Towards an Affective Ludo-ethics of Re-enactment: Witnessing (in) Attentat 1942

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsArleen IonescuArleen Ionescu is Tenured Professor of English Literature and Critical Theory at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her major research interests are in the fields of Modernist prose, Critical Theory, Memory Studies, Holocaust and Trauma Studies. Her work on James Joyce and related aspects of Modernism, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Samuel Beckett as well as on various aspects of historical trauma has appeared in James Joyce Quarterly, Journal of Modern Literature, Joyce Studies Annual, Memory Studies, Oxford Literary Review, Paragraph, Parallax, Partial Answers, SLOVO, and Style, among others. She is joint Editor-in-Chief of Word and Text – A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics. Her books include Romanian Joyce: From Hostility to Hospitality (Peter Lang, 2014), The Memorial Ethics of Libeskind’s Berlin Jewish Museum (Palgrave, 2017) and, co-edited with Maria Margaroni, Arts of Healing: Cultural Narratives of Trauma (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2020). Email: anionescu@sjtu.edu.cnNotes1 Cowley, “Introduction,” xvii.2 See, for instance, LaCapra, “Trauma, Absence, Loss,” 723.3 Rothberg, The Implicated Subject, 1.4 Agnew, “An Introduction,” 327.5 Agnew, “History’s Affective Turn,” 300.6 Erickson, “The Real Movie,” 108.7 Laqueur, “The Holocaust Museum,” 31.8 Perry, “The Holocaust Is Present,” 173.9 See LaCapra’s development in Writing History, Writing Trauma, 91–94.10 Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” 34; also 70, 73.11 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 362.12 Ionescu, Memorial Ethics, 49.13 Zimmerman, “Manifesto for a Ludic Century,” 19, 20.14 See, among others, Young, “The Holocaust as Vicarious Past;” Mandel, “The Story of My Death;” Loman, “The Canonization of Maus.”15 Hirsch, Family Frames, 13.16 Chapman and Linderoth, “Exploring the Limits of Play,” 149.17 Feinstein, “Pushing the Limits of Artistic Representation,” 726.18 See the artist’s webpage on the Tate’s website at https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/zbigniew-libera-13716.19 Kleeblatt (ed.), Mirroring Evil.20 van Alphen, “Playing the Holocaust,” 77. See also Janisz, “Atrocity and Aesthetics;” Feinstein, “Zbigniew Libera’s Lego Concentration Camp;” Young, The Stages of Memory, 147–148.21 Ionescu, Memorial Ethics, 164.22 Chapman, Digital Games as History, 222.23 Anable, Playing with Feelings, xii.24 Pötzsch, “Selective Realism.”25 McKeand, “Videogames’ Portrayal of the Holocaust…”26 Ibid. See also Pfister, “‘Of Monsters and Men’” for a discussion of the ‘naive distinction between “evil” Nazis and normal German soldiers’ in Call of Duty: WWII.27 Rohrbough, “Racist Computer Games.” See also “Video Game Uncovered.”28 See the list of prohibited games in ‘Racist Groups Use Computer Gaming to Promote Hate’.29 Galloway, “Social Realism in Gaming.”30 Waxman, “Video Games May Be Key to Keeping World War II Memory Alive.”31 See Gardner, “Does a VR Auschwitz Simulation Cross an Ethical Line?;” de Jong, “Witness Auschwitz?;” and, more generally, Lebovic, “The ‘Virtual’ Future of Holocaust Education…”32 See Webster, “‘Imagination Is the Only Escape’…;” Parker, “Inside Controversial Game.”33 Kansteiner, “Transnational Holocaust Memory,” 313.34 Frasca, “Ephemeral Games,” 181 and 177.35 Langer, Admitting the Holocaust, 80.36 Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 2430–2456. See also Spargo, “Sophie’s Choice,” 153; Tessman, Moral Failure, 162.37 Rothberg, The Implicated Subject, 38.38 Langer, Versions of Survival, 72.39 See Sicart, Beyond Choices, especially “Defining Ethical Gameplay,” 5–25. Sicart had already explored the notion and experience of ‘ethical gameplay’ in The Ethics of Computer Games and “Digital Games as Ethical Technologies,” the latter offering the most concise definition: ‘By ethical gameplay I am referring to the experience of a game by an agent that takes choices based on moral principles, rather than instrumental ones.’ (105).40 Šisler, “Attentat 1942.”41 See Šisler, “Contested Memories of War…;” Pötzsch and Šisler, “Playing Cultural Memory.”42 See Anable, Playing with Feelings, 131–134.43 Šisler, “Attentat 1942.”44 Ibid.45 Laub, “Bearing Witness,” in Felman and Laub, Testimonies, 71.46 Lothe, Suleiman and Phelan, “Introduction,” 3.47 Felman and Laub, “Forward,” in Testimony, xiv.48 Laub, “An Event Without a Witness,” 75.49 Ibid., 76.50 Ibid., 76.51 Trezise, Witnessing Witnessing, 9.52 For this notion, see Hirsch, Family Frames; Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory; Schwab, Haunting Legacies, passim.53 Richardson and Schankweiler, “Introduction,” 237.54 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience; LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust.55 Goldberg, Trauma in First Person, 39.56 Laub, “An Event Without a Witness,” 78–79.57 Charles Games, Attentat 1942 (Prague: Charles University, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2017), from which all subsequent quotations are also derived.58 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 92, 91.59 For a synthesis of these debates, see Ionescu, “Forgiving as Self-Healing?”60 See Goldberg, “An Interview with Professor Dominick LaCapra.”61 Caruth, “A Record That Has Yet to Be Made,” 49.62 Sirlin, William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, 16.63 Ibid., 16.