culture, world culture, what?

I'd like to answer this question, I've been trying to get hold of my lecturer this week but haven't been able to, the secretary's on leave so I can't get his timetable and he's never in his office when I go there. Office hours are Tuesday and Wednesday and I only knew my other module was cancelled on Thursday. I'm guessing effect on western culture specifically but I'm hoping for a lot of US to be thrown in there because I suspect the effect of ww2 was gigantic on the culture.

What's the class being taught as? What's the professor like? And what's on the reading list?

Well it's cultural studies with a philosophical fix. The professor's not all that bright to be perfectly honest and the course is generally ridiculously simple and it frustrates me a lot. He marks me down a lot of the time because I just stopped trying and churn out a load of shit in my essays that shouldn't be there. They don't give us good source material and don't give us the basis of where the material they do use comes from so they talk about Lyotard and I recognise it, or Pilger, Zizek, Visnijc (blah blah) no one else has a clue where it's coming from. Then they have the cheek to insult the Daily Mail.

Sounds like the course title's riffing on adorno's "to write poetry after aushwitz is barbaric."

Yes I thought so too... but as I was saying to my poor father the other day, it's ok to say that if you're Jewish and the war's just ended, 60 years later... not so good, not so common sensical, not so right. I imagine there will be a bit of Lyotard thrown in for good measure and a bit more name dropping and I'll have to read my arse off to get the basics they won't teach us and it'll make me cry with the frustration of my disagreement with the whole concept put forward.

The Apple-Picker

15:37 / 06.10.02

Janina, if you choose to take this course, here are two radio archives that you might want to hear. They could be relevant, and you might find them interesting. The shows have other acts to them, too, also interesting, but not having to do with the Holocaust.

P.S. You need to have RealPlayer to listen to them.

Before It Had a Name
October 26, 2001
Episode 197
Act One. Mr. Boder Vanishes. In 1946, a man named David Boder started to investigate the Holocaust before it was known as the Holocaust. He dragged a primitive recording device around Europe and gathered the first recorded testimonials of concentration camp survivors. But his research was largely ignored, and his recordings forgotten for decades. The tapes are broadcast for the first time nationally on tonight's show. Carl Marziali tells the story. (22 minutes). Listen to Boder's recordings, or read transcripts, at their official home on the web.

Fake I.D.
September 20, 2002
Episode 221
Prologue. Ira talks with Erin Einhorn, a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, who went to Poland to find the Catholic family that had sheltered and saved her mother from the concentration camps during World War II. She found that in Krakow where she was living, in a country whose Jewish populations had been vilified and then exterminated, Judaism was suddenly trendy. (6 minutes)
Act One. Pole Vault. Ira's conversation with Erin Einhorn continues. She talks about the possible reasons, 50 years after Auschwitz, 10,000 Polish hipsters will now show up to see a Klezmer music concert. (17
minutes)

16:36 / 06.10.02

Hmmm, you may want to back your arguments up with this book. I still don't understand what a. makes Nazi atrocities so special, b. makes people think only Jewish people were affected and c. how this sort of course can go on in the light of what's happening in Palestine. (Sorry, did I say Palestine? I mean that bit of Israel which is full of smelly Ayrabs.) So I agree with what you say in your first post totally. However, I totally second the warning about going off all guns blazing. It may alienate your tutor and / or lead to accusations of antisemitism on your part.

Also you might wanna check out this:

"Martin Amis' new book Korba the Dread, concerns 'the failure of Western intellectuals to condemn the grotesque horrors perpetrated in the USSR even as they were happening, and their reluctance to fully repudiate some of their communist sympathies since,'" amazingcriswell writes. "The subtitle of Amis' book is 'Laughter and the Twenty Million,' and it raises a serious point. Why is the Holocaust considered the 'great tragedy' of the 20th century, while the bloody history of the USSR is met with shrugs or laughter? With the exception of Mel Brooks and the occasional 'Hogans Heroes' re-run, Nazi Germany is taken deadly seriously."

This quote is from here, near the bottom of the page. If lefties were capable of objectivity this issue would have been faced years ago.

Tryphena Absent

12:55 / 07.10.02

Thanks very much. Ah shite I think he's going to make us watch 'Schindler's List'. Fine until they get Neeson to whine 'I could have saved more' in that typical Spielbergian blamefest kinda way.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

13:38 / 07.10.02

I believe that Adorno actually said that writing lyric poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric. That's a rather different statement about what is and is not appropriate and tenable in the light of the Nazi Holocaust. It also occurrs to me that this claim is situated within the Frankfurt School's position on 'Culture' as a semi-separate entity from society, which looks a little dated now. You're probably going to have a lot of quarrels with the course title if you take it straight on.

As Deva said, I guess it depends partly what your notional discipline is, and how much leeway you have where you go with this.

Just as a random and distantly related madness, Yitzak Shamir was part of a Jewish delegation from Palestine in '42 to Damascus, then under the Vichy French, asking the Germans for aid in throwing off the British Colonial Oppressor.

The Germans must have been utterly bewildered. (Found in Hobsbawn's Age of Extremes)

08:27 / 08.10.02

If lefties were capable of objectivity this issue would have been faced years ago.

Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 1958 I believe.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

11:29 / 08.10.02

'If lefties were capable of objectivity'?

'Cos, yeah, you know, the right is well known for objective self-assessment and sticking to its own basic policies.

What grade A poppycock. Bill, what the hell are you on about?

11:35 / 08.10.02

And, as well as Arendt, Doris Lessing's 60s/70s novels, of course. I shouldn't wonder if Adorno hadn't had a thing or two to say about Stalin, as well.

But I'm sure Martin Amis is far more interesting & objective than any of the above.

Tryphena Absent

15:02 / 08.10.02

This is what Adorno says:

'Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today'.
Adorno, Prisms, 1981

Also I would like to say, Nick, that the right may be bad at objectivity and self assessment but that does not mean the left does not share the same fault.

15:29 / 08.10.02

What grade A poppycock. Bill, what the hell are you on about?

Oh sorry, I just thought 20 million excruciating deaths in the name of leftie-oid utopia was worth mentioning. I was obviously hopelessly misguided.

16:11 / 08.10.02

Bill, I'm sure we all agree on the seriousness of the tragedies involved. I think that Nick might be questioning your implication that the left's differing attitudes toward the holocaust and the USSR are symptomatic of a more general lack of objectivity.

I've heard this sort of thing said before, but I'd be interested in seeing it argued.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

05:51 / 09.10.02

I hate to a) throw fuel on the fire and b) give any credence to Julie "fucking" Burchill, but I did like a line of hers once which said something to the effect that Communism killed shitloads of people when it went wrong, whereas Nazism killed shitloads of people when it was working properly...

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:58 / 09.10.02

Well, yeah, Stoatie, but they're still *just as dead*...

Hang on....didn't I see this "Stalin was a bit of a twart" propaganda in the mouth of running dog Martin Amis, lately? What, so it's fashionable to suggest that Stalin wasn't all hugs and puppies all of a sudden? That's, like, political correctness gone sane...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:02 / 09.10.02

Of course they are, Haus... but then again, so are people killed by cars, cancer, giant squid, or what have you.

I wasn't justifying Stalin... just trying to make the point that you can't really deride the left OR the right in terms of casualty figures... otherwise it becomes a "they/we scored/lost more than we/they did- BASTARDS!" kind of argument and loses any point.

I mean, if some radical Buddhists suddenly killed, I dunno, 7 million people, would we say "Buddhism is worse than fascism?" (If the answer wasn't obvious, of course- reductio ad absurdum and all that).

All I really meant to say by my reference to (God, I have to admit to this again?) Burchill was that, as this seemed to be degenerating into a "lefties- uncoordinated", "righties- murderers" debate, which, while it's probably true, isn't much fun as an argument, we seemed to have lost track of what we were actually talking about.

Even when I was a communist, I'd never have advocated what Stalin did. And when I was a Xtian, I'd have drawn the line at burning witches/books/records- most stuff, really.

Life versus ideology- hmmm. Another thread needed, probably.

10:08 / 09.10.02

The thing to remember is that wilst its all well and good to go on the course and argue, it's a safe bet that the lecturer will just get pissed off with you. Find out what the attendance requirements are (probably 75%) and go to all the lessons at the start and then just go and get a beer (for the last 25%).

Keep your head down and keep moving. Don't argue with 'em you'll just get a shitty grade.

Tryphena Absent

15:19 / 09.10.02

Actually I went to see my lecturer and had a chat with him yesterday. Nice guy, reads Bruce Sterling, didn't mind me hassling him about the Anne Rice books that live in his office either. Sorry - off topic - back to the point... I raised my millions of issues with him and he told me that he wished I'd been in the class on Monday morning. Apparently he wants me to incite argument and looked quite stunned that I actually hold these opinions. That would be something to do with the fact that I usually giggle with my friends at the back of the room while he's trying to tell us about Donna Haraway.

The beer sounds good though - want one now - I spent too much money on Grant Morrison today (yeah,you people finally caught me in your web of graphicness)and now I have to dull my money pangs.

16:30 / 09.10.02

I think that Nick might be questioning your implication that the left's differing attitudes toward the holocaust and the USSR are symptomatic of a more general lack of objectivity.

I've heard this sort of thing said before, but I'd be interested in seeing it argued.

I think Nick illustrates the point perfectly well in his flagrantly unscientific response to my post. I criticise the left and am accused of talking cock. Though of course I could go on to mention little things like the Sokal hoax. Or the fact that Deva said:

Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 1958 I believe.

I believe one of the most common criticisisms of which is that it focusses primarily on Nazi stuff and far less on the Stalin side of the equation, so no, I don't think that Arendt can be described as facing up to the slaughter of 20,000,000 people. On the contrary, her bias illustrates my point. However in all fairness Deva, you also said:

And, as well as Arendt, Doris Lessing's 60s/70s novels, of course.

As I am unfamiliar with those so I'll take the hit there. But as for:

But I'm sure Martin Amis is far more interesting & objective than any of the above.

Did I say he was? Must you put words into my mouth?

Thanks for that Burchill quote, Chairman. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck, it comes to summat when that woman has though about something in more depth than some of us have.

Glad to hear things have improved, Janina!

We're The Great Old Ones Now

18:00 / 09.10.02

I think Nick illustrates the point perfectly well in his flagrantly unscientific response to my post. I criticise the left and am accused of talking cock.

As opposed to the immensely scientific generalisation 'lefties', and the claim that because some reject like Arthur Scargill can't get his head around Stalin's evil, 'The Left' - some monolithic fiction you see skulking around the world of politics - is devoid of objectivity. And 'The Left' is more devoid of objectivity in this respect than everyone else in the world? Hardly. All political groups spend vast amounts of energy not looking at their bad moments. However, it does bear pointing out that Stalinism is no more Marxist or even Leftist than 'National Socialism'. A far more telling criticism of many left thinkers and politicians is that they didn't notice that, got taken in, and have never owned up - and some of them still try to uphold Uncle Joe.

Incidentally, your 20 million figure has not been established. Estimates vary from as many as 40 million to as few as five hundred thousand. I mention this in the interests of academic candour.

You're getting accused of talking poppycock because you're talking poppycock.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

18:42 / 09.10.02

You know what'd be interesting? For everyone to argue this at Auschwitz, or one of the other camps. Inside the camps, I mean.

Let me explain. I'm not trying to be a smartass, or insult anyone here. After I graduated, I went to parts of Germany and Austria for a couple weeks, and I got to spend a few hours walking around the camp at Dachau. It's a very sobering experience, I can tell you.

I was talking with my World History teacher about the S.S., my arguments naturally dressed in all the glamorous bullshit that everyone dresses their arguments in to look pretty, when I looked over at a placard with a picture of a room filled waist high with bodies. That was pretty shocking. Then I realized the room in the picture was the room I was currently standing in. That feeling followed me around for weeks.

The feeling that you can't help getting there when you're faced with the realness of it all dissolves any and all desire for rethoric and glamour in your speech. Everything gets boiled away and you can't dress anything up pretty. It has a huge effect on everything you do, everything you say...

Am I making sense? It's so hard to describe. When you're there, you're forced to look at how you really feel about the holocaust. No, better yet, you get such a good look at it, you can't help but see it for what it was, and after that you can't use it as a tool in an argument or anything else anymore. Not that I'm accusing anyone here of doing that. I'm just trying to provide an example of the effect the place has on you. It's like you suddenly feel that everything you say or do is real, so it damn well better be good.

Ah, crap. I can't explain it properly. But I still think it'd be interesting.

22:52 / 09.10.02

Me: But I'm sure Martin Amis is far more interesting & objective than any of the above.

Bill: Did I say he was? Must you put words into my mouth?

You said:

Martin Amis' new book Korba the Dread, concerns 'the failure of Western intellectuals to condemn the grotesque horrors perpetrated in the USSR even as they were happening

[snip since people can look up the page & see the whole context]

If lefties were capable of objectivity this issue would have been faced years ago.

I just pointed out that in 1958 Hannah Arendt, a leftie, wrote a book about Hitler and Stalin - which may have focussed primarily on Hitler, but as I think she states this is partly because Stalin was better at destroying records: she certainly didn't fail to condemn Stalin - and that Doris Lessing's Children of Violence and later novels focus on the problems the Western Left had with disowning Stalin. Your post, as I read it, implied that Martin Amis was the first (Western) person ever to point out that Stalin killed a bunch of people and that this was totalitarian & problematic along much the same lines as Hitler. Given that Arendt pointed the Hitler/Stalin parallel out in 1958, and Lessing wrote tons of agonised Western hand-wringing novels about it shortly afterwards, I don't think my point is unjustified.

22:55 / 09.10.02

And Jonny O: interesting & important points, thanks. And Janina, I'm glad you've discovered - and posted - that not everyone in tertiary education is a complete fuckwit.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:28 / 10.10.02

Where the hell did I get the 'lyric' thing from? Must find my old notes. There's definitely something about that. It's like Adorno's work on Jazz - which I found utterly incomprehensible, because he kept saying it was a compromise music, and a slave. And I was like, uh, white guy with no clue... And then I found out he was talking about insipid white 'Radio Jazz', apparently, and not bothering to make the distinction.

10:04 / 10.10.02

To whomever brought it up - 'Shoah' is Hebrew for a whirlwind or big storm. It is used as a proper name for the events in WW2, while "holocaust" has a broader meaning in English and is applied to multiple contexts.

As someone from the Soviet Union with a penchant for dredging through the darkest aspects of its history, I have to point out that the Soviet Union didn't really "go wrong" under Stalin; the mechanisms that created the NKVD and the Gulag were established by Lenin, and staged trials and summary executions started before the Red and the White ended. While we tend to dwell up the actors..the torturers and murderers - Abakumov, Beria, Yagoda - you have to understand that the treatment of those twenty-million-plus was shaped within legal precedent set in place by Lenin, Trotsky, and Zinoviev, and performed by the litigatory mouthpieces Krylenko and Vyshinsky, starting with the Revtribunals of 1919-20, through the Church Trials, the SR and Promparty trials (for quick reference, Solezhinitsyn summarizes these in ch8-10 of Gulag vol 1).
Millions were tried and executed long before Stalin came into power, to say nothing of the drumhead justice handed out to uncounted so-called "kulaks" during the Red and the White.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:34 / 10.10.02

Well, yeah - it was the Bolsheviks who betrayed the left, as any fule kno.

Thought I should draw your attention to this poor neglected thread about the Amis book...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:40 / 10.10.02

Monkey- yup, you do indeed know a good deal more about this than me (basically, my main knowledge of Russian history comes from what I was told in the Lenin museum in Moscow in '89, so is probably horribly flawed...)
Anyway, I always thought Lenin had planned to disband his government after a certain amount of time, when the reforms it had made were no longer needed- then he died and it all went to shit. But, as I said, I am fully prepared to admit that I'm wrong on that one.

Point being, though (and if I wasn't so pissed I'd start a Head Shop thread about it now... probably tomorrow, though, realistically) that the actual ideology of Communism doesn't (in my reading) require the persecution/expulsion/death of a section of the population. Whereas fascism generally does.

Communism, to my mind, is like Christianity in that it's a good idea, but tends to fail in practise. Fascism, on the other hand, is a bad idea, but tends to work in practise. Which says something deeply unpleasant about the nature of humanity.

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