Language:
English
Year of publication:
2001
Titel der Quelle:
In Times of Crisis
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2001) 122-136
Keywords:
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Holocaust (Jewish theology)
Abstract:
Analyzes the tremendous intellectual and emotional impact, especially on American Jews, of Arendt's book, which was an attempt to explore the meaning of the deadly phenomenon of totalitarianism. Arendt situated the Jews at the storm center of events and attempted to grasp antisemitism at its deadliest level. Notes the book's inadequacies and weaknesses, including regarding the concept of totalitarianism. Stresses that Nazism and Auschwitz, and not the Gulag, drove Arendt's analysis. She does not, however, hint at the German "Sonderweg"; instead she universalizes totalitarianism, which she associates not with German or European culture, but with bourgeois mass society. Before the term "Holocaust" was common, the book formulated a (subsequently highly controversial) discourse of evil that is problematic, including in relation to Eurocentricism and other genocides. Concludes that, although the effort to find a rational vocabulary and explanation of unprecedented evil was in many ways unsuccessful, Arendt's attempt was valid and fascinating.
Note:
Appeared previously in "New German Critique" 70 (1997).
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
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