Fascination, Narrative, and Trauma in the Holocaust Imaginary
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University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 2009 Absent meaning: Fascination, narrative, and trauma in the Holocaust imaginary Christopher Scott Massey University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Massey, Christopher Scott, "Absent meaning: Fascination, narrative, and trauma in the Holocaust imaginary" (2009). Doctoral Dissertations. 479. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/479 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSENT MEANING: FASCINATION, NARRATIVE, AND TRAUMA IN THE HOLOCAUST IMAGINARY BY CHRISTOPHER SCOTT MASSEY B.A. ENGLISH, EAST TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY, 1994 M.A. ENGLISH, JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY, 1998 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English May, 2009 UMI Number: 3363723 Copyright 2009 by Massey, Christopher Scott INFORMATION TO USERS 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 bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send 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. UMI UMI Microform 3363723 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED c2009 Christopher Scott Massey This dissertation has been examined and approved. Dissertation Director, Dr. Douglas Lanier, Professor of English Dr. Siobhan Senier, Associate Professor of English Dr. Michael Ferber, Professor of English Dr. Sean Moore, Assistant Professor of English Dr. Mary Rhiel, Associate Professor of German Date DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to Carrie Loewenthal, whose encouragement, patience, and love have given these pages and their author new life. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Siobhan Senier, Mary Rhiel, Sean Moore, and Michael Ferber, for their patience and support. I am especially grateful to my dissertation director, Douglas Lanier, for his advocacy of this project, his generosity of time and attention, and his valuable guidance in bringing the project to completion. Much of this dissertation develops out of my work with Petar Ramadanovic, whose imprint on the project is deep. I thank him for the strong role he has played in developing the dissertation's central concerns and in the refinement of their expression. Kuhio Walters has been a good friend, a critical reader, and an insightful commentator. I appreciate his help with the project and his friendship. This project benefited from the generous assistance of the Graduate School at the University of New Hampshire. A summer teaching assistant fellowship in 2002 allowed me to do research into Pynchon's novel, and a Dissertation Fellowship for the year 2003- 2004 gave me the resources to research much of the dissertation and write chapter four. My time in Boston and at the University of Massachusetts Boston was sustained largely by the friendship of Matt Brown. I thank him for our many stimulating conversations, for our work with the UMass Theory Group, and for a summer's worth of brilliant World Cup viewing. A special debt of thanks is owed to Michael Powell at the Imperial War Museum, London, for assistance with technical and historical material related to the V-2 rocket. v Mark Facknitz advised an M.A. thesis on Herbert Read, Paul Nash, and post- WWI romanticism, the ideas of which inform the work of this dissertation. More than that, Mark gave me invaluable lessons in how to read and write with integrity and seriousness of purpose. It was with Mark that I traveled through France exploring its memorial topography, an experience that will remain a highlight of my professional life. I cherish our decade-long collaboration and friendship, and I thank Mark for it. My mother and father, Ken and Patsy Massey, and my brother, Ken Massey, Jr., have never wavered in their support. I thank them for their love and guidance. Carrie Loewenthal gave me the strength and courage to come back to this project and a vision of a future in which it is complete. I thank her for our life together, the greatest gift I have ever received. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v ABSTRACT x CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 I. RECONSIDERING "FASCINATING FASCISM" 13 Introduction 13 "Fascinating Fascism" in Context 17 "Fascinating Fascism" and Fascist Aesthetics 20 "Fascinating Fascism's" Intellectual Antecedents 25 Fascination, Past and Present 35 Fascination, Beauty, and Sadomasochism 38 Conclusion 44 II. KITSCH, FASCINATION, AND THE NARRATIVES OF THE "NEW DISCOURSE" IN FRIEDLANDER' S REFLECTIONS OF NAZISM 52 Introduction 52 "Nazism as Such": The Psychological Dimension 57 Art and the "New Discourse" 60 An Example of the "New Discourse": The Portage to San Cristobal ofA.H. ...64 vii Kitsch 66 Kitsch and Emplotment in Holocaust-Themed Sexploitation Film 71 The Portage to San Cristobal ofA.H. as Kitsch Narative 78 Fascination and Fetishism 81 Conclusion 86 III. ON THE "EMPATHIC UNSETTLEMENT": FASCINATION, TRAUMA, AND TRAUMA STUDIES 93 Introduction 93 Trauma 97 LaCapra: Structural and Historical Trauma, Absence and Loss 99 Melancholic Fascination 103 Fascinated Discourse 110 LaCapra, Lyotard 113 Transference, Empathy, Experience 118 Conclusion 124 IV. "IMAGES OF THE UNCERTAINTY": READING TRAUMA IN GRA VITY'S RAINBOW 133 Introduction 133 Gravity' s Rainbow 142 A Progressive Knotting Into 154 Dora, After 162 Conclusion 169 V. CONCLUSION: TOWARD AN ETHICS OF FASCINATION 181 vii Introduction 181 Work 187 Image 204 Fascination 215 BIBLIOGRAPHY 228 viii ABSTRACT ABSENT MEANING: FASCINATION, NARRATIVE, AND TRAUMA IN THE HOLOCAUST IMAGINARY BY CHRISTOPHER SCOTT MASSEY UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, MAY, 2009 Examining post-1970 representations of the Holocaust and Nazism along with critical responses to these representations, the dissertation demonstrates how a use of the term "fascination" has shaped contemporary understandings of how the Holocaust should and should not be represented and remembered. My argument is that despite its pervasive and influential usage in the discourse of Holocaust representation, no critical attention has been given to what the term means. In as much as the term's usage draws the historical and ethical boundaries across which representations of the Holocaust cannot pass, this dearth of critical attention given to the term means that these boundaries are not clearly defined. This dissertation gives definition and context to the use of the term "fascination" in three representative thinkers from the post-Holocaust epoch: Susan Sontag in the 1970s; Saul Friedlander in the 1980s; and Dominick LaCapra in the 1990s and 2000s. By focusing on their use of "fascination," I trace the historical and aesthetic development of representations of the Holocaust and the critical discourses that develop around them. I x contend that, contra the understanding of "fascination" demonstrated by Sontag, Friedlander, and LaCapra, the term may in fact designate ethically responsible modes of engagement with the art and literature of the Holocaust. My assessment of "fascination" in the Holocaust Imaginary thus provides definitional contours to an oft-used but little understood term and also points toward possible new understandings of how the catastrophic past is to be given narrative representation. xi INTRODUCTION To introduce this dissertation, allow me to recount the story of how I came to the subject of fascination: In the summer of 2000, a colleague and I developed and then co-led a summer study abroad trip. With eighteen undergraduate students, we traveled through England, France, and Belgium in an intensive, on-site examination of what Pierre Nora characterizes as lieux de memoire and Jay Winter calls "sites of memory, sites of mourning": places—battlefields, cemeteries, memorials, monuments, parks, museums—designated for the commemoration of the First and Second World Wars. In our course, devoted to exploring how contemporary commemorative culture remembers, forgets, or at times remembers in order to forget, the First and Second World Wars were offered as the two halves of one tremendous, cataclysmic historical event, beginning, antecedents aside, in 1914 and ending, aftereffects notwithstanding, in 1945. Thus our travels took us to Paris's Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation 1940-1945; London's Cabinet War Rooms, Cenotaph at Whitehall, and Imperial War Museum; the Great War battlefields of Verdun, the Somme, and Flanders; Kathe Kollwitz's statues of grieving parents at the German military cemetery at Vladlso, Begium; Oradour sur Glane; and Paul Landowski's monumental statuary works La France and Lesphantomes