LIFE WRITING the HOLOCAUST Margaret Polizos Peterson, Doctor
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PROJECT OF MEMORY: LIFE WRITING THE HOLOCAUST Margaret Polizos Peterson, Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor Francine H. Hultgren Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership This phenomenological study explores the lived experience of life writing the Holocaust. Life writing is the term used to describe personal biographical and autobiographical accounts in many genres (Jolly, 2001). As research concerned with how personal writing of the Holocaust is experienced by the writers themselves, this work explores the ways in which memory, narrative and history intersect in the writing processes of each writer. What insights might we gain about personal writing as a tool for helping to understand the past? What might we learn about historical events, such as the Holocaust, from crafted writing made by eyewitnesses? What does it mean for these writers to do this work? What may we learn about personal writing as a mode of learning? This research is done in the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology and draws on the work of philosophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, and particularly Levinas, as foundational grounding for this study. The work of David Carr, who describes our understanding of experience and history as narrative in nature helped to guide this research as well. Van Manen provides a systematic process by which research employing hermeneutic phenomenological philosophy can be done. Through engagement with the literature surrounding the existential phenomenon; research on writing after trauma; literature and research on survivor testimony; philosophical and psychological research concerning the nature of memory and critical analysis of historical consciousness and historiology, I formed questions that guided my conversations with participants. I recruited twelve participants, members of The Memory Project, a writing group of Holocaust survivors at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for this study. My phenomenological data suggests that life writing the Holocaust acts as a mode of seeking coherence for these writers. The narrative structure of memory, as pre-writing for life writing, is employed as a tool for greater self understanding and communication of a self by these writers. In addition, multiple communities are called upon by these writers as they craft and revise the texts they make. Conversations with historians of the Holocaust, dialogue with family members and the interactions within our group guide the remembering and writing of these writers and help add to a sense of their own “narrative coherence” described by Carr (1986). Drawing from insights gained from my participants, I suggest that the lived experience of life writing the Holocaust is a pedagogical process. This process is one in which narrative memory, expanding historical consciousness and writing as impetus and mode of questioning engage these survivors in ongoing discovery and communication of their own life stories. Additionally, I offer an understanding of life writing, memory and history conceived differently than in an objectivist tradition as transformative to a pedagogical sense of engaging in processes of memory, historical consciousness and writing. The Project of Memory: Life Writing the Holocaust by Margaret Polizos Peterson Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Professor Francine Hultgren, Chair and Advisor Professor Barbara Bass Professor Noah Drezner Professor Michael Glaser Professor Jing Lin Professor Joseph McCaleb © Copyright by Margaret Polizos Peterson 2014 ii Dedication For my Mother, who taught me to question. For my Father, who taught me to wonder. For Francine, who taught me these questions. For Michael, who taught me others. For the survivors. For their bearing. For Betsy, who taught me a scholarship of hearing. For my family, Shannon, Cal, Annie, the home, oh the home of my being. iii Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to every one of the members of The Memory Project, both past and present, for sharing their stories with me. The experience of getting to know their lives, their ways of being in the world, has helped to shape me and my sense of what it means to live life well. I am thankful also for the encouragement I have received from each one of my participants, the current members of The Memory Project, as I have worked through each phase of my doctoral study. Their enthusiasm and belief in my potential buoyed me up when the task seemed daunting. I am also indebted to those at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum who believe in the work of The Memory Project and who support it. I gratefully acknowledge Diane Saltzman, Director of Survivor Affairs and Rachel Wimberley, Project Coordinator of Survivor Affairs for their work on behalf of Holocaust survivors and for making the monthly meetings possible and enduring. The Memory Project would not exist if not for the deep care and concern Betsy Anthony, my dear friend, has for the stories of others. Without her sense that there was always going to be more for the survivors to say and her commitment to having them tell their stories themselves, The Memory Project would not be. Aside from being indebted to Betsale for this, I am thankful to her for always being willing to sit and talk, drink and kvetch with me. I have become a scholar by having the way thoughtfully indicated to me by Dr. Francine Hultgren, my advisor and dissertation chair. Through her own way of being in the world she is a model for the kind of pedagogue and leader I hope to become. I am sincerely thankful for this abiding care. I am also filled with gratitude for the guidance iv and assistance given to me by the other members of my committee: Dr. Barbara Bass, Dr. Noah Drezner, Dr. Michael Glaser, Dr. Jing Lin and Dr. Joseph McCaleb, who helps me to remember again and again that our being is always in process. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: THE PROJECT OF BUILDING: LAYING THE DOORSILL 1 The Project 1 The Context of Questions 2 Possessing the Questions 3 The Possibility of a Project 6 The Clean White Paper: A Building Site 9 The Past We Can Know 10 Being on the Doorsill 13 Being In Questioning, Dwelling In 14 The Master’s House 15 The Master’s Tools 18 Re-Membering our Dwelling 20 The Life Writing 23 In Being 24 Sistering the Beams: Re-Membering Our Dwelling 28 The Ring of the Hammer: Re-Membering Our Dwelling Through Resonance 31 Constructing the Self: From Life Story and Lived Experience to Life Writing 37 Life Writing, The Structure of Memory and Being in the World 40 In The Building: Joinery 43 Inhabiting the Questions: Being in the Building 47 Re-Membering: A Narrative Structure 49 The House Built by Hermeneutic Phenomenology 51 The Doorway Itself: Further Into the Building 52 CHAPTER TWO: ASSEMBLING THE STRUCTURE: A FRAMEWORK OF MEMBERS 54 The Vernacular Architecture of Memory, Narrative, History and Writing 54 The Built and Building Past: Memory and Forgetting 58 Forgetting: Hammer and Nail 60 Memory: In the Making 62 Memory: Both Form and Function 63 The Reconstructed Past: How to Tell a "True Story" 68 Holding Together: Narrative Coherence 70 The First Story: Narrative as Human Structure 73 The Slide of the Lock: History as Opening 75 Room and Board: The Table as Gathering Place 79 To Come To The Table: Symbols as Gathering Place 80 The Unfinished Product: Writing as Building Process 82 vi CHAPTER THREE: ASSEMBLING THE CONSTITUENTS: CORNERSTONES AND KEYS 86 The Home Phenomenology Builds: The Growing Doorway 86 Being At Home: The Researcher in the Methodology 88 The Opening: Writing as Dis-covering 91 The Four Existentials: Frame and Structure of Lived Experience 93 Lived Time 95 Lived Space 97 Lived Body 98 Lived Relationship 99 Perspective: Coming to an Understanding of Standing 100 The Shape of The Doorway: What is Seen Through Hermeneutic Phenomenology 103 Cornerstones: Themes Essential to the Phenomenon 106 The Window Frame's Keystones: History and Memory 107 Writing and Narrative: The Mullioned Windows 111 Care and Keeping: Phenomenology as Methodology 113 Being-In: "Turning to a Phenomenon Which Seriously Interests Us and Commits us to the World" 114 Moving Further In: "Investigating Experience As We Live It Rather Than As We Conceptualize It" 116 Exposing The Structure: "Reflecting on the Essential Themes Which Characterize the Phenomenon" 118 Building On: "Describing the Phenomenon Through the Art of Writing and Rewriting" 119 The Well Built House: "Maintaining a Strong and Orientated Pedagogical Relation to the Phenomenon" 121 Made Of and By: "Balancing the Research Context by Considering Parts and Whole" 121 A Plan To Build 122 The Members Themselves 123 CHAPTER FOUR: DWELLING IN: THE SITE OF THE DEMOLITION 131 No Place of Visitation: Inhabiting Air 133 Incomplete Knowledge: Being Historically 135 The Loss of Home: Denial of the Ordinary 136 On the Wide Front Porch: Audience as Expanding Purpose 139 The Empty House: Detachment in Fact 143 “Transformation Into Structure:” The Reciprocal Building of Story 147 Building On: The Stifling Structure of Form 150 The Blueprint of the One Holocaust Story 154 From Door to Door: The Body Telling 158 Built or Building: Process as Product 161 “In the Unity of Geschichte” 163 vii Building On: Remembering as Project 166 Getting it Out: A Project Complete 167 Constructing the Past: