Pathos and Anti-Pathos : Ruptured Affections in the Writing of the Shoah / Tom Vanassche

Englisch

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, 2022

©2023

1 Online-Ressource (XII, 375 p.) : Illustrationen

In English

Erscheint auch als (print) : ISBN 9783110757743

Erscheint auch als: Druck-Ausgabe- Vanassche, Tom *1990-*: Pathos and Anti-Pathos. - Berlin : De Gruyter, 2023. - XII, 375 Seiten

Dissertation, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg i. Br., 2021

978-3-11-075858-0

978-3-11-075870-2 : EPUB

Weitere Ausgaben: 978-3-11-075774-3 (Druckausgabe) : print

DOI: 10.1515/9783110758580

Frontmatter

Acknowledgements

Contents

List of abbreviations

A note on translations and transliterations

Introduction: Setting the stage

1 The pathos of anti-pathos

2 Describing emotions: Metaphorical oppositions and their ambiguities

Part One: Pathos and anti-pathos and the ‘risks’ of encyclopaedic and documentary fiction

Introduction

3 W. G. Sebald: Melancholia, nostalgia and the pathos of empathy

4 Dieter Schlesak: The pathos of anti-pathos and the pathos of the ‘real’ in testimony and in the documentary tradition

Part Two: The survivors’ pathos of anti-pathos: Autobiography and historiography

Introduction

5 Ruth Klüger: An (ant)agonistic pathos of anti-pathos

6 Raul Hilberg: The historian’s affective self-control

In lieu of a conclusion. Summary and further questions

Bibliography

Index

*Sebald, W. G. *1944-2001* / Schlesak, Dieter *1934-2019* / Klüger, Ruth *1931-2020* / Hilberg, Raul *1926-2007* / Judenvernichtung

*SOCIAL SCIENCE / General ; Shoah ; affect studies ; pathos of antipathos

Dewey Dezimal-Klassifikation: 833.91409358405318

bisacsh: SOC000000

Scholarship often presumes that texts written about the Shoah, either by those directly involved in it or those writing its history, must always bear witness to the affective aftermath of the event, the lingering emotional effects of suffering. Drawing on the History of Emotions and on trauma theory, this monograph offers a critical study of the ambivalent attributions and expressions of emotion and “emotionlessness” in the literature and historiography of the Shoah. It addresses three phenomena: the metaphorical discourses by which emotionality and the purported lack thereof are attributed to victims and to perpetrators; the rhetoric of affective self-control and of affective distancing in fiction, testimony and historiography; and the poetics of empathy and the status of emotionality in discourses on the Shoah. Through a close analysis of a broad corpus centred around the work of W. G. Sebald, Dieter Schlesak, Ruth Klüger and Raul Hilberg, the book critically contextualises emotionality and its attributions in the post-war era, when a scepticism of pathos coincided with demands for factual rigidity. Ultimately, it invites the reader to reflect on their own affective stances towards history and its commemoration in the twenty-first century

 

Issued also in print

Elektronische Ressource - Nutzung mit Bibliotheksausweis der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

BIBTEX - ENDNOTE - RIS