LaCapra Holocaust Testimonies

8/3/2019 LaCapra Holocaust Testimonies

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PARALLAX RE-VISIONS OF CULTUREAND SOCIETY

S te ph en G . N ic ho ls , G e ra ld P rin ce , a nd w e nd y S te in er ,SERIES EDITORS

W r itin g H i sto ry ,W r itin g T raum a

Domin ic k L aC a pr a

The Johns Hopkins University PressBa l timo re a n d London


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Ho lo c au st T e st imon ie sAttending to the Victim's Voice

The interest in testimonies has been on the risein the course ofthe lasttwenty years or so. Claude Lanzmann's Shoah of 1985 was not only asignificant film; it alsoheralded the turn to survivor videos, a turn thathelps to place Lanzmann's film in a broader context and enables amore informed and critical response to it, notably with reference toproblems of interviewing and representation. 1The interviewer in survivor testimonies isin a position comparable

to that of the oral historian, and one important role for testimonies isto serve as a supplement to more standard documentary sources inhistory. But they may at times be oflimited value when used narrowlyto derive facts about events in the past. Historians who see testimoniesas sources of facts or information about the past are justifiably con-cerned about their reliability.Lessjustifiably, they areat times prone todismiss an interest in them. The importance of testimonies becomesmore apparent when they are related to the way they provide some-thing other than purely documentary knowledge. Testimonies are sig-nificant in the attempt to understand experience and its aftermath,

I. O n t his p ro ble m, s ee m y H i st or y a nd M em or y a ft er A u sc hw it z ( It ha c a: C o rn e ll U n i-ve r si ty P ress , 1998), chap. 4. '

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Ho loca u st Te s timoni e sincluding the role ofmemory and its lapses,in coming to terms with-or denying and repressing-the past. Moreover, the interviewer in anexchange with the survivor or witness generally does not seek purelydocumentary knowledge of the past. His or her manifest implicationin an affectivelycharged relationship to the survivor orwitness and thespecial, stressfuldemands this relationship places on inquiry may havemore general implications for historical research, especially with re-spect to highly sensitive, emotionally laden, and evaluatively signifi-cant issues-issues quite prominent in (but ofcourse not confined to)Holocaust studies. One issue that israised in accentuated form bythestudy ofsurvivor videos ishow to represent and, more generally, cometo terms with affect in those who have been victimized and trau-matized by their experiences, a problem that involves the tense rela-tion between procedures of objective reconstruction of the past andempathic response, especially in the case of victims and survivors.The psychoanalyst and interviewer for the YaleFortunoff collec-tion of survivor videos, Dori Laub, tells the following story:Awoman in her late sixtieswasnarrating herAuschwitz experienceto interviewersfrom theVideo Archivefor Holocaust Testimoniesat Yale., .. She was relating her memories as an eyewitnessof theAuschwitz uprising; a sudden intensity, passion and color wereinfused into the narrative. Shewasfullythere. "Al l ofa sudden," shesaid, "we saw four chimneys going up in flames,exploding. Theflamesshot into the sky,peoplewererunning. Itwas unbelievable."There was a silence in the room, a fixedsilence against which thewoman's words reverberated loudly, as though carrying along anecho of thejubilant sounds exploding from behind barbedwires,astampede of people breaking loose, screams, shots, battle cries,explosions.'

Laub continues:Manymonths later,a conferenceof historians, psychoanalysts,andartists, gathered to reflect o n the relation ofeducation to the Holo-

2. S ho sh an a F el ma n a nd D o ri L au b, M . D. , T e st imo n y: C r is e s o /W i tn e ss i ng i n L i te r at u re ,P s y ch o an a ly s is , a n d H i st o ry (New York : Rou t ledge , 1 99 2 ), 5 9 .


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WRITI:t:


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WRITING HISTORY, WRITING TRAUMA

prepared-for which one did not have, in Freud's term, Angstbereit-scha f t (the readiness to feel anxiety). Traumatic Dasein haunts or pos-sessesthe self, isacted out or compulsively repeated, and may not beadequately symbolized or accessible in language, at least in any criti-cally mediated, controlled, self-reflexivemanner. Words may be ut-tered but seem to repeat what was said then and function as speechacts wherein speech itself is possessed or haunted by the past andacts asa reenactment or an acting out. When the past becomes acces-sible to recall in memory, and when language functions to providesome measure of conscious control, critical distance, and perspective,one has begun the arduous process of working over and through thetrauma in a fashion that may never bring full transcendence of actingout (or being haunted by revenants and reliving the past in its shatter-ing intensity) but which may enable processes ofjudgment and at Ieastlimited liability and ethically responsible agency. These processes arecrucial for laying ghosts to rest, distancing oneself from hauntingrevenants, renewing an interest in life, and being able to engagemem-ory in more critically tested senses.In memory asan aspect ofworking through the past, one isboth

back there and here at the same time, and one isable to distinguishbetween (not dichotomize) the two. In other words, one remembers-perhaps to some extent still compulsively reliving or being possessedby-what happened then without losing a sense ofexisting and actingnow. This duality (or double inscription) of being is essential formemory asa component of working over and through problems. Atleast in one operative dimension of the self, one can sayto oneself or toothers: "I remember what it was like back then, but I am here now,.and there isa difference between the two." This isnot moralistically toblamesomeone tragically possessedby the past and reliving its suffer-ing to such an extent that present lifeand the assumption of its respon-sibilities become impossible. Nor is it to assert the possibility of totalmastery or full dialectical overcoming of the past in a redemptive nar-rative or a speculative Aufhebung and Versohnung-a stereotypicallyHegelian overcoming and reconciliation-wherein all wounds arehealed without leaving scars and full ego identity is achieved. Indeed,

Ho lo caust T e s timon i esseverelytraumatized people may have different dimensions of the selfengaged in acting out, working over, and working through which maynot, to a greater or lesser extent, effectively communicate with oneanother. The process of working over and through the past is i tselfrepeated and subject to remission, but it counteracts the compulsivelyrepetitive, full reliving of the traumatizing past and the feeling thatone is simply back there in which "there" involves an experientialidentity between here and there, now and then. It also enables ethi-cally responsible behavior, including consideration for others, whichmay not be available to someone insofar ashe orshe isin an impossiblesituation (aswere certain inmates of concentration and death camps)or compulsively reliving a traumatic past. Moreover, it is conceivablethat inworking through problems, memory may assimilate the resultsof critical testing and integrate accurate information as a validatedcomponent of the way the past is recalled, especially as memory isdisseminated in the public sphere. Indeed, one of the ways history isnot merely professional or a matter of research isthat it undertakes tocreate a crit ically tested, accurate memory as its contribution to acognitively and ethically responsible public sphere. Memory of thissort isimportant for an attempt to acknowledge and relate to the pastin a manner that helps tomake possible a legitimate democratic polityin the present and future.I have broached the perplexing question of how to represent and

relate to limit events. Traumatic limit events pose challenges to bothreconstruction or representation and dialogic exchange. [ean-FrancoisLyotard and others (Saul Friedlander, for example) have theorized thisproblem in terms of the unrepresentable excessof extreme events thatcall for discursive and affective responses that are never adequate tothem." This is, I think, an important point evenif one would want tosignal its dangers and qualify it in certain ways. In videos one has theembodied voices of witnesses and survivors who typically have beenoverwhelmed by the exce~sof traumatizing events and the experience

3. See Iyorard, T h e D if fe re n d: P h ra se s i n D is pu te , t ra ns . G e or ge V a n D en A b be el e (I983;Minne a po li s: U n iv e rs it y o f Mi nn e so ta P re ss , 1988), and Sau l F r ied lande r, Memo r y, H i st o ry ,a nd th e E x te rm in at io n o f t he J e ws o f E u ro pe (B lo omi ng to n : I nd ia n a Un iv e rs it y P re s s, 1993).

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of them. Those interviewed areboth living archives and more or otherthan living archives. Viewing these videos has effects on people. Thesound of the voices, the often agonized looks on the faces have apowerful, at times an overwhelming, effect, and the impression mayremain with the viewer long after the actual event. Different peopleare able to view these videos for variable but limited periods beforethey shut down and are unable to take more. (In using videos inteaching, I have found that about one hour is a general limit forstudents.) There is, moreover, the ethically induced feeling that onemay not be responding with sufficient empathy, a reaction that in-creases the anxiety one feels both because of the evident, often over-whelming pain of the survivor recalling and even returning to theposition of helpless victim and because of one's own helplessness indoing anything about what isbeing recounted or relived."Despite its significance, the notion that traumatic limit events in-

volve and convey an unrepresentable, anxiety-producing excess mayhave two questionable consequences, even if one does not go to thehyperbolic point ofidentifying that excesswith the "real" or with theidea that, in traumatic memory, the event isrepeated in its incompre-hensible, unreadable literality. First, an exclusiveemphasis or fixationon unrepresentable excessmay divert attention from what may indeedbe represented or reconstructed with respect to traumatizing limitevents, and should be, as accurately aspossible. The latter includes thedaily life of victims, a problem to which Saul Friedlander's N azi G er-m an y a nd th e Je ws isdedicated. As Friedlander saysin his introduction:At each stage in the description of the evolvingNazi policies andthe attitudes ofGerman andEuropean societiesasthey impinge onthe evolution of those policies,the fate, the attitudes, and some-times the initiatives of the victims are given major importance.Indeed, their voicesareessentialif we are to attain an understand-4 . I t i s im po rta nt t o n ote t ha t th e p er so n b ei ng i nte rv ie we d w as n ot simply a v ic tim i n

t he p as t b ut t ha t v ic ti ma ge m ay w el l h av e b ee n a n e sp ec ia ll y d if fi cu lt , d is em p ow er in g, a ndi nc ap ac it at in g a sp ec t o f t he p as t w h ic h m a y a t t im e s b e r el iv ed o r a ct ed o ut i n t he p re se nt .Te st if yi ng i ts e lf , i n i ts d ia lo g ic r el at io n t o a tt en ti ve , emp at hi c l is te n er s, i s a w ay o f e ff ec ti ng ,a t l e as t i n p ar t, a p as sa ge f rom t he p os it io n o f v ic ti m c om p ul si ve ly r el iv in g t he p as t t o t h at o fs ur vi vo r a nd a ge nt i n t he p re se nt .

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Ho lo ca u st T e st im o n ie singof this past. Forit istheir voicesthat revealwhat wasknown andwhat could be known; theirs were the only voices that conveyedboth the clarity ofinsight and the total blindnessof human beingsconfronted with an entirely newand utterly horrifYingreality.Theconstant presence of the victims in this book, while historicallyessential in itself, is also meant to put the Nazis' actions into fullperspective."A second dubious consequence of the notion of an unrepresentable

excessin traumatic limit events isthat it may lead to a construction ofthese events in terms of an insufficiently differentiated, rashly gen-eralized, hyperbolic aesthetic of the sublime or even a (posit ive ornegative) sacralization of the event which may prompt a foreclosure,denigration, or inadequate account not only of representation but ofthe difficult issue of ethically responsible agency both then and now.One may perhaps detect such a hyperbolic appeal to the sublime andthe unrepresentable in Lyotard himself.6 I have speculated that thesublime may itself be construed asa secular displacement of the sacredin the form of a radically transcendent, inaccessible, unrepresentableother (including the alterity of radical evil). The typical response itevokesis silent awe. I have also argued that one important tendency inmodern thought and practice has been the attempt to link the trau-matic to-or evenconvert it into-the sublime bytransvaluing it andmaking it the basis for an elevating, supraethical, even elated or quasi-transcendental test of the self or the group. Such an attempt took aparticular form in certain Nazis themselves, involving the ability toperpetrate and endure scenes of unheard-of devastation and horror.Here one may briefly recall Himrnler's 1943 Posen speech to upper-levelSS officers-in important waysa proof text ofNazi ideology andof an important dimension of modern thought more generally, par-

5 S a ul F r ie d la n de r, N az i G er ma ny a nd th e J ew s, vol. I, T h e Y e a rs o f P e r se c ut io n , I933-I939 ( New Y or k: H a rp er C ol li ns , 1 9 '9 7 ), 2,

6. See his D i jf er en d : P h ra se s i n D is p ut e and H ei de gg er a nd " th e je ws , " t ra n s, A n d re a sM i ch el a nd Ma rk S . R o b er ts , f or ew o rd b y D a vi d C ar ro ll (1988; Minne a po li s: U n iv e rs it y o fMi n ne s ot a P r es s, 1990). O ne m ay a lso fin d a h ype rbo lic a pp ea l to a " the matic " o f th et ra um at ic a nd t he s ub lim e, i n d if fe re nt w ay s, in S ho sh an a F el ma n, L aw re nc e L an ge r,C la ud e L an zr na nn , H a yd en Wh it e, a nd E li eW i e se l.

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ticularly with respect to the fascination with excess and unheard-oftransgression. In that speech, Himmler asserted that Nazis remaineddecent in the face of a geometically increasing expanse of corpsesand that their ability to combine these antinomic features-decency(in Kantian terms, the morally beautiful and uncontaminated), on theone hand, and an obscene, seeming mathematical sublime, on theother-is what made them hard.Moreover, I have suggested that the notion of a negative sublime,

one in which the negativity perhaps alwaysinvolved in sublimity be-comes particularly accentuated, is applicable to dimensions of theShoah, notably to the Nazi quest for redemption or regenerationthrough an extremely violent, distorted sacrificial process involvingquasi-ritual anxiety about contamination and the quest for purifi-cation of the Volksgemeinschaft from putatively contaminating pres-ences.? The possible role of a Nazi sublime should be understood asone factor (not a total explanation) of Nazi ideology and practice,especiallywith respect to fanatically committed Nazis such asHider,Himmler, and Goebbels aswell as many upper-level 55 officerswhowere prime movers ofthe Holocaust. (It probably did not apply,at leasttypically, to middle- and lower-level functionaries or to such groups aspolice battalions of "ordinary" men motivated by "ordinary" forcessuch asobedience to orders, peer pressure, and the desire to conform.)Itspossible role nonetheless attests to the importance of distinguishingbetween the different modalities of the sublime and of being ascarefulaspossible about its invocation, especially with respect to a dubiouslyhomogenizing and possibly evasiveuseof it in one's own voice to applyto the Holocaust asan undifferentiated scene of excessand unimagin-able horror.Despite its clear and present dangers, the value of the notion ofan

unrepresentable excessis to foreground the problem of the possibili-t ies and limits of both representation and dialogic exchange in re-sponding to, or coming to terms with, events of the Shoah (aswell as

7. S ee m y R e pr es en ti ng t he H o lo ca us t: H is to ry , T he or y, T ra um a (I thaca: CornellUniver-s ir y P r es s, 1 994 ), e s p. IOO-IIO. S e e a l s o H is to ry a nd M em or y a ft er A u sc hw it z. 27-30.

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Ho loca us t Te st imon ie sother limit events in history). And it simultaneously raises the ques-tion of the relations between research, memory, and what limits them.A goal of historical understanding is, as I have intimated, to de-

velop not only a professionally validated public record of past eventsbut also a critically tested, empirically accurate, accessible memory ofsignificant events which becomes part of the public sphere. A related,problematic, even impossible goal is to assist in the effort to restoreto victims (at least symbolically or even posthumously) the dignityperpetrators took from them-a restorative effort in which historicaldiscourse isitself engaged to some extent in processesof mourning andattempts at proper burial (important forms of working through thepast). This process of memory.work is related to, but not identicalwith, research, and itisbound upwith the problem oftrauma and thechallenges it poses to memory in the sense of critically ~est~g"r~;:tllor recollection. Research is, of course, crucial, and, in an importantsense, i t is broader than memory; it involves elements that are notcommitted to memory either by the collectivity or by the individual,including the historian. But one may contend that the past issignifi-cant in its bearing on the present and future to the extent that it makescontact with problems of memory. It is what is allowed or made toenter into publicly accessible memory-not historical research ingeneral-which enables the past to be available for both uses andabuses, and the precise manner in which it becomes available (or issuppressed, distorted, or blocked) isof the utmost importance." Accu-rate memory ofthe past mayor may not benecessaryfor an individual"cure" (if one can indeed provide an acceptable definition of thismedicalized notion which it may be best to avoid, at least in historicaland critical-theoretical work). But one may argue that such memory,including memory that confronts the traumatic dimensions o f history,is ethically desirable in coming to terms with the past both for theindividual and for the 'collectiviry It is bound up with one's self-understanding and with the 'nature of a public sphere, including the

8 . H ow o ne r em emb er s t he S ho ah i s o f o b vi ou s i mp or ta nc e i n I s ra el , G e rm a ny , a nd t heU n it ed S ta te s, a s w e ll a s e ls ew h er e, a nd m emo ry w il l, o f c ou rs e, h av e d if fe re nt p er so na l,c o ll ec t iv e , c u lt ur a l, a n d p o li ti ca l f u nc ti o ns i n i ts d i ff e re n t mod es a n d s it es .

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W R I TIN G HIS TOR Y, W R I TIN G T R A U M,A

way a collectivity comes to represent its past in its relation to itspresent and future. One may also argue that accurate memory con-cerning events that playa crucial part in a collective past isan impor-tant component of a legitimate polity? Moreover, accurate, criticallytested memory work is related to the kind of active forgetting of thepast, or letting bygones be bygones, which (to the extent it ispossible)is both earned through collective effort and desirable in group rela-tions-not simply a matter of political expediency. (In this sense,active forgetting is, of course, a complement of, not an alternative to,remembering and memory work.) In this context, an extremely diffi-cult problem ishowto respond to, and givean account of, traumaticlimit events and their effects in peoples' lives in different genres andareas of study.Any answer to this question is problematic and contains-in the

dual sense of "includes" and "holds or hems in"-paradoxes becausetrauma invites distortion, disrupts genres or bounded areas, andthreatens to collapse distinctions. The problem here ishow one tries toinscribe and bind trauma and attendant anxiety in different genres ordisciplinary areasin spite of the fact that no genre or discipline "owns"trauma asa problem or canprovide definitive boundaries for it. I think

9, This is the kind of point Habermas made concerning Germany during the 1986Histarikerstrei t . One may ask whether the point iss lighted in Haberrnas 's defense, ten yearslater, of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's H it le r's W il li ng E x ec ut io ne rs : O r di na ry G er m an s a nd t heHo locaus t (New York: Alfred A . Knopf, 1996). On thi s ques tion , s ee Chap ter 4 ,The prob-lem of a collectivity's relation to its past isalso at issue in contemporaty Israel in the debateover post-Zionis t his toriography in the work of Benny Morris and others. For Haber rnasscontr ibutions to the Historians' Debate, see his N e w C on se rv at is m: C ul tu ra l C rit ic is m a ndthe Hi s t o r ian s 'Deba te ; ed. and trans . Shier ry Weber Nicholsen, intro, Richard Wolin (Cam-bridge : MIT Press , 1989). For a compari son of the German Histor ians' Debate and thedebate in Israel over post-Zionis t his toriography, see Jose Brunner , "Pr ide and Memory:Nationalism, Narciss ism, and the Historians' Debates in Germany and Israel," H i st or y a n dMemory 9 (1997): 256-300 . Brunner does not note that the s tage tha t may wel l fo llow thepost-Zionis t debate in Israel may bring out elements shared by (but concealed bythe heateddeba te ove r) so-ca ll ed Zion ist and post -Zion ist h is tor iography, notab ly a focus (i f not af ixation) on Israel, a very res tr icted interes t in comparative his tory, a limitation of researchon the Holocaust l argely to Is rael i r esponses, and the absence of any re read ing or re in -terpreting of the Diaspora (which tended to be presented negatively in Zionist his toriogra-phy and is marginalized in post-Zionis t his toriography, which focuses , understandablyenough, on Israeli-Arab relations), '

Ho l oc a u st T e st imo n ie sthe anxiety attendant on trauma and related to a questioning of clear-cut definitions of genres or disciplines should in important ways re-main active and not be denied or repressed. It is, for example, whatmotivates a certain hesitancy (what in Thomas Mann's Do ct or F a us tu sis expressed in terms of the narrator 's or writer's trembling hand)in putting forth a general method or even a limited interpretationof a problem, and it also inhibits unqualified rejection or avoidance ofanalysesor interpretations with which one does not agree. But all dis-tinctions, while being subjected to pressure and recognized asmore orlessproblematic in their relation to phenomena, should not be con-flared with binary oppositions and blurred or collapsed. Nor shouldthe notion of trauma be rashly generalized or the difference betweentrauma victim and historian or secondary witness_:'or, for that matter,between traumatization and victimhood-be elided. 10In testimonies the survivor aswitness often relives traumatic events

and is possessed by the past. These are the most difficult parts oftestimony for the survivor, the interviewer, and the viewer of testi-monies, Response isa pressing issue, and one may feel inadequate orbeconfused about how to respond and how to put that response into

ro , One may al so contest the idea tha t one of the ro les p layed bythe h is to rian i s tha t o fsecondary witness . One may argue that the his torian is l imited to objective modes ofunder-s tanding involving only empir ical inquiry, observation, analysis, and commentary. It isprobably lesscontes table to argue that the interviewer isa secondary witness in bearing wit-nessboth to the witness and to the object of testimony conveyed by the witness . This s tatusimplies an affective bond with the witness which Dor i Laub desribes asfollows: "Bear ingwitness to a trauma is, in fact, aprocess that includes the lis tener, For the tes timonial processto take place, there needs to bea bonding, the intimate and total presence ofan other-in thepos it ion of one who hear s" (Test imony, 70). Th is statement i sdub ious even for the inter-viewer, indeed for the interviewer-cum-therapist , whose presence, however intimate, isnever t0tal and who may not undergo secondary traumatization. In any event, i t is implaus-ible for the his torian orother commentator . At most one may argue that the his torian isasec-ondary witness through empathy that nonetheless respects the otherness of the other anddoes not pretend to full and intimate presence of either self or other , much less to bonding(rnislunderstood asfusion or identification. To the extent that one denies the role of transfer-ence and rejects an affective componenein understanding, notably in the form ofempathy (orwha t I t erm empa th ic unset tl ement ), one wil l a lso re si st the not ion tha t one ro le p layed bythe historian isthat ofsecondary witness, even when that witnessing issituated at a respectfuldistance from the experience ofthe victim, not necessarily tantamount to secondary trauma-tization, and correlated with knowledge (analogous to that of the exper t witness in court).

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words. One question is whether one can and should develop whatmight be called an ethics of response for secondary witnesses-inter-viewers, oral historians, and commentators. Such an ethics would atleast become a force or consideration in a larger force field. Here it isimportant to recognize that a historian or other academic, howeverattentive and empathetic a listener he or she may be, may not assumethe voice of the victim. In addition, the academic (as academic) isnot-and isnot entitled simply to identify with-a therapist workingin intimate contact with survivors or other traumatized people. Read-ing texts, working on archival material, or viewing videos isnot tanta-mount to such contact. Moreover, with respect to the interviewer ororal historian, one may argue that it is dubious to try to induce thesurvivor to relive trauma and in a sense be revictimized before thecamera even if one's motive is to empathize or even to identify fullywith the victim and transmit the experience to the viewer. (Such anattempt to take the survivor back-figuratively and at times evenliterally-to the scene of victimization and traumatization is evidentin Claude Lanzmann as interviewer in Shoah, and at times it leads tointrusive questioning.) More generally, one may question the desire toidentify fully with, and relivethe experience of, the victim in howevervicarious a fashion. The force of this desire may both occlude theproblem ofagency in one's own lifeand desensitize one to the problemand process of attempting to move, however incompletely, from vic-tim to survivor and agent in survivors themselves. This arduous pro-cess, which bears on the afterlife of victims as survivors, warrantsextensive study. It is not a concern in Lanzmann's Shoah or even inLawrence Langer's Holocaust Tes t imon ies , both ofwhich are concernedwith victims asvictims, not assurvivors or agents.'! Also dubious isaresponse to which Lanzmann and Langer are decidedly (I think justi-fiably) opposed-one that circumvents, denies, or represses thetrauma that called it into existence, for example, through unqualifiedobjectification, formal analysis, or harmonizing, indeed redemptive

II. Claude Lanzmann , S ho ah : T he C om pl et e T ex t o f t h e A c cla im ed H o lo ca us t F il m (NewY o rk : D a C ap o P re ss , 1995); Lawrence Langer : H o lo ca u st T e st im o ni es : T h e R u in s o f M e m or y(N ew Hav en ; Y a le Un iv e rs it y P r es s , 1991).

Ho loca u st Te s timoni e snarrative through which one derives from the suffering of otherssomething career-enhancing, "spiritually" uplifting, or identity-forming for oneself or one's group. !2Unqualified objectification and narrative harmonization aswell as

unmediared identification are particularly questionable when theyoccur in areas of polit ical and social l ife, including the classroom.Without positing a simple binary opposition, I would suggest thatexcessiveobjectification, purely formal analysis, and narrative harmo-nization (including what Eric Santner has termed narrative fet ishism)may be more likely when one uses printed sources or does archivalresearch." In partial contrast, videos may present in an especiallypowerful form the temptation of extreme identification.!"Objectivity is a goal of professional historiography related to the

attempt to represent the past asaccurately aspossible. One may refor-mulate and defend this goal in postpositivistic terms by both ques-tioning the idea of a fully transparent, unproblematic representationofthe way things in the past "really were" and recognizing the need tocome to terms with one's transferential implication in the object ofstudy by critically mediating projective inclinations, undertaking me-ticulous research, and being open to the way one's findings may bringinto question or even contradict one's initial hypotheses or assump-tions. One may also distinguish objectivity from excessiveobjectifica-tion that restricts historiography to narrowly empirical and analytictechniques and denies or downplays the significance of the problemsof subject position and voice in coming to terms with the implication

12. Th is i s a t em p ta ti on b ot h i n p ro fe ss io na l h is to ri og ra ph y a nd i n t he m e di a, f or e x-am pl e, i n a f il m s uc h a s Sch i nd le r ' s L i s t. Itmay, o f c o u rs e , a ls o b e a f e at ur e o f p o li ti ca l u s es o ft he Ho lo c au s t a s s ymbo li c c a pi ta l o r i n i de n ti ty -b u il d in g g ro u p f o rma ti on a n d n a ti on a li sm .

13. F or S anm er s i nc is iv e a na ly si s o f n ar ra ti ve f et is hi sm , s ee h is " H is to ry b ey on d t heP le as ur e P ri nc ip le : S om e Th ou gh ts o n t he R ep re se nt at io n o f T r aum a, " i n P r ob in g t h e L im i tso f R ep re se nt ati on : N az is m a nd t he " Fin al S ol ut io n, " e d. S au l F ri ed la nd er ( Camb ri dg e; H a r-va rd Unive r s ity Press , 1992), 143-54.

14- Of c o ur se , t he o p po s it e ~ e nd e nc ie s a re a ls o p o ss ib l e, f or e x amp le , s imp ly s h ut ti n gd ow n emo ti on al ly w he n v ie w in g t es ti mo ni es . B u t I t hi nk t he d an ge rs I s tr es s o c cu r. in s om eimpo rt an t , i n fl ue n ti al w o rk s , f o r e x amp le , L aw re n ce L a ng e r' s Ho lo c aus t T e st im on ie s , Lanz-mann's Shoah , a nd S ho sh an a F el ma n' s a nd D o ri L au b' s Test imony. Mor eo v er , s h ut ti ng d ownmay b e a d e fe n se a g ai ns t t h e t hr ea t o f i de n ti fi ca ti on .

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and response of the historian with respect to the object of study (in-cluding the voices of others). Simultaneously, one may recognize theneed for objectification within limits both for research and for theprotection of the researcher, especially in areas in which traumaticsuffering ismarked and the tendency to identify fully with the victimmay be compelling.Pronounced, if not excessive, objectification is at times present inevenso unquestionably important and groundbreaking awork asRaulHilberg's T he D e st ru ct io n o f t he E u ro pe an feus, and it isexacerbated bythe fact that Hilberg, in his painstaking analysis of the Nazi "ma-chinery of destruction," tended not to employ the testimony of vic-tims and based his study largely on documents left by perpetrators.In Hilberg an objectifying methodology induces (or at least is con-joined with) what may be an insensitivity to the plight ofmembers ofJewish Councils, whom Hilberg discusses in a distanced and harshlycritical way, largely oblivious to the double binds or impossible situa-tions inwhich Nazi policy placed these councils. IS In marked contrast,Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, while relying on printed sources, has in-stantiated the possibility of extreme identification with Jewish victims(as Goldhagen understands-or rather imagines-them in their rela-tion to perpetrators) accompanied by an inability to employ evidenceto test rather than simply illustrate extremely questionable hypothesesand assumptions. (One such assumption is the idea that "the long-incubating, pervasive, virulent, racist, elirninationist antisemitism ofGerman culture," indeed "the ubiquity of eliminationist antisemi-tism" in Germany, was the sole significant motivational factor forperpetrators in the Holocaust.) 16

15 . Raul Hilberg, T he D es tr uc ti on o f t he E ur op ea n J ew s (New York: Holmes &Meier,1985). On Jewish Counc il s and the double b inds in which Nazi pol icy p laced the ir mem-bers, see Isaiah Trunk, J ud en ra t: T he J ew is h C ou nc il s i n E as te rn E ur op e u nd er N az i O c cu pa -t ion, intro, byJacob Robinson; new intro. by Steven T. Katz (19Tl.; Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1996).

16 . Goldhagen, H i tl e r' s W i l li n g E x e c ut io n e rs , 4 19 , 4 3 5. See the responses in Unwil l ingG er m an s? : T he G o ld ha ge n D e ba te , ed. Robert R. Shandley (Minneapolis: Univers ity ofMinnesota Press, 1998), and Norman G. Finkel stein and Ruth Be tt ina Bi rn , A N ation onT r ia l: T h e G o ld h ag e n T h es is a n d H i st or ic al T r ut h (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1998). See

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Ho l o ca u s t T e st imo n ie sStill, even when one resists going to Goldhagen's extreme, videos

may present in an especially forceful manner the temptation of aprimarily participatory, idenrificatory response. In the first of herchapters in Tes t imony , Shoshana Felman recounts how her classat Yalefacedradical disorientation and the threat of breakdown, both sociallyand as individuals, after viewing Holocaust videos. She tells of howshe became "a witness to the shock communicated by the subject-matter; the narrative of how the subject-matter was unwittingly en -ac ted, set inmotion in the class,and how testimony turned out to beatonce more critically surprising and more critically important thananyone could have foreseen" (7). Coupled with reading literary texts,the viewing of testimonies "carried the class beyond a limit that [she]could foresee"-something that took her "completely bysurprise. Theclass itself broke out into a crisis" (47). After consulting with DoriLaub, they "concluded that what was called for was for [her] to reas-sume authority asthe teacher ofthe class,and bring the students backinto significance" (48). One may question whether taking up an au-thoritative role that brings students "back into significance" is tanta-mount to working through problems. As I have intimated, one mayalso raise doubts about an academic's tendency to identify with a

a lso my comments in H is to ry a nd M e mo ry a ft er A us ch w it z. Finkelstein provides an oftenconvincing, detailed refutation of Goldhagen. But one of Finkels tein 's own more dubioustendencies is to postulate a tendentious "disciplinary divis ion between holocaust scholar -ship-primarily a branch of European history-and Holocaust literat ure-primarily abranch ofJewish studies" -a divis ion that presumably was "mutually respected" before thepublication of Goldhagen's book (which represents the extreme of a "Holocaust l iterature"or "Jewish studies" approach for Finkelstein). Finkelstein tends to associate objectivity withHolocaust scholarship ( the epitome of which isRaul Hilberg's De st ru c ti on o f t he E u ro p ea nJews) and sentimentalizing empathy with Holocaust l iterature, acategory that includes notonly Elie Wiesel but (along with Lucy Dawidowicz) Yehuda Bauer and Dan Diner (88 n).Finkelstein also ironically states: "Arno Mayer's main blasphemy was emphasizing the sali-ence of anti-Bolshevism alongside anti-Semitism in Nazi ideology" (90 n). By contras tMayer subordinated anti-Semitism to anti-Bolshevism in Nazi ideology and practice, evengoing to the ex treme of terming "the i ta r against the Jews . .. a g ra ft o r pa ra si te upon theeastern campaign, which always remained its host, even or especially when it became miredin Russia." See W hy D id th e H ea ve ns N ot D ar ke n? : T he " Fin al S olu tio n" in H is to ry (NewYork: Pantheon, 1 9 88 ), 2 7 0, and my dis cussion of thi s book in Re p r es e n ti n g t h e Ho l oc a u st ,chap. 2.

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therapist in intimate contact with traumatized people aswell as aboutthe identification of a class with trauma victims and survivors-ten-dencies that may induce the reader's identification with one or theother subject posit ion. In any case, the extreme traumatization ofa class through a process of unchecked identification with victimswould obviously not be a criterion of success in the use of survivorvideos. And itwould be preferable to avoid or at least counteract suchtraumatization-or its histrionic simulacrum-rather than to seekmeans ofassuaging it once it had been set in motion.The broader question is the role of empathy in understanding,

including historical understanding, and its complex relations to objec-tification and dialogic exchange. Empathy is an affective componentof understanding, and it is difficult to control. Certain professionalidentifications or research strategies may attempt to marginalize oreven eliminate (perhaps blind one to) its role along with affectiveresponse in general. But empathy is bound up with a transferentialrelation to the past, and it is arguably an affective aspect of under-standing which both limits objectification and exposes the self toinvolvement or implication in the past, its actors, and victims. A s Ihave already tried to argue, desirable empathy involves not full identi-fication but what might be termed empathic unsettlement in the faceof traumatic limit events, their perpetrators, and their victims. Em-pathic unsettlement may, of course, take different forms, and it may attimes result in secondary or muted trauma as well as objectionableself-dramatization in someone responding to the experience of vic-tims. It is plausible to think secondary trauma islikely in the case ofthose who treat traumatized victims or even in the caseof interviewerswho work closelywith victims and survivors. But it may be hyperbolicto argue that all those who come into contact with certain material,such asHolocaust videos, undergo at some level secondary or mutedtrauma. And one may justifiably be wary of the overextension of theconcept of trauma, even though any idea of strictly mastering its useand defining its range may be self-defeating. But it isblatantly obviousthat there is a major difference between the experience of camp in-mates or Holocaust survivors and that of the viewer of testimony102

Ho lo c au st T e st im o n ie svideos. Still, even the viewing of videos may have different subjectiveeffects on different people, including recurrent nightmares, and thepossibility of secondary trauma cannot be discounted.Without implying a rash generalization of trauma, empathic unset-

tlement should, in myjudgment, affect the mode ofrepresentation indifferent, nonlegislated ways, but sti ll in a fashion that inhibits orprevents extreme objectification and harmonizing narratives. Indeed,it isrelated to the performative dimension of an account, and, despitethe ways performativity may lend itself to abuse, the problem ofper-formative engagement with unsettling phenomena isimportant in anexchange with the past. One's own unsettled response to another'sunsettlement can never be entirely under control, but it may be af-fected by one's active awareness of, and need to come to terms with,certain problems related to one's implication in, or transferential rela-tion to, charged, value-related events and those involved in them. Inaddition, the attempt to give an account of traumatic limit eventsshould have nonformulaic effects on one's mode of representationeven independent of all considerations concerning one's actual ex-perience or degree of empathy. In other words, one may maintainthat there is something inappropriate about modes of representationwhich in their very style or manner of address tend to overly objectify,smooth over, or obliterate the nature and impact of the events theytreat.'? Still , one need not go to the extreme of dissociating affect orempathy from intellectual, cognitive, and stylistic or rhetorical con-

1 7 T he s o- ca ll ed n or ma liz at io n o f t he H ol oc au st w ou ld p re su ma bl y e nt ai l s ty li sti cn orm al iz at io n i n i ts r ep re se nt at io n a s w e ll .W h i le o ne m a y a rg ue t ha t h is to ri og ra ph y o f t h eHo l oc a us t r e qu ir e s t h e u s e o f p r of es s io n al t ec h ni q ue s i n a u th e nt ic a ti n g d o cument s, p r ov i d-i ng f oo tn ot es , v al id at in g em pi ri ca l a ss er ti on s, a nd s o f or th , o ne m a y s ti ll o bj ec t t o t he f ul ln o rma li za ti o n o f Ho l oc a us t h i st o ri og r ap h y i f it i nv o lv e s a s imp le r el ia n ce o n c o nv e nt io n als ty le a nd s ta nd ar d o pe ra ti ng p ro ce du re s. B u t, a s I h av e i nt im a te d, i t w o ul d a ls o b e q ue st io n-a bl e t o u se a n u nd if fe re nt ia te d " ex pe ri me nt al " s ty le ( of te n a ss oc ia te d w it h t he s ub li me ) f ora ll a sp ec ts o f t he S ho ah . F or p er ti ne nt d is cu ss io ns o f p r ob lem s o f r ep re se nt at io n, s ee E r ns tvan A lphen , Caught b y H i st or y: H o lo c au st E ff ec ts i n C o nt em p or ar y A r t, L it er a tu re , a n d T h eo r y( S ta n fo r d: S t an f or d Un iv e rs it y P r es s , I997); Geof f rey Har tman, T he L on ge st S ha do w: I n t heA fte rm a th o f t he H ol oc au st (B lo om in g to n : I n di an a Un iv e rs it y P r es s , 1996); Micha e l R o th ,T he I ro ni st s C ag e ( New Y o rk : C ol um b ia U n iv er si ty P re ss , 1995); a nd J am e s E . Y o un g, Th eT ex tu re o f M e mo ry : H ol oc au st M e mo ri als a nd M e an in g (N ew Hav en : Y a le Un iv e rs it y P r es s ,19931.

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cerns, and one may askwhether empathy ison some levelnecessaryforunderstanding (however limited or self-questioning that understand-ing may be). With respect to perpetrators, one may justifiably resistempathy in the sense of feeling or understanding that may serve tovalidate or excuse certain acts. In fact, one may feel antipathy orhatred. But one may nonetheless argue that one should recognize andimaginatively apprehend that certain forms of behavior (that of theEinsatzgruppen or of camp guards, for example) may be possible foroneself in certain circumstances, however much the events in questionbeggar the imagination. One may even suggest that recognition isnecessaryfor being better able to resist even reduced analogues ofsuchbehavior as they present themselves as possibilities in one's own life.I8The foregoing argument does not mean that one can provide a

how-to book that stipulates formulaically the manner in which histo-rians or others should respond with "proper" empathy and enable thatresponse to affect their writing or mode of representation. In fact, aprimary commitment to objectification and empirical-analytic rneth-ods in historiography may confront anyone trying to create a prob-lematic space for empathic response (aspace that in no sense excludescareful research and critical, contextual analysis)with a double bind ordilemma. On the one hand, one may be asked for concrete pro~cedures, analogous to those employed in empirical-analytic research,which could be taught and followed asrules ofhistorical method. Buthow could one, with respect to empathy, provide anything analogousto procedures for footnoting references or authenticating sources?Onthe other hand, any such procedures or rules-more plausibly, any

18. These points are, ofcourse, contestable and difficult to demonstrate with any degreeof adequacy. The minimal desirable function they serve is to inhibit demonization ~()_fth~other and facile self-certainty or self- righteousness. Moreover, the idea that one shouldrecognize and imagina tively apprehend that cer tain ext reme forms of behav ior may beposs ib le fo r onesel f in certain c ircumstances does not mean tha t one i sprone to, or evencapable of, such behavior, although one can never tell how one would respond in a cer tainsi tuat ion unt il one i s indeed in tha t s ituat ion. St il l, s pecu la tions abou t wha t one can orcannot imaginat ively appr ehend do not imply the des irabi li ty of t ry ing to run va riousscenarios of atrocity by one 's mind, and such speculations may be par ticularly pointless inview of the way limit events, such asthose of the Holocaust , may disempower rheimagina-tion or exceed its ability to conjure up situations. _. - -

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Ho lo c au st T e st im o n ie ssuggestions one put forward-might bring the charge that they couldreadily bemechanized and abused. The double bind isa reason why itis difficult to acknowledge affective response within a disciplinaryframework that, in any case, may be constitutively informed by anattempt to exclude or marginalize affectivity and attendant anxiety. Itmay also be taken to indicate that one cannot-and should not evenattempt to-provide procedures or rules concerning the proper use orcorrect "dosage" of affect or empathy. Rather, the problem ishow anattentiveness to certain issues may lead to better self-understandingand to a sensitivity or openness to responses that generate necessarytensions in one's account. This attentiveness creates, in Nietzsche'sterm, a Schwergew ich t , or stressful weight in inquiry, and it indicateshow history in its own way poses problems ofwriting or significationwhich cannot be reduced to writing up the results of research.In literature and art (of course including film), one may observe the

role ofa practice that has perhaps been especiallypronounced since theShoah but may alsobe found earlier, notably in testimonial art: experi-mental, gripping, and risky symbolic emulation of trauma in whatmight be called traumatized or post-traumatic writing ("writing" inthe broad sense that extends to all signification or inscription). Thismarkedly performative kind ofwriting may be risky-at leastinsofar asit is not automatized and assimilated in mimetic fashion as an all-purpose methodology that predictably privileges excess, incalculabil-ity, the transgression of limits, (self-)shattering, unbound or associa-t ive play, and so forth. But, even in its riskier and less predictableforms, it is a re lat ive ly safe haven compared with actual traumatiza-tion. It may even be a means of bearing witness to, enacting, and, tosome extent, working overand through trauma whether personally ex -perienced, transmitted from intimates, or sensed in one's larger socialand cultural setting. Indeed, such writing, with significant variations,has been prevalent since theend of the nineteenth century in figures asdifferent as Nietzsche, Mallarme, Flaubert, Woolf, Blanchot, Kafka,Celan, Beckett , Foucault , and Derrida. One crucial form it takes-notably in figures such as Blanchot, Kafka, Celan, and Beckett-iswhat might perhaps beseenas awriting ofterrorized disempowerment


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as close as possible to the experience of traumatized victims withoutpresuming to be identical to it.Itisdebatable whether such writing has a place in literary criticism

and the kind ofphilosophy which isclose to it and to literature itself 19I would defend its role in criticism that emulates its object, but Iwould not see it as the only or even the preferred path for literarycriticism or for its interaction with philosophy and literature. It isanextremely demanding and easilymishandled limit form of the attemptto bring criticism into close proximity or dialogue with art and pre-vent it from aspiring to the status ofa masterful metalanguage, but theactive attempt to distance oneself from this pretension to full masterymay take other forms that include a role for historical analysisand theelucidation, not only the emulation, of experimental literary texts orother artworks. Emulative writing becomes especially open to ques-tion when it takes an unmodulated orphic, cryptic, indirect, allusiveform that may render or transmit the disorientation of trauma butprovide too little a basis for attempts to work it through even in sym-bolic terms. Still, some of the most powerful and thought-provokingrecent criticism isthat which opens itself to the reinscriptionor emu-lation of disorienting, disruptive, post-traumatic movements in themost powerful and engaging literary texts orworks of art. One may attimes sense such movements in Cathy Caruth's writing. One remark-able use of the term precisely, along with paradoxically, in her writingcomes precisely when the thought isleastprecise and most perplexing,perhaps at times disoriented-but in rhought-provoking ways thatgive a "feel" for traumatic experience. In this sense, precisely may beinvoked more or lessunconsciously asa compellingly repeated markeror trace of post-traumatic effects that may not be sufficiently workedthrough. Shoshana Felman uses the terms paradoxically and paradoxi-c a ll y e n ough so repeatedly that their meaning and force are almost

19. JUrgen Habermas, in his hosti le reaction to Derridas way ofeffecting an interactionbetween phi losophy and l it era tu re, does not addre ss thi s pr oblem in wri ting , a lthough i twould seem germane to his concerns. See T h e Ph i lo s op h ic a l D i sc o u rs e o f Mo d e rn i ty , trans.Frederick Lawrence (1985;Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 161-210.

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Ho loca us t Te st imon ie sevacuated-or perhaps they come to function as apotropaic devicesthat both conjure upand conjure away the unsettling effects of para-dox. Still, her last chapter in Testimony, in which she discusses Lanz-mann's Shoah, is quite different from her first chapter, in which shesomewhat self-dramatizingly is anxious about the effects of trauma ina class. In her discussion of Shoah she writes in a fragmented, lyrical,participatory style that helps to evoke the movement and almost com-pulsive power of the film, although her approach may entail certainsacrificesin the critical analysis ofLanzmann's masterpiece."

20. Bessell A. van der Kolk's neurophysiological theory of trauma has been especiallyimportant fo r Ca thy Caruth. Van der Kolk ar gues tha t ther e i s a regi st ra tion of the t rau-matic event in its l iterality asa neural pathway-what in his later work becomes an imprint ,engraving, icon, or image in the amygdala of the right side of the brain which is notaccessible to symbolization or verbalization. Hence the traumatic event asexperience wouldbe inscr ibed asa literal pathway or image that is in itself incomprehensible or unreadable-one that is read belatedly (nachtri ig l ich) not because of repress ion or disavowal but becauseof l it era l di ssoc ia tion f rom language centers in the lef t side of the bra in . Th is v iew is notlimited to neuroscientif ic claims, however . Quoting van der Kolk and Onno van der Har t,Caruth asks whether " the possibili ty of integration into memory and the consciousness ofhis tory thus raises the question 'whether it isnot a sacrilege of the traumatic exper ience top lay with the r ea li ty of the pas t' " (Caruth, T r au m a: E x pl or at io ns i n M em or y [Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Univers ity Press , 1995] , 154). For van der Kolk, the initial ly inaccessibletraumatic imprint may in time be addressed or represented in language asthe " translation"between the r ight and lef t s ides of the brain isachieved. The verbalization of the traumaticimprint and the perhaps "sacrilegious" variations played on i t may be necessary for atraumatized person's recovery or "cure." (One example van der Kolk gives of var iation orf lexibili ty is imagining "a f lower growing in the ass ignment place in Auschwitz" [Caruth,T ra u ma : E x pl or a ti on s i n M em or y , 178]. Roberto Benigni's film L i fe I s B e a ut if u l might beseenas a dubious analogue of this idea in t hat it is an event in the public sphere which bot hpresents a questionable image of concentration camps and, especially in its "magical realist"or even fairy-tale treatment of camp life, may well prove offensive to survivors.)

Caruth builds on and extends van der Kolk's argument, often combining itwith Freud-ian views. Indeed, her version of trauma theory, aswell asShoshana Felman's, may itself beinterpreted as an intricat e displacement and disguise of the de Manian variant of de-construction. (See also Cathy Caruth, U nc la im ed E xp er ie nc e: T ra um a, N ar ra ti ve , a nd H is -tory [Balt imore: Johns Hopkins Univers ity Press , 1996] .) In this view (close to Lacans) , thereal or the literal is traumatic , inaccessible, and inherently incomprehensible or unrepre-sentable, it can only be represenredoraddressed indirectly in figurative or allegorical termsthat necessarily dis tort and betray it. Iwould speculate that the fur ther displacement (aswella sd i stor tion and disgui se ) involved here may be wi th re spect to a var ian t o f r el igion inwhich the Hidden God is rad ical ly t ranscenden t, insc ru table (o r unreadab le ), and , in a


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In historiography the attempt at, or effectof, bearing witness to, oreven "emulating," trauma (if that is the right term) in an extremelyexposed and experimental style would be questionable to the extentthat it overwhelmed the demands of accurate reconstruction and criti-cal analysis instead of tensely interacting with and, to some extent,

secular context, dead, unavailable, lost, or barred. All representations ofsuch an absolute aresacrilegious or prohibited. In this context, trauma may itself be sacralized asa catas trophicrevelation or, in more secular terms, be transvalued asthe radical other or the sublime. Thiscompelling f rame ofreference isalsoat play in other f igures , including Claude Lanzmann inh is commentaries on, and ro le in, Shoah. The dif ficulty is that this f rame of reference mayeither foreclose any attempt to work through problems or immediately conflate the latterwith a necessarily Pollyanna or redemptive dialectical Aujhebung. Bycontras t, one may con-ceive ofworking through asa limited process of integration or introjection of the past whichmay never fully transcend the acting-out of trauma or achieve full integration and closure.

Van der Kolk h imsel f s eems at t imes to a llow for a very opt imist ic idea of "comple terecovery" through full integration of traumatic memory in a " life his tory" and the "whole"of a personaliry ( Tr au m a: E x pl or at io ns i n M em or y, 176), a view perhaps facil itated by hisres is tance to the notion ofa dynamic unconscious that exerts pressure and creates conflict inthe self Van der Kolk also tends to believe that "traumatic memories cannot be bot hdissociated and repressed" (169). He assoc iates di ssoc ia tion (which he accept s) with "ahor izontally layered model of mind" in which the dissociated forms "an alternate s tream ofconsciousness," while he links repression (which he rejects in cases of trauma) to "averticallylayered model of the mind" in whi ch "what is repressed is pushed downward, into theunconscious" (168). Van der Kolk nonetheless refers to the dissociated assubconscious andas not accessible to consc iousness but ma in ta ins" that i t i s not repre ssed or sub ject toconflictual forces related to forbidden wishes or desires . One might, ofcourse, object that adissociated "memory" may indeed be associated with or attached to repressed and forbiddendesi re s (f or example, the desi re f or the dea th of a par en t) , and such an associat ion wouldmake even more traumatic and conflict- ridden an actual occur rence ( for example, the deathof the mother in a case van der Kolk d iscus se s- that o f J anet 's pat ien t Ir ene, in which themother's death was associated with abusive behavior toward I rene on the par t ofher father) .

Van der Kolk might himself be seen as transferenti ally repeating or acting out theprocesses he studies in that he splits or dissociates repress ion f rom dissociation and resis tsany notion of their connection. Moreover, his notion of the lodging of the traumaticmemory in one half of the brain which is inaccessible to the other half could be seen as aquestionable yet convenient l iteralization of the lateral model of dissociation which "ex-plains" why there isdissociation without repression or other unconscious forces. Distortionwould a ri se not from repre ss ion but by the very at tempt to "t rans la te " wha t i s l it era llyincomprehensible (or unreadable) into language. In any case, i tshould be evident that whatisexperienced asthe exact repetit ion of the traumatic "memory" (or scene) does not entailthat the repetit ion is the exact or literal replication of the empir ical event i tself Moreover, i tshould be stressed that van der Kolk's notion of the exact l iterality of the imprint or. icon oft rauma is re la ted to h is r ejec tion of unconsc ious process es such as r epres sion with the

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Ho lo c au st T e st im o n ie sraising questions for those demands. One important text in whichsuch a style at times seems to undercut the historical nature of theanalysis is Foucault's F olie e t d er aiso n: H is to ire d e fa fo l ie a t ag e c la s-sique." In it Foucault does not quote or even summarize the voicesofradical disorientation or unreason but rather allows them to-or isopen to the manner in which they-agitate or infiltrate his own tor-tured, evocative discourse, a discourse that may exhilarate the readeror threaten to make him or her mad (in both sensesof the word).22Iwould in general argue that in history there is a crucial role for em-pathic unsettlement as an aspect of understanding which stylisticallyupsets the narrative voice and counteracts harmonizing narration orunqualified objectification yet allows for a tense interplay betweencritical, necessarily objectifying reconstruction and affective responseto the voices of victims. I would even entertain the possibility ofcarefully framed movements in which the historian attempts morerisk-laden, experimental overtures in an attempt to come to termswith limit events.A larger question here is the complex relation of acting out, re-

living, or emulatively enacting (or exposing oneself to) trauma andworking it overaswell aspossiblyworking it through in amanner thatnever fully transcends or masters it but allows for survival, a measure

dis tort ion and disguises it brings about. Whatever one makes of his neuroscientif ic claims( that may rely on an overly functionally specific model of the brain in which the amygdalabecomes something like a neurophysiological analogue of the Kanrian noumenal sphere) ,one may find many ofvan der Kolk 's obse rvat ions concer ning t rauma and memory to beinsightful, and both Caruth and Felman are amenable to a sympathetic, if st ill partlysymptoma tic, r eading where in one may t ry to bring out how, despi te- per haps a t t imesbecause of-their critical shortfalls, they each, in their affectively charged modes ofwriting,convey something of the "feel" and pathos of the exper ience of trauma.

21. Michel Foucault, F o li e e t d e ra is on : H i st oi re d e fa folie a l ' ag e c l a ss ique (Paris: Gal-limard, 1961). See my analysis in H is to r y a n d R e ad in g.

22. Another way of making thi~ point is to say that, at his most disor ienting, Foucaultin F o li e e t d e ra i so n does not so muchspeak about (or even for) the mad as to-and at timeswith- the voices ofunreason in something close to a f ree indirect s tyle . Iwould fur ther notethat the operationalized adaptation of Foucault in historiography that provides genealogiesof concepts or an objectifYing account of disciplines, as in the important work of JanGoldstein or Ruth Leys, t ends to downplay seve re ly , e limina te , o r deny thi s dimension ofFoucault's writing. "


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of agency, and ethical responsibili ty-a question that bears in signi fi-cantly different ways on people occupying significantly different andinternally di fferentiated subject positions, such as vict im, witness,therapist, " imaginative" writer or artist , and secondary witness or his-torian. In an attempt to address this extremely complex and di fficul tquestion, there may be limited justifications for various responsesshort of full identif ication and unqualified objectif ication. The prob-lem that clearly deserves further reflection is the nature of actual anddesirable responses in different genres, practices, and disciplines, in-cluding the status of mixed or hybridized genres and the possibili ty ofplaying different roles or exploring different approaches in a given textor "performance."Survivor testimony, including the interviewing process, is in cer-

tain ways a new, necessarily problematic genre- in-the-making withimplications for oral history, particularly in especially sensitive areas ofresearch. Historians have not yet worked out al together acceptableways of "using" testimonies, and their task is further complicatedby the at times marked di fferences between the condi tions and expe-riences of vict ims as well as their responses to them. As one limitedbut significant instance of the diversity of (esponses to limit eventswithin the group of Jewish victims and survivors alone, one maybriefly mention the cases of Helen K and Leon S. in the Yale For-tunoff collection. 23

23. FortunoffVideo Archive Tape A-35 and ForcunoffVideo Archive Tape A-25. Anyfurrher d iscuss ion of sur vivor v ideos would have to inc lude an ana lysi s o f problems ininterviewing and f ilming, including rhe role ofseemingly insensitive or dubious questionsand the re li ance on techniques such as zoom shots or c lose -ups appa rent ly to intensi fyemotion tha t i s a lready overwhelming-hence in a 'manne r tha t i sunneces sa ry a t best andoffensively intrusive at worst . S ti ll , rhe power of tes timonies is that rhey often transcend.such stumbling blocks or inadequacies.

The dif ferences in exper iences and responses multiply when one adds orher groups ofvictims such aspolitical prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses, Slavs, homosexuals, and "Gypsies."A related point is that i tcan be misleading to s tudy victims in isolation f rom orher -at t imesintricately related or even par tially overlapping-subject posit ions and groups such asper-petrators, collaborators, bystanders, and resisters. In my judgment, the historian should nots imply ident ify wi rh any sing le part ic ipan t subjec t posi tion or gr oup but t ry to work out .varying modes ofproximity and dis tance in rhe effor t to understand each one aswell asrhe

lIO

Ho lo ca u st T e st im o n ie sHelen K seems to see the world in secular terms. She stresses the

role of resistance and the manner in which her desi re to defeat Hitlerin his will to kill her was a force in her survival. Discussing her father'sdisappearance in the Warsaw ghetto, she speculates on the basis oflit tle evidence that he was picked up by a German patrol. She never al-lows herself to entertain the possibility that he abandoned the family:this disturbing thought-which can only be suggested by the viewer-is not allowed to enter her mind. Her mother was captured (firstthought killed) during the Warsaw ghetto uprising when Germansinvaded the house in which they were hiding (a house that also con-tained the bunker of Resistance leader Mordechai Anielewicz) . Shelater is surprised to find her mother in Majdanek and spends six oreight impossible weeks wi th the weak and debilitated woman until themother is"selected" for death. In the tightly packed cattle car in whichHelen K and her thirteen-year-old brother are deported after the fallof the Warsaw ghetto, the brother, suffering from lack of oxygen, diesin her arms. At this point , she tells us, she said to herself: ''I'm going tolive. I must be the only one survivor from my family. I'm going to live.I made up my mind I'm going to defy Hitler. I'm not going to give in.Because he wants me to die, I'm going to live. I was going to just bevery, very strong." She recounts other di fficul t experiences in Maj-danek and Auschwitz and concludes by saying: "I don't know. I don'tknow if it was worth it. I don't know if it was worth it-because, youknow, when I was in concentration camp and even after I said: 'Youknow, after the war people will learn, they will know. They will ...they will see. We, we'll learn.' But did we real ly learn anything? I don'tknow."In contrast to Helen K, Leon S. is a gaunt, spectral presence and

of ten speaks in an excruciating, hal ting manner in which each word,like a fragile monument, is separated by a gap from the followingword. He saw his grandmother, upon asking for help from a German,shot before his eyes. His closest friend, who helped him through the

re la tions among rhem. The h istorian migh t even a tt empt to work out ways of ge tt ingbeyond the grid rhat locks par ticipant posit ions or groups togerher in theory and practice.

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camp experience, later committed suicide. Leon S. becomes religiousafter his harrowing experiences and says of his belief: "There is God.Despite the terrible things that happened to us , I couldn't deny theexistence. I would never." Of his behavior and attitude toward Ger-mans, he observes: "I could say I didn't raise my hand. I didn't hit asingle German. And this may come asa surprise to you. I don't hatethem." He adds: "Youcannot blame the whole people for somethingthat was done bya group ofpeople." Helen K. and Leon S.may sharecertain sentiments and both undergo moments of breakdown or ex-treme disempowerment in which they seem to relive in anguish thepast that haunts and at times possesses them. But they are very dif-ferent people with different waysof coming to terms with that past.Even when one comes to question the inclination of some his-

torians to exclude or marginalize survivor testimonies as unreliablesources ofhistory, one may still be at seawith respect to the proper us eof resrimonies.f The questions I have raised do not settle this issue.

24. I noted Raul Hilbe rg 's t endency not to employ surv ivor tes timonies. Al though hecontinues to emphasize, at t imes excessively, the role of a machinery of destruction in allaspects of the Shoah, Hilberg's later approach to tes timonies and, more ge-nerally, to theproblem of interpreting the behavior ofvictims (notably that of members ofJewish Coun-cils) issomewhat more nuanced than in T he D e st ru c ti on o f t he E u ro p ea n j ew s . See especiallyhis P e rp e tr a to rs V ic ti m s B y st an de rs : T h e j e w is h C a ta st ro ph e , I933-I945 (New York: Harper,Collins , 1992) ; his contr ibutions to W r it in g a n d t he H o lo ca us t, ed. Berel Lang (New York:Holmes & Meier, 1988), esp. 274; and his "The Ghetto as a Form of Government: AnAnalysis of Isaiah Trunk's judenrat ," in T h e H o lo ca u st a s H i st or ic a l E x pe ri en ce , ed. YehudaBauer and Nathan Rorensr reich (New York: Holmes &Meier, 1981), 155-71. See also theimportan t d is cuss ion and the comments ofI sa iah Trunk a t the end of the las t book. Trunkasser ts : " Iagree with most ofwhat [Hilberg] said about the Jewish Councils; I disagree onlywith his character ization of the ghettos and the Councils asa 'self -destructive machinery.'He re he comes close to Hannah Arendt 's absurd suppos it ion tha t withou t the Counci lsannihilation would not have been sototal" (268) .

Despite her proximity to the perspective ofvictims (as she understands it), Lucy Dawid-owicz stresses the impor tance of cor roborating eyewitness accounts through other docu-mentary sources and gives survivor testimonies a rather limited sUflplementary importance" to f il l out, augment, and enr ich the substantive sources for the his tory of the Holocaust"(T he H olo ca us t a nd th e H is to ria ns [Cambridge: Harvard Univers ity Press , 1981] , 128).Yehuda Bauer quotes and integrates into his narrative, without comment, limited selectionsf rom survivor written nar ratives and tes timonies , both res tr icting their role and lendingthem a distinctive authority ( A H i st or y o f t he H o lo ca us t [New York: Franklin Watts, 1982],chap. 9). Lawrence Langer (not a profess ional his torian) goes to the opposite, comparably

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Ho l oc a us t T e st im o n ie sAt most they explore options and possibilities, especiallywith respectto the relation between objectifying reconstruction or representationand what escapes it or is not encompassed by it, including the histo-rian's own implication in, or transferential relation to, the past, havingstrongly affective and evaluative dimensions, and his or her consciousand unconscious exchange with that past and those living through it.The attempt to come to terms with survivor videos poses an importantchallenge to history in that it forces a question towhich wemay at bestprovide essentially contested answers: how to represent trauma and togive a place in historiography to the voices of victims and survivors.

questionable extreme from the ear ly Hilberg in explicitly and emphatically privilegingsurvivor oral tes timonies as a locus of authenticity while downplaying the significance ofsurvivor writings ( H ol oc au st T e st im o ni es : T he R u in s o f M em or y [New Haven: Yale UniversityPress , 1991]). "Beyond dispute in oral tes timony is that every word spoken falls direct f romthe lips of the witness" (210 n). Indeed, for Langer "oral tes timony isdist inguished by theabsence of literary mediation" (57). Langer, however, also makes this thought-provokingcomment: "Though we have the option ofrejecting such tes timony asa form ofhistory, wealso face the challenge ofenlarging our notion ofwhat his tory may be, what the Holocausthas made of it, and how it urges us to reconsider the relation of past to present (in a lesshopeful way, to besure), and of both to the tentative future" (109) . (Langer returns to theseand related questions in his P r ee m pt in g t he H o lo ca u st [New Haven: Yale University Press,1998].)

Se e also the insightful analysis of Mar ianne Hirsch (ali terary critic) , who extends theinvestigation of testimonies and witness ing into the study ofphotographs and their relationto narrative ( Fa m il y F r am e s: P h ot og ra ph y , N a rr at iv e, a nd P o st me m or y [Cambridge: HarvardUnivers ity Press , 1997]). She proposes the notion of postmemory for the memory of latergenerations not directly implicated in events: "Postmernory characterizes the experience ofthose who grow up dominated by nar ratives that preceded their bir th, whose own belatedstories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic eventsthat can be nei ther unde rs tood nor recr ea ted . I have developed thi s not ion in re la tion tochildren ofHolocaust survivors , but I believe it may usefully descr ibe other second genera-tion memories of cultural or collective traumatic events and experiences" (22).

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