1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910461003803321

Autore

Loew Camila

Titolo

The memory of pain [[electronic resource] ] : women's testimonies of the Holocaust / / Camila Loew

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Amsterdam, : Rodopi, 2011

ISBN

1-283-36632-0

9786613366320

94-012-0706-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (247 p.)

Collana

Value inquiry book series. Holocaust and genocide studies ; ; v. 237

Disciplina

940.53/18

940.5318

Soggetti

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) - Psychological aspects

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Preliminary Material -- CENTURY OF EXTREMES, CENTURY OF TESTIMONY -- CHARLOTTE DELBO: THE SPECTACLE OF HURT MEMORY -- MARGARETE BUBER-NEUMANN: WITNESS TO THE CENTURY -- RUTH KLÜGER: EMBRACING EXCLUSION -- MARGUERITE DURAS: WITNESS TO THE WITNESS -- CONCLUSION -- WORKS CITED -- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -- INDEX -- VIBS.

Sommario/riassunto

In this book, Camila Loew analyzes four women’s testimonial literary writings on the Holocaust to examine and question some of the tenets of the fields of Holocaust studies, gender studies, and testimony. Through a close reading of the works of Charlotte Delbo, Margarete Buber-Neumann, Ruth Klüger, and Marguerite Duras, Loew foregrounds these authors’ search for a written form to engage with their experiences of the extreme. Although each chapter contains its individual focus and features, the book possesses a unity in intention, concerns, and consequences. In the theoretical introduction that unites the four chapters, Loew eschews essentialism and revises the emergence of the field of Women and Holocaust studies from the early 1980's on, and signals some of its shortcomings. In response, and in



accordance with a recent turn in various disciplines of the Humanities, Loew highlights the ethical dimension of testimony and its responsible commitment to the other. In dealing with the texts as literary testimonies—a complex genre, between literature and history—, testimony is freed from the obligation to respond to the requirements of factual truth, and becomes a privileged form to voice the traumatic event, and to symbolically explore the role of excess.