Elija’s Reviews > Maus Now: Selected Writing > Status Update

“Holocaust laughter?” explores why comedy is a better and more active media through which to explore tragedies ‘..the comic spirit proceeds in an antimimetic mode that mocks what is, that deflates or even cancels authority of its object.’

prev essay. to remember genocide without abusing its memory, to confront jewish violence while acknowledging the ever present filter of self-hatred - these are the difficult intellectual tasks which mark the minefield of identity explored in Maus through the “lowbrow” medium of comics.

“We were talking jewish” talked in depth about language and the changing identity of jewishness, touched on israel and need for current representation.’All discourse that partakes of the innocence/redemption dialectic ultimately serves as a legitimating apparatus for j chauvinism and for the j state since within its terms we cannot acknowledge j as themselves victimisers either as individual or collective