David Patterson 
The Holocaust and the Nonrepresentable 
Literary and Photographic Transcendence

Many books focus on issues of Holocaust representation, but few address why the Holocaust in particular poses such a representational problem. David Patterson draws from Emmanuel Levinas’s contention that the Good cannot be represented. He argues that the assault on the Good is equally nonrepresentable and this nonrepresentable aspect of the Holocaust is its distinguishing feature. Utilizing Jewish religious thought, Patterson examines how the literary word expresses the ineffable and how the photographic image manifests the invisible. Where the Holocaust is concerned, representation is a matter not of imagination but of ethical implication, not of what it was like but of what must be done. Ultimately Patterson provides a deeper understanding of why the Holocaust itself is indefinable—not only as an evil but also as a fundamental assault on the very categories of good and evil affirmed over centuries of Jewish teaching and testimony.

Cuprins

List of Photographs

Acknowledgments

Preface



Part I. Reflections on Holocaust Representation and the Nonrepresentable: Theoretical Considerations



By Way of a Prologue



Naming
It



Naming Auschwitz



Post-Auschwitz Implications for an Understanding of Language



The Nonrepresentable and the Murder of the Mother



The Silent Scream



The Nonrepresentable Site of Silence



Naming the Name, the Nameless, and the Assault on the Name



The Nonrepresentable Assault on the Nonrepresentable Good



The Assault on Time, the Death of Death, and Holocaust Representation



A Memory and a Name



Part II. The Literary Transcendence of Holocaust Representation: Speaking the Ineffable



Opening Thoughts: Epiphany and the Ultimate



A Word about Method: Substitution and the Transcendent



The Extermination of the Eternal



The Annihilation of the Father



The Obliteration of the Mother



The Collapse of Human Relation



The Disintegration of Knowledge



The Devastation of the Word



The Demolition of Meaning



The Desolation of the Soul



The Death of Death



The Eradication of the Child



Part III. The Photographic Transcendence of Holocaust Representation: Revealing the Invisible



The Legacy of Lot’s Wife



Footprints



The Glory under Assault



The Mothers of Israel



The Child



The Face



The Edge of the Anti-World



The Grave without a Cemetery



The Muselmann



Selection: No Judge and No Judgment



A View from the Gas Chambers



Notes

Bibliography

Index

Despre autor

David Patterson is Hillel A. Feinberg Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. His many books include
Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins.