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Curriculum and the Holocaust: Competing Sites of Memory and *Representation

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Curriculum and the Holocaust: Competing Sites of Memory and *Representation Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1999 Curriculum and the Holocaust: Competing Sites of Memory and *Representation. Marla Beth Morris Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Morris, Marla Beth, "Curriculum and the Holocaust: Competing Sites of Memory and *Representation." (1999). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 7112. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/7112 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CURRICULUM AND THE HOLOCAUST: COMPETING SITES OF MEMORY AND REPRESENTATION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Curriculum and Instruction by Marla Morris B.A., Tulane University, 1991 M.A., Loyola University, 1993 December 1999 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number 9960083 __ ® UMI UMI Microform 9960083 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION I dedicate this work to Mary Aswell Doll. You have been my mentor, my friend and constant companion throughout many tough writing moments. You are a great teacher. I remember sitting in your classroom at Tulane University, in what you term u pedestrian writing 102," many years ago and thought that you were the Dewey of Tulane. I remember thinking to myself: here is a progressive educator, a progressive teacher. That was 1988. Now it is 1999 and I think that because of your influence and great teaching I have been able to write this most difficult dissertation. You have taught me more about writing than anyone else. Yet more than that, you have given me the nurturing that young scholars need. The Goddesses sent you, of that I am sure. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the many people who have helped me move my thinking along over the years. The conversations I have had with all of these wonderful souls have helped me grow intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Without the mentoring of all of these people I would not have been able to write this dissertation. I would like to thank Ronna Berger, Cathy Binstock, Alan Block, Deborah P. Britzman, Toby Daspit, Brent Davis, Mary Aswell Doll, William Doll Jr., Vivus Dorwin Jr., Tibby Duboys, Father Steven Duffy, Elizabeth Ellsworth, Denise Egea-Kuehne, James Gaffney, Rhoda Gilpin, Lillian Glick, Rabbi David Goldstein, Shannie Goldstein, Denis Janz, Rosan Jordan, Harisimran Khalsa, Wendy Kohli, Janet Miller, Petra Munro, Marshall Parks, William F. Pinar, Elaine Riley, Paula Salvio, Mike Siddoway, Roger Simon, Lisa Snider, Patrick Slattery, Sally Stiller, Dennis Sumara, Susan Talburt, Andrew Reck, Mary B. Virre, Cathy Wessinger, Delese Wear, John Weaver. IN MEMORY This dissertation is in memory of my father, Meyer Morris, who died August 22,1999, the very day I finished this work. In your absence you are present. And yet you are gone. You lived just the way you wanted to. You died the way you wanted to. And I thank God you died peacefully in your sleep. I respond to the call to remember you. Anti-establishment to the core. You were radical and funny, charming and good-hearted. You were the most generous person I knew. You cut through the trivial and only had profound thoughts, philosophic thoughts about lived experience. King Lear, Willie Loman and Sancho Panza were never far from your thoughts. Death does not allow us to say goodbye. But death isn’t exactly goodbye either. You will be with me in memory, for I am my father’s daughter. They used to say to me “you are a spittin’ iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. image of Mike.” And so I am, in many ways, like you. I look like you, think like you. But I'm not as radical. I only wish you could have lived long enough to see me complete my doctorate. And so I honor your memory the best way I know how. I have devoted my life work to the task of memory, and it is ironic that the very day I finished my dissertation, August 22,1999, you died. God works in uncanny ways. I wish I could have told you that I loved you more than anybody, except Mary-- of course. But I felt that we were soul mates in many ways. You will be missed. Along with my father, I have written this work in memory of the following people: George Gabris, Ida Gabris, Irwin Glick, Richard Kendrick, Sally Morris, Milton Morris, Bea Schwartz, Hershey Schwartz, Hyme Schwartz, Mary Schwartz, Morris Schwartz, Rebecka Sneiderman, Harry Stiller. And the six million others. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION..............................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................... iii ABSTRACT............................................................................................. vii CHAPTER 1 CURRICULUM THEORY AND THE HOLOCAUST.................1 General Overview of Study............................................ 11 Education and the Holocaust............................................ 17 2 A PSYCHOANALYTIC HERMENEUTIC................................33 The Vicissitudes of Classical Psychoanalytic Theory............................................................................... 34 Object Relations Theory................................................... 63 The Limits of Psychohistory............................................ 74 3 REPRESENTATION AND ANTI-SEMITISM....................... 80 Understanding the Notion of Representation................87 Historical Overview of Anti-Semitism..............................97 Effects of Anti-Semitic Representations.................... 115 4 MEMORY AND HISTORY................................................ 121 Collective and Personal Memory............................... 124 Memory, the Unconscious and the Holocaust.... 132 The Memory Text of History: The Unconscious and the Holocaust................................................................ 144 The Vicissitudes of Historiography.............................158 The Vicissitudes of Historical Interpretation 163 5 MEMORY TEXT OF HOLOCAUST HISTORIES................ 167 Perpetrator Histories....................................................... 174 Victim Histories...............................................................196 Bystander Histories.......................................................... 216 6 MEMORY TEXT OF HOLOCAUST NOVELS................ 228 Jewish Novels.................................................................. 239 German (non-Jewish) Novels...................................... 254 7 UNDER THE SIGN OF DYSTOPIA................................ 277 Remembering Utopianism.......................................... 283 The Four Horsemen of Utopianism................................291 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. REFERENCES........................................................................................310
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