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

Tom Vanassche

Published by De Gruyter 2023

Pathos and Anti-Pathos

Ruptured Affections in the Writing of the Shoah

Tom Vanassche

Volume 36 in the series Media and Cultural Memory

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110758580

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Tom Vanassche, RWTH Aachen / Ghent, Belgium.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
List of abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	XI
A note on translations and transliterations Publicly Available Download PDF	XIII
Introduction: Setting the stage
1 The pathos of anti-pathos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 Describing emotions: Metaphorical oppositions and their ambiguities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	50
Part One: Pathos and anti-pathos and the ‘risks’ of encyclopaedic and documentary fiction
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
3 W. G. Sebald: Melancholia, nostalgia and the pathos of empathy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
4 Dieter Schlesak: The pathos of anti-pathos and the pathos of the ‘real’ in testimony and in the documentary tradition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Part Two: The survivors’ pathos of anti-pathos: Autobiography and historiography
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
5 Ruth Klüger: An (ant)agonistic pathos of anti-pathos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	236
6 Raul Hilberg: The historian’s affective self-control Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	284
In lieu of a conclusion. Summary and further questions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	330
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	343
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	373

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars in the fields of German literature, comparative literature, memory studies, Jewish studies
Pages
- Front matter: 12
- Main content: 375
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 2
Keywords: Shoah; affect studies; pathos of antipathos

eBook

Published: December 31, 2022
ISBN: 9783110758580

Hardcover

Published: December 31, 2022
ISBN: 9783110757743