Personal Engagement and the Study of the Holocaust

Presents the thoughts of established and emerging scholars, including Hayden White's interpretation of Otto Dov Kulka's Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, as well as Kulka's response. Contributors also address core questions, such as the definition of the Holocaust in the new millennium.

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Can we have an objective history of a modernist event such as the Holocaust? How much 'historical distance' does, can, or should a historian have? Since Hayden White's Metahistory (1973), we have become used to asking these questions. Saul Friedlander's 1992 Probing the Limits of Representation marks their entry into Holocaust historiography. But, what do other scholars have to say about this? What new grounds and arguments are opening up in contemporary Holocaust scholarship beyond what Hayden White calls the 'History-Fiction divide'? How does personal engagement influence the conceptualization of the Holocaust and the writing of its history? This collection presents the thoughts of established and emerging scholars, including Hayden White's interpretation of Otto Dov Kulka's recent Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, as well as Kulka's response. Contributors also address core questions, such as the definition of the Holocaust in the new millennium, the political (ab)use of Holocaust memory, and changes in national and transnational historiography influencing contemporary Holocaust scholarship. This group of studies first appeared in a special issue of 'Holocaust Studies: a journal of Culture and History' Vol. 20, No 1-2.