Language:
English
Year of publication:
2009
Titel der Quelle:
History and Theory; Studies in the Philosophy of History
Angaben zur Quelle:
48,2 [Theme Issue 47] (2009) 25-53
Keywords:
Friedländer, Saul,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
Abstract:
Examines Saul Friedländer's "The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945" (2007) from the theoretical perspective of Hayden White's philosophy of history, as it was articulated in the latter's "Metahistory" and subsequent writings. White emphasizes that historical texts are first and foremost narrative constructs comparable, in some aspects, to narrative fiction. In his dialogue with Friedländer, White suggested that events like the Holocaust are most truthfully captured through a modernist aesthetic framework. Argues that Friedländer's book is a thoroughly modernist work of history. It is as much an aesthetic as an epistemiological achievement. Friedländer rejects the idea of giving a comprehensive explanation of the Holocaust; instead, he presents a "simulation of the 1940s" and entices the reader to consider the events from the viewpoint of the victims of the Holocaust, who had historical insight but could not grasp the reasons for their suffering. By displacing linear notions of time and space and subtly deconstructing conventional concepts of causality, Friedländer has invented a new type of historical prose that performs rather than analyzes the victims' point of view. His reflections on the role of Nazi antisemitism as a cause of the Final Solution reveal much ambivalence. Friedländer is the first to present the perspective of the victims in an academic work; his book is path-breaking and makes it impossible to return to the historiographical status quo ante.
DOI:
10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00497.x
URL:
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