The American National Narrative of the Holocaust

There Isn't Any

Bibliographic Data

ID4071033
AuthorsPeter Novick (0000-0003-0401-7857, corresponding author)
Year2003
Issue90
Pages27
Publication date2003-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew German Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-033X • E-ISSN: 1558-1462
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3211105
OpenAlexW2331540061
LanguageEN
Citations received3

Before explaining why there is no American of the Holocaust it is a good idea to discuss what we might mean by a narrative of the Holocaust, or of anything else. It is not self-evident what the phrase describes; what the criteria are for designating an account a narrative. At the most general level, to call something a narrative suggests that de facto or de jure the in question constitutes some sort of national statement about how the collectivity understands (or is supposed to understand) all or part of its history in this case, the Holocaust. This is all right so far as it goes, but it's not very specific. Let's consider some of the sorts of criteria which we might expect a to meet before we designate it as national. I am not suggesting that these are hard and fast or necessary criteria: just that they seem to be at least implied by the label narrative. In the first place, it would seem reasonable to assume that the event which is allegedly the subject of a national in a given country is, in some specifiable sense, part of that country's history. This is not a judgment on the importance of the event, or whether it can be shown to have had consequences for the nation. Thus, the Bolshevik Revolution

Art · Literature · Narrative · Political science · The Holocaust · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub