Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century (review)

Abstract

Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and Twentieth Century, by Moishe Posrone and Eric Santner. Chicago and London. University of Chicago Press, 2003. 272 pp. $25.00. Catastrophe and Meaning an exceptionally important and useful compilation of essays that revisit and sometimes rethink critical issues connected with our understanding of Holocaust and German History. It result of November 1998 conference at University of Chicago that focused on four central debates regarding scholarly approaches to Holocaust. The text reflects this fourfold division: History, Antisemitism and Holocaust; The Holocaust and Twentieth Century; Annihilation, Victimhood, Identity; and Trauma and Limits of Representation. Postone and Santner's introduction makes it clear that while focus of book Holocaust, meaning of Jewish destruction has wide implications for understanding later acts of genocide. The authors' introduction suggests these events asthe'birth' of this mutation of human possibilities, and of its relation to general historical processes in twentieth century (p. 7). Saul Friedlander and Shulamit Volkov deal with aspects of implementation of Final Solution. Friedlander focuses on what he calls redemptive anti-Semitism (as) . . . most radical form of anti-Jewish hatred (p. 18), which had apocalyptical dimensions. This becomes point of departure for convergence theory about Holocaust. Volkov likewise suggests that Nazi policy is tangled web of interaction between ideology and praxis (p. 42). Friedlander disputes idea that Nazis were modern and had Utopian goals. Rather, he prefers to refer to specificity of Nazi laws which separated Aryans and Jews as an obsession which indicative that the Jewish issue was its ideological core (p. 21). Anson Rabinbach's focus rethinking of Zygmunr Baumans thesis about Holocaust and modernity. The author sees more an era that witnessed substitution of administrative regularity for moral responsibility. Rabinbach asks question of why so many German Jewish intellectuals defended thesis while rejecting more German-centered view of Nazism as deviation from western traditions. Hannah Arendt, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Gunther Anders, and Jean Amery, it pointed our, all concurred that Auschwitz was 'caesura' in civilization (p. 58), rather than something inherent in modernity itself. Rabinbach concludes that arguing for uniqueness of Holocaust implies certain normalcy to other genocides, which suggests that full understanding of Holocaust may be found only by analyzing other genocides. Dan Diner and Moishe Postone continue on course that suggests need to understand context of German history and exceptional period in which it occurred. Diner notes that Nazi anti-Bolshevism was different from other types of anti-communist ideology because it became connected with race. The practical aspects of mass murder of Jews, linked to German plans for territorial expansion as well as decision to implement T-4euthanasia program, may be subsumed under general idea of nation building rather than particular antisemitic policy directed only against Jews. Postone argues that modern atinsemitism did nor define Jews ultimately as an inferior race, rather as an antirace. For Postone, this antisemitism was particularly dangerous because it defined Jews by intangible concepts. Postone also suggests German antisemitism was involved with a biologization of capitalism, derived from an understanding of dispersed nature of Jews. The Nazi anti-capitalist revolt was therefore also revolt against perceived power of Jews and their invisibility. Omer Bartov's and Frank Trommler's articles deal with different forms of memory. Bartov indicates how different countries remembered World War I. …