Synopses & Reviews
The Historical Uncanny takes the memory of World War II and the Holocaust in Germany and Italy as a touchstone for exploring the cultural and political mechanisms by which certain memories become inscribed into the heritage of a country or region while others are erased or forgotten.
To this end, the study explores the ways in which historical memories that pose uncomfortable challenges to the self-understanding of the remembering public are often systematically disregarded. I propose the notion of the historical uncanny as something that resists reification precisely because it is uncomfortable or unassimilable to the dominant discourses of commemoration. In this way, the marginalization of the two sites that I examine is made into a productive challenge to the prevailing practices of commemoration and the memory culture in these two countries.
The book focuses on two marginalized aspects of the memory of the Holocaust: the Nazi "euthanasia" program directed against the mentally ill and disabled, and the Fascist persecution of Slovenes, Croats, and Jews in and around Trieste. Central to my approach is the problem of representation and reception. The two memorials under consideration, Grafeneck, a former Nazi euthanasia killing center in Germany, and the Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp memorial in Trieste, bookend the Holocaust, revealing a trajectory from the systematic elimination of socially undesirable people, such as the mentally ill and disabled, to the full-scale racial purification of the Final Solution.
I couple my analysis of memorials to these atrocities with an examination of the literary and artistic representations of the traumatic events in question. This approach has led me to an expanded definition of "site of memory" as an assemblage of cultural artifacts and discourses that accumulate over time; a physical and a cultural space that is continuously redefined, rewritten, and re-presented.
This comparative and interdisciplinary study brings together perspectives from literary studies, memory studies, disability studies, and postcolonial studies that contribute to a broader and more differentiated understanding of the Holocaust and its place in contemporary European memory culture.
Review
"ELan ambitious and highly engaging work."--Sarah Clift, University of King's College
"Susanne Knittel's book is beautifully written and original. It will inspire a necessary and overdue dialogue between Holocaust studies, memory studies, and disability studies."--Michael Rothberg, author of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization
Review
"...an ambitious and highly engaging work."--Sarah Clift, University of King's College
"Susanne Knittel's book is beautifully written and original. It will inspire a necessary and overdue dialogue between Holocaust studies, memory studies, and disability studies."--Michael Rothberg, author of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization
"The Historical Uncanny is a compelling and highly original study of two interlinked, 'asymmetrical' sites of European history and memory: Grafeneck and Trieste, Germany and Italy, disability and race, euthanasia, ethnic persecution and genocide. Knittel builds on and challenges some of the most important recent insights into Holocaust memory, weaving around her two case studies a fascinating web of 'multidirectional' connections, biographical, spatial, representational and conceptual."--Robert S.C. Gordon, University of Cambridge, author of The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944-2010
"Susanne Knittel s study of 'disability, ethnicity, and the politics of Holocaust memory' is an extraordinarily original addition to the contemporary literature of Holocaust memory studies. In her focus on previously under-examined sites of memory (such as those commemorating the Nazis mass-murder of the disabled) and under-studied dimensions of the Holocaust (such as perpetrators 'from Grafenick to the Risiera'), Knittel s work not only expands the field but exemplifies the best, most profound new work in Holocaust memory studies I have seen in the last several years. It is absolutely essential reading."--James E. Young, author of The Texture of Memory and At Memory's Edge.
"The Historical Uncanny starts with the fact that it was the same group of German men who organized, supervised, and carried out the killing of the mentally ill and disabled in Grafeneck in 1940 and the deportation and killing of Jews and partisans at the Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste in 1943. The multi-directionality of perpetrator history on the killing fields across Europe generates new insights into the neglected links between eugenics, the Holocaust, and the role of Italian colonialism toward Slovenians and Croats. Past and present of two seemingly very different sites are woven together in illuminating readings of archival research, memorial sites and practices, exhibitions, television series, and literary texts. An exceptionally rich study in perpetrator history and nationally distinct memory politics in today's Europe."--Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University
Synopsis
The Historical Uncanny explores how certain memories become inscribed into the heritage of a country or region while others are suppressed or forgotten. In response to the erasure of historical memories that discomfit a public's self-understanding, this book proposes the historical uncanny as that which resists reification precisely because it cannot be assimilated to dominant discourses of commemoration.
Focusing on the problems of representation and reception, the book explores memorials for two marginalized aspects of Holocaust: the Nazi euthanasia program directed against the mentally ill and disabled and the Fascist persecution of Slovenes, Croats, and Jews in and around Trieste. Reading these memorials together with literary and artistic texts, Knittel redefines "sites of memory" as assemblages of cultural artifacts and discourses that accumulate over time; they emerge as a physical and a cultural space that is continually redefined, rewritten, and re-presented.
In bringing perspectives from disability studies and postcolonialism to the question of memory, Knittel unsettles our understanding of the Holocaust and its place in the culture of contemporary Europe.
About the Author
Susanne C. Knittel is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her work focuses on the interaction between memorials, literature, historiography, and popular culture. She is currently working on a comparative project that explores the memory and representation of perpetrators in literature, film, and at sites of memory in Germany and Romania.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Introduction
Part I
1. Remembering Euthanasia: Grafeneck and the Struggle for Memory
2. Bridging the Silence, Part I: The Disabled Enabler
3. Bridging the Silence, Part II: The Vicarious Witness
Intermezzo
4. Lethal Trajectories: Perpetrators from Grafeneck to the Risiera
Part II
5. Black Holes and Revelations: The Risiera, the Foibe, and the Making of an "Italian Tragedy"
6. A Severed Branch: The Memory of Fascism on Stage and Screen
7. Bridging the Silence, Part III: Trieste and the Language of Belonging
Conclusion
Bibliography