MPHIL IN ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
in association with
THE HERZOG CENTRE FOR JEWISH AND NEAR EASTERN RELIGION AND CULTURE, TRINITY
COLLEGE DUBLIN
RE-PRESENTING THE SHOAH FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Conference held at
University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
13-14 March 2001
The ongoing debate as to the possibility of speech, or discourse, about the
Holocaust was inspired by Adorno's famous claim that 'after Auschwitz it is
no longer possible to write poems' and fuelled by survivors such as Elie
Wiesel, who insisted that only survivors were entitled to speak about the
Shoah. On the one side of the debate are those, such as George Steiner, who
argue that the Shoah is unspeakable and that the best response is silence.
Studying the Shoah may demand a Foucauldian 'archaeology of silence'.
However, as argued by Derrida, is such an approach in itself not an order,
an organised language, a project, a syntax, a work? On the other side of
the debate stand people such as Paul Celan, and Laurence Langer, who argue,
as Adorno himself did later, that surrendering to silence would be a
surrender to cynicism and by implication, to the very forces that created
Auschwitz in the first place.
Memory of the Shoah features prominently in the cultural legacy of the 20th
century. This conference aims to debate representations and
re-memorisations at the age in which, on the one hand, there is a
proliferation of discourses about the Shoah, and on the other, arguments
are voiced concerning a 'holocaust industry' and banalisation. Papers about
the meanings and interpretations of the Shoah from a perspective of the
beginning of the 21st century will refer to a multiplicity of media, from
the written word through various art forms. Sessions will discuss personal
testimony, literature, theatre, film, television, music, historiography,
museums and education. Several presentations will be given by practicing
writers and artists, who will be happy to discuss their work with the
audience.
Keynote speakers: Professor Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor, Univ. of
Leeds
Aharon Appelfeld, Israeli author and Shoah survivor
Conference sponsors: Goethe Institute, Dublin; Embassy of Israel, Dublin;
The Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religion and Culture, TCD;
Department of Sociology, TCD.
PROGRAMME
Pre conference day:
Monday, 12 March 2001 Goethe Institute, 37 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
4 pm - 10 pm Film screenings - programme to be announced
Tuesday, 13 March 2001 Walton / Ussher Theatres,
Arts Building, Trinity College, Dublin 2
9.00 - 9.30 Registration
9.30 - 9.45 Greetings
9.45 - 11.00 Plenary session:
Reality and representation after the Shoah
Paul Sars: Poetry after Auschwitz: Aesthetics of hermetism; about the
poetry of Paul Celan
Andrea Tyndall: Authority, authenticity and the replication of the Shoah
in an age of mass mediated education
11.00 - 11.30 Coffee break
11.30 - 13.00 Parallel sessions:
1. Historiography, policy and state memory (a)
Joseph Nevo: The attitude of Arab-Palestinian historiography to Nazi
Germany and the Holocaust
Katrina Goldstone: Perceptions of the Holocaust in Ireland
Ruth Linn: The escape from Auschwitz and Israeli historiography
2. The Shoah and Jewish identity
Debra Renee Kaufman: Post-Holocaust narratives and Jewish identity:
twenty to thirty year olds speak about the Holocaust
Catherine Hezser: The Shoah in American Jewish writing: Bernard Malamud,
Rebecca Goldstein, Thane Rosenbaum
Esther Fuchs: Nationhood, gender and Holocaust: is identity possible
after Zionism or Judaism?
13.00 - 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 - 15.30 Parallel sessions:
1. Historiography, policy and state memory (b)
Michael Shafir: Holocaust denial and minimization in post-community east
central Europe
Denise Roman: Holocaust vs. Gulag: Competing memories in post-community
Romania
Philip Spencer: The Shoah and Marxism: Behind and beyond silence
2. Auto/biographies and representability
Veronica Zangl: Logorrhoea
Carmel Finnan: The Shoah and the second generation: A German-Jewish
perspective
Liliana Ruth Feierstein: 'But he doesn't utter a word': Name, silence,
memory, the darkness of the Shoah
15.30 - 16.00 Coffee break
16.00 - 18.00 Plenary session:
The Shoah and the creative process
Janina Bauman: Entering the world of a Holocaust victim: schoolchildren
discuss a ghetto memoir
Nava Semel: Life after death in families of Holocaust survivors
19.00 Keynote lecture:
Prof Zygmunt Bauman: The what and how of the Holocaust memory
Wednesday, 14 March 2001 Walton / Ussher Theatres
Arts Building, Trinity College, Dublin 2
9.30 - 11.00 Plenary session:
Language, memory and silence
Heidrun Friese: 'As that world awakened, the word passed
away' - On the (im)possibility of representation
Ronit Lentin: 'To remember, to forget': gendering the silences in the
relations between Israel and the Shoah
11.00 - 11.30 Cofee break
11.30 - 13.00 Parallel sessions:
1. The Shoah in testimony and Literature
Neima Barzel: Testimony as literature and literature as testimony: Abba
Kovner and Amir Guttfreund
Dermot Fagan: Alain Finkielkraut and the century of useless suffering
Idith Knebel: Changes over time in the re-presentation of the Holocaust
in survivor testimonies
2. Shoah memory and representation
Efrat Tseelon: On representing the evil 'with a human face' (???)
Angela Reinicke: 'It's the undertones that set the tone': Albert Drach's
'Poetology of Absence' in Unsentimental Journey
Sabine Kock: (Im) possibilities of the power of imagination after the
reality of the Shoah
13.00 - 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 - 15.00 Parallel sessions:
1. The use of humour
Anne Fuchs: Representing the Shoah: Black humour and satire in the works
of Edgar Hilsenrath
Massimo Leone: Shoah and laughter
2. Theatre and television representations
Olav Shroer: The Shoah and the problem of representability in
contemporary Israeli and German-speaking theatre
Jon Silverman: It's not my Shoah: images of the Holocaust
15.00 - 15.30 Coffee break
Plenary session:
15.30 - 18.00 Coming to terms with the Shoah
Thomas Elsaesser: Absence as presence, presence as parapraxis:
Representations and the Holocaust in the new German cinema
Anna Adam: Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
Melanie Brown: 'I have not seen a butterfly around here'
20.00 Keynote speaker: Aharon Apelfeld
RE-PRESENTING THE SHOAH FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
REGISTRATION FORM
NAME
..
ADDRESS
..
..
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CONFERENCE FEE:
Before 19 February 2001
IR£50.00IR or $55.00
Student £30.00 or $35.00
After 19 February 2001
£55.00IR or $63.00
Student £35.00IR or $40.00
Zygmunt Bauman's lecture only
£5.00IR or $6.00
Student £3.00IR or $3.50
Please make cheques payable to 'Ethnic and Racial Studies'
Return with the completed form to:
Dr Ronit Lentin, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Department of Sociology,
Trinity College Dublin 2, Ireland
Further information from Ronit Lentin ([log in to unmask]) or Brid O'Farrell
([log in to unmask])
Dr Ronit Lentin
Course coordinator,
MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies,
Department of Sociology, University of Dublin,
Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Tel: 353 1 6082766. Fax: 353 1 6771300.
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www2.tcd.ie/Sociology/mphil.htm
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