Sander L. Gilman
Who are the Nazis; who are the Jews? The Holocaust in the NOW
Is the refunctioning of the Holocaust unique or is it simply that the passage of chronological time blurs the edges of every historical event? The experiences of the immediate past, of NOW, the age of Trump and Putin, the global pandemic, all seem to warrant a specific explanation. Not only of how the Holocaust is being refunctioned but why now; why its centrality in the context of a resurgent nationalism, populism, and, yes, the concomitant anti-Jewish sentiment. Are social media at the core of this or are they simply a vehicle for its increased dissemination? When rightwing protestors at the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, simultaneously denied the reality of the Holocaust and wished that more Jews are been murdered during it, we are indeed presented with a social reality that needs both granular description as well as theoretical consideration.
Sander L. Gilman is a cultural and literary historian and was a professor of the liberal arts and sciences as well as professor of psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He works at the intersection of stereotypes and their impact on lived experience. Gilman has been elected an honorary professor of the Freie Universität Berlin and an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is the author of several books, among others Jewish Self-Hatred (1990).
Vortrag im Rahmen der Tagung “Hijacking Memory. The Holocaust and the New Right”.