Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation

by Michael Rothberg

Literary Theory/Cultural Studies Analyzes the impact of historical trauma on contemporary culture. How to approach the Holocaust and its relationship to late twentieth-century society? While some stress the impossibility of comprehending this event, others attempt representations in forms as different as the nonfiction novel (and Hollywood blockbuster) Schindler's List, the documentary Shoah, and the comic book Maus. This problem is at the center of Michael Rothberg's book, a focused account of the psychic, intellectual, and cultural aftermath of the Holocaust. Drawing on a wide range of texts, Michael Rothberg puts forth an overarching framework for understanding representations of the Holocaust. Through close readings of such writers and thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Ruth Klger, Charlotte Delbo, Art Spiegelman, and Philip Roth and an examination of films by Steven Spielberg and Claude Lanzmann, Rothberg demonstrates how the Holocaust as a traumatic event makes three fundamental demands on a demand for documentation, a demand for reflection on the limits of representation, and a demand for engagement with the public sphere and commodity culture. As it establishes new grounding for Holocaust studies, his book provides a new understanding of realism, modernism, and postmodernism as responses to the demands of history. Michael Rothberg is assistant professor of English at the University of Miami. Translation University of Minnesota Press

Genres: Nonfiction, Holocaust, History, Cultural, Theory

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Enya · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly enlightening book for anyone interested in the memory of the Holocaust and how it has been interpreted by survivors, academics and creatives alike in recent years.

Pros:
- Rothberg's analysis is straightforward to understand and insightful
- Far from expecting his readers to know the in-and-outs of Maus, Schindler's List, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (which I'm sure, many of them will), Rothberg takes care to provide context

Cons:
- The initial chapters on realism and postmodernism are complex to read as you would expect on those subject matters but the rest of the book is easygoing in comparison - don't be put off by them!
- This is personal interest but I would've enjoyed the book a great deal more and given it that precious 5-star mark had there been more analysis on how the Holocaust is presented in contemporary culture. Rothberg limits the analysis to several things including Maus, Lanzmann's Shoah documentary, and the 'year of the Holocaust' on Saturday Night Live (in the mid-1990s) and though it's very insightful, analysing a few more sources would've been helpful.
- On a similar note to above, this is personal interest rather than a criticism - the chapter on the Americanisation of the Holocaust was fascinating and I wish Rothberg had written more on the subject.


I opened this book looking for some short and sweet analysis to put in an essay I was finishing that needed to pack a little more of a punch before I submitted it two days later. Instead, I spent a good chunk of that essay-writing time poring over the pages completely fascinated by Rothberg's analysis of Holocaust representation, particularly his analysis of Maus and of the Americanisation of the Holocaust.

This is an insightful book for anyone interested in that field of research and Rothberg's thoughts on how the memory of the Holocaust is being used to propagate American values is both chilling and intriguing.
For an academic text, this book manages to be both highly comprehensive and very readable which is a hard balance to manage, particularly when it comes to talking about postmodernism and the effects of the memory of historical events in contemporary culture and politics. It's well worth a read and I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest, whether casual or academic, in how the Holocaust is being represented and why this representation is of vital importance to its memory and the place historical trauma has within modern society when it comes to commercialism, globalisation, identity politics, and the media.

[Brandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a research paper for grad school.

Although only two chapters are immediate relevant to my work, Rothberg's book is very informative and interestingly written and if I didn't have more self control, I probably would have sat and read the entire thing much more closely, haha.