Peter E. Gordon
All too often, and with the cool assurance of intellectual sophistication, it is said that post-Holocaust culture has entered upon an era of traumatic excess—an apotheosis of a victim whose moral stature has grown so exorbitant that no representation can ever be adequate and no reparation can suffice. Suffering, we are told, has been fetishized, then instrumentalized, and finally displaced by its simulacrum. But even if such complaints merit consideration, the question is rarely posed as to just why we are so quick to doubt the reality of the victim's experience: What covert investments underlie the very critique of suffering? And what are the paradigms that shape our expectations of 'proper’ or ‘proportionate’ suffering such that when confronted with actual testimony we suppress our empathy and avert our gaze? These are only a few of the questions that animate Carolyn J. Dean’s provocative and critically agile reflections in this new book on the place of the victim in post-Holocaust theory and historiography. Aversion and Erasure simply abounds with originality and insight.
Ethan Kleinberg
In Aversion and Erasure, Carolyn J. Dean offers stunning insight into the enormous influence the concepts of victimhood and suffering bring to bear on current debates in history, identity, and human rights, as well as in political controversies. She allows the richness and complexity of issues including the iconic status of the Holocaust and the category of Jewish victimhood to unfold over the course of the book.
