Van Alphen: Testimonies & the Limits of Representation

Why are some Holocaust survivors incapable of expressing/narrating their experiences? Usually connected to the conviction that the holocaust is un-representable in the sense of being unique or extreme. As a result history is seen as more basic – imaginative discourses such as art and language are seen as secondary because of this problem. Van Alphen doesn’t entirely agree.

What is the cause of the un-representability of the holocaust? Is it…  The intrinsic restriction of language?  Or the extremity of events? Van Alphen argues that: Language as a function of history, as precondition of history, was disrupted during the holocaust.

Semiotic Incapacity: Traditional View Caused by features of the OBJECT of representation.  inadequacy of mimetic/symbolic language  historical reality beyond comprehension] The MEANS of representation remains undiscussed, that is, the SUBJECT.

Representation itself is historically variable. [see Gombrich and Berger] The Holocaust could not be expressed in the symbolic order of that time. Later representational problems were a continuation of the impossibility during the event to experience the holocaust in terms of the symbolic order then available.

Four Basic Representational Problems Ambiguous actantial * position:  one is neither subject nor object/ or are both. Total negation of any actantial position of subjectivity. Lack of plot/narrative frame to give events meaning/coherence Plots/frame available are unacceptable  Don’t do justice to role in the events. Actantial – a term from Actor Network Theory

I: AMBIGUOUS SUBJECTIVITY Selves are split: “that wasn’t me there.”  Don’t know what your role is.  Subject/Passive or Object/Active don’t easily apply. Language only provides these two possibilities:  There was no middle voice to situate them inside the action [subj/obj are outside action] In the holocaust there was no distance from the action.  There were no unambiguous roles of subject/object.

II: DENIED SUBJECTIVITY Existence as human beings totally denied: they were in situations that normally require action, but they were unable to interfere. The result is not impotence, but apathy  The situation was defined by LACK of choice: thus some killed the self to keep the self alive.  Gender differences: men less adept at killing the self in order to survive. The capacity to narrate is lacking: when the self is killed one is not able to tell. A killed self has no experiences, much less narratable memories.

III: THE HOLOCAUST AS NARRATIVE VACUUM Events are not isolated. We experience and represent events in a narrative framework – to make a continuous sequence out of those events.  This allows them to be understood as meaningful. framework vs context: context does not escape the need for interpretation. The “frame” is something we DO: pressure exercised by a culture but also the way members of a culture deal with a situation to produce meanings.

III: THE HOLOCAUST AS NARRATIVE VACUUM c ontinued … In the holocaust it was impossible to activate a narrative framework as an anticipation of coming events.  You lose the capacity to reflect on the situation.  Didn’t know where you were in the sequence. Because the holocaust situation did not fit any conventional framework, it was almost impossible to “experience”, and therefore later to represent.

IV: HOLOCAUST AS NEGATION OF NARRATIVE FRAMEWORKS The inadequacy of frames inflicted on the survivor by the surrounding culture. Frame imposed by interviewers:  Childhood/ghetto/deportation/camp/liberation. Assumption is that liberation is closure. For many the camp experience continues. For many life in the camp can’t be remembered. The feeling of being dead [killing the self] is not narratable. For others: they still live in the situation of the camp, which precludes distance from it that is necessary for narrative.

HOLOCAUST AS NEGATION OF NARRATIVE FRAMEWORKS  Unrepresentability of the Holocaust not result of the extremity of the experiences, but that the symbolic order offered no frames to experience it, because it had no precedent.  SS Soldiers had less problem because they had the framework of war.  Their subjectivities haven’t been killed: they could solve the situation within a conventional narrative framework.  what the inmates dealt with could not be understood or dealt with by means of any narrative framework.

 EMPLOTTING THE HOLOCAUST Experience is an interpretive transformation that depends on the symbolic order to occur. [not independent of how we symbolize and create meaning] Liberal view of Nazi period: Nazism is a political/ideological deviation from the Western Liberal model. poor differentiation from Stalinism. You lose the specificity of Nazism. Structural emplotment: Nazism is not totalitarianism, but Fascism. Dynamics of institutions and social structures. Conservative/revisionist approach: Nazism was a defensive reaction to the “red threat” of the Soviets.

Meaning must be produced in the service of memory: “We should also ask to what ends have we remembered” – Young The reasons given for Holocaust Memorials and the kinds of memory they generate can never be reduced to the past events themselves. Changes in time and in context require continuously renewed engagement with what we can learn from the remembrance of the holocaust. [Berger– the relation between seeing and knowing is never settled]