The Holocaust and the Maternal Body: an Exploration of The
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The Holocaust and the Maternal Body: An Exploration of the Diverse Deployment of the Symbolic Maternal Body as a Discursive Trope in Holocaust Literature and its Impact on the Construction and Proliferation of Collective Memory. By Carmelle Margaret Stephens Doctoral Thesis Presented to The School of English University of Sheffield Tuesday 31st of July 2018 Dedicated to the memory of Myrtle Wooldridge Table of Contents Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................3 Abstract......................................................................................................................................4 Introduction................................................................................................................................6 Chapter One: The Angel Behind the Fence..............................................................................31 Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys.............................................................................................38 Isabella Leitner, Fragments of Isabella................................................................................63 Penelope Holt, The Apple...................................................................................................75 Chapter Two: Nationalism, Motherhood and Abjection..........................................................95 Chapter Three: Projective Identification: The Maternal Body and the Ethnic Self...............136 Chapter Four: The Maternal Body and the Archive...............................................................181 Conclusion..............................................................................................................................226 Appendix A............................................................................................................................235 Massacre at Ivangorod, 1942.............................................................................................235 Appendix B............................................................................................................................236 Images of Maternal Martyrdom.........................................................................................236 Appendix C............................................................................................................................238 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial by Nathan Rappaport...............................................238 Appendix D............................................................................................................................239 ‘Cheri’ by Judy Dater........................................................................................................239 Appendix E.............................................................................................................................240 ‘The Motherland Calls!’....................................................................................................240 Appendix F.............................................................................................................................241 Deportation from Miedzyrzec Transit Ghetto...................................................................241 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................242 Abstract This thesis explores the significance of maternal symbolism in the examination of Holocaust literature. The majority of the existing research surrounding motherhood and the Holocaust approaches maternity from a specific sociological or cultural standpoint, with the aim of providing further insight into previously marginalised testimony. By way of a departure from this approach, I intend to analyse the significance of maternity as a psychodynamic construct. Whilst I do not go so far as to argue that psychodynamic theory offers a universally applicable maternal archetype, I do argue that a discussion of the maternal influenced by the broadly Lacanian theoretical position that the mother plays a pivotal role in the evolution of subjectivity, lays at the foundation of many of the religious and sociological manifestations of the mother figure that have previously informed analysis of Holocaust literature. Over the course of four chapters I build upon the initial observation that psychodynamic maternal symbolism makes a frequent appearance across multiple genres of Holocaust literature. Using various theoretical models of maternal attachment and identification, I attempt to emphasise the importance of maternal symbolism to the confrontation of many of the over-arcing epistemological and ethical dilemmas that accompany contemporary efforts to confront the traumatic cultural legacy of the Holocaust. The opening chapter explores the use of idealised maternal imagery as a discursive trope in Holocaust memoir. Chapter two examines intergenerational Holocaust memory in terms established by Julia Kristeva’s theory of the maternal abject and its appearance in Bernhard Schlink’s controversial novel The Reader. The third chapter looks at contemporary engagement with the Holocaust using the discursive framework of projective identification. Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Fragments and Sarah Kofman’s Rue Ordener, Rue Labat are analysed using Melanie Klein’s discussion of the mother’s breast as a primary object of attachment. Finally, chapter four uses Melvin Bukiet’s short story ‘The Library of Moloch’ and Norma Rosen’s 1969 novel Touching Evil to examine the metaphysical connection between the archive and the body. Having introduced and established this relationship using ‘The Library of Moloch,’Touching Evil will be discussed in terms its specific deployment of the maternal body as an archetypal memorial vessel. Ultimately I conclude that many of the issues that arise in attempting to confront the Holocaust (on an individual or collective level,) fundamentally arise from discourse surrounding the politics of identity. I posit that the frequent manifestation of the symbolic maternal in Holocaust writing can be attributed to the thematic resonance that exists between these two subjects. The Holocaust is characterised by the disruption of established cultural social and philosophical paradigms, causing us to question the extant assumptions that influence our conception of who we are and what makes us human. The psychodynamic theory that situates the maternal as a master paradigm that sits at the primal origins of the self, renders it uniquely situated as a rhetorical framework to explore many of the problematic issues that surround the continued presence of the Holocaust as a traumatic subtext in western culture. Introduction At the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, Yehiel Dinur famously collapsed on the witness stand after describing the horrors of daily life on ‘the planet of ashes.’1 In 1949 French philosopher David Rousset coined the term l’univers concentrationnaire2 and in ‘The Long Life of Metaphor: An Approach to the Shoah’ George Steiner describes the events of the Holocaust as ‘the abyss of 1938-1945.’3 Notwithstanding the diversity of their provenance, these monikers share one key feature in common; the metaphorical language of space travel and general disruptions in the fabric of reality imply an event that transcends the limitations of human experience and understanding. Owing to the sheer scale of the slaughter, the Holocaust has been widely regarded as a cataclysmic event without historical precedent, and it is viewed as an other-wordly historical nightmare that stretches comprehension to its limit. The emergence of the Holocaust in popular consciousness is commonly attributed to events such as the highly publicised Eichmann trial and the release of the much-maligned television series Holocaust in 1978. In the decades following these watershed events, the rhetoric of contextual inaccessibility has dominated discourse surrounding the representation of the Holocaust; however this particular set of metaphors subtextually evokes a different, and perhaps more unsettling series of implications that contributes to the cultural legacy of the Nazi genocide. The revelation of the appalling crimes of the National Socialist regime had the effect of redefining common assumptions surrounding the human capacity for brutality. In ‘Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate’ Jurgen Habermas describes the Holocaust in the following terms: 1 Jeffrey Wallen, ‘Testimony and Taboo: The Perverse Writings of Ka-Tzetnik 135633,’ Dapim:Studies on the Holocaust, 28.1 (2014), 1-16 (p.2). 2 David Rousset, L’Univers Concentrationnaire, (Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1981). 3 George Steiner, ‘The Long Life of Metaphor: An Approach to “the Shoah,” Writing and the Holocaust, edited by Berel Lang (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988) 154-175 (p.155). There [in Auschwitz] something happened; that up to now nobody considered as even possible. There one touched on something which represents the deep layer of solidarity among all that wears a human face; notwithstanding all the usual acts of beastliness of human history, the integrity of this common layer had been taken for granted...Auschwitz has changed the basis for the continuity of the condition of life within history.4 Habermas’s words imply that the Holocaust should not be viewed as a self-contained event, but as a paradigm-altering rupture in human history. The perpetration of such atrocities