There and un-there

During their interviews with the Visual History Archive, hundreds of Holocaust survivors recite poems. This article examines empathy in poetry written and read by two poet-survivors, Martha Osvat and Jacob Rosenberg, as well as empathy in two poems I write after viewing their interviews. Recognizing the dual potential of empathy to help and harm, both the poems the survivors recite and my response poems variously request and refuse empathy in a process I term empathetic dissonance. This academic-creative paper argues that empathy is suspect in the context of the Holocaust and probes the ethical boundaries of approaching another’s traumatic experiences

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Empathy · Harm · Literature · Narrative · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Storytelling · The Holocaust · Theology · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · History · Identity, Memory, and Therapy · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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• From The Cultural Politics of Emotion

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• Introduction

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• Regarding the pain of others

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• Testimony without Intimacy

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• When Is an Interview an Interview? Notes from Listening to Holocaust Survivors

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