Third-Generation Holocaust Representation: Trauma, History, and Memory

Cultural Expressions of World War II

by Victoria Aarons, Alan L. Berger

Victoria Aarons and Alan L. Berger show that Holocaust literary representation has continued to flourish well into the twenty-first century—gaining increased momentum even as its perspective shifts, as a third generation adds its voice to the chorus of post-Holocaust writers. In negotiating the complex thematic imperatives and narrative conceits of the literature of third-generation writers, this bold new work examines those structures, tropes, patterns, ironies, disjunctions, and overall tensions that produce a literature that laments unrecoverable loss for a generation removed spatially and temporally from the extended trauma of the Holocaust. Aarons and Berger address evolving notions of “postmemory”; the intergenerational and ongoing transmission of trauma; issues of Jewish cultural identity; inherited memory; the psychological tensions of post-Holocaust Jewish identity; the characteristic tropes of memory and the personalized narrative voice; issues of generational dislocation and anxiety; the recurrent antagonisms of assimilation and historical alienation; the imaginative re-creation and reconstruction of the past; and the future of Holocaust memory and representation.

280 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2005

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

Waste of time. This reads like an extended book report for high school- a feeling generated by how much the author is forcing direct quotes to become the content of the work and how, instead of actually expanding and building any depth for their points, they just repeatedly fire off more examples of the same thing.