Holocaust literature and the taboo

Boswell, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0041-5583 2014. Holocaust literature and the taboo. Adams, Jenni, ed. The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 179-197. (10.5040/9781472593801.ch-009)

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Abstract

This essay considers taboos that have developed in and around Holocaust literature, focusing on controversial, fictional responses to the Holocaust, with a particular emphasis on the representation of perpetrators. All of the writers discussed draw on the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, and this essay takes Freud’s reading of social taboos as a model for interpreting transgressive forms of historical representation and cultural practice, arguing that the proscription of certain forms of Holocaust representation constitutes an attempt to foreclose responses to the genocide that are particularly difficult to articulate or deal with, such as the ‘fascination of Fascism’, the ordinariness of perpetrator identities, and ambivalent attitudes towards the dead. It makes a case for the value of novels and poems which engage with truths about our relationship with history that are never straightforwardly empirical, arguing that they are fundamental to what the Germans term ‘working through’ or ‘dealing with’ (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) the knowledge and cultural legacy of the Holocaust.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History P Language and Literature > PR English literature P Language and Literature > PS American literature P Language and Literature > PT Germanic literature
Publisher:	Bloomsbury
ISBN:	9781472593801
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 March 2025
Last Modified:	02 Apr 2025 11:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176756

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