[Reader-list] Re: Re:

[Rana Dasgupta]

a lot of interesting reflections on memory, poetry
and, to use a word that has become generic, holocaust.
 i have not been on the list much recently and have
spent an evening catching up.

to return to the starting point - a poem posted by
professor Saint - i think that not becoming
blackmailed by the existence of true human suffering
into surrendering one's critical standing ground is
actually a crucial issue to which ribald resistance
might be an extremely important response.

when it becomes impossible to criticise a
representation of suffering without being accused of
denying the suffering, one has to ask: In the name of
what is this silencing happening?  people can suffer
very much but write bad poetry.  more importantly,
they can suffer very much but their suffering, in the
public domain, be part of a wider political formation
which is very different from the original suffering,
perhaps to the extent of being morally repugnant.  to
make either of these points is not to deny the
suffering, even though voices of great moral authority
assure you that it is so.  

i'm obviously thinking in part of the jewish
holocaust.  the governments of the victorious nations
decided in 1945 that the 'labour camps' (as they were
then referred to, since belsen, rather than auschwitz,
was the archetypal camp, largely due to a government
sponsored travelling photo exhibition) were to be
shown to the people not as the specific tragedy of the
jews (etc) but of the universal reminder of what
facism would have done to the world.  the jewish
element was actively suppressed.  without taking into
account the trauma, aphasia and shame that brought
that silence down to the individual level.

the jewish campaign to 'reclaim' the holocaust has
been stunningly successful, from the Eichmann trial of
1961 throug a major US TV series in 1973 to a
contemporary plethora of stone and celluloid
representations.  it has succeeded to the extent that
showing any kind of discomfort with the reclaimed
history is met by wariness and often hostility in
otherwise liberal american society today.  one
language only is permissible to talk about the
holocaust - epic tragedy (with the conspicuous and
somewhat curious exception of roberto benigni's 'la
vita e bella') - and with this regime comes a
silencing of all critique of how the memory is
politically mobilised (and since benigni's film
avoided the political entirely, perhaps that explains
how it could 'play' with the holocaust).

i think that such powerful social censorship goes a
long way to explain the way in which the various
silences of the US press on Israel can sustain their
legitimacy.

this is the sacralisation of a particular memory, a
particular version of history, which has built into it
a moral dismissal of those who disagree.  it generates
complex and viciously enacted aesthetic rules for the
memorialisation of the original suffering (such as
could be seen in the furious debate in the jewish
community over 'schindler's list', which broke one of
the primary rules: you do not show the death
chambers).  and it links everything together so that
you cannot criticise any part of it without being
found guilty of dismissing the whole.

i find the back-and-forth on this list and the
frequent invocation of moral categories in surprising
contexts extremely interesting in this context.

R

PS Am highly impressed by the infinitesimal gradations
of 'in' and 'out of' this list that exist...  CC boxes
seem to be like the purgatorial waiting chamber
between being in and being totally cast out...

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax
http://taxes.yahoo.com/