places of amnesia

Emiliano Perra (University of Winchester ) Damiano Garofalo (Sapienza University of Rome) Abstracts: We will explore how the memory of the Holocaust is reinterpreted and reshaped in Italy and Britain. Emiliano Perra: The Holocaust and British National Identity in Peter Kosminsky’s The Promise (2011) Peter Kosminsky’s miniseries The Promise (Channel 4, 2011) generated intense public responses upon its broadcast, predominantly around the representation of the Palestinian Jews in the Mandate years and of Israel in the more recent past. This paper discusses the somewhat less debated but equally important theme of how the miniseries takes the lead from the paradigmatic British Holocaust memory of the liberation of Belsen to engage with issues of British national self-perception. The paper draws on Michael Rothberg’s concept of ‘multidirectional memory’ and Astrid Erll's 'travelling memory' and situates them within a broader postcolonial theoretical framework, in particular Paul Gilroy’s ‘post-imperial melancholia’. In thus doing, the paper argues that The Promise explores important issues related to Britain’s past and present, in particular the lasting heritage of Empire. With relation to the Holocaust, the paper will argue that The Promise problematises conventional public narratives about Britain’s subject position at the end of WWII and in its aftermath. In linking the Holocaust to broader British history, the miniseries thus offers an important contribution towards making the Holocaust less foreign and keeping it relevant for Britain in the present. Damiano Garofalo: Foibe. Public Memory and Media Representations. The Myth-Building of An Italian Holocaust The object of this paper is to illustrate how the memory of the Foibe has been spread in the Italian media since the end of WWII. In particular, Damiano will explore how certain paradigms of representation, which are characteristic of the memory of the Holocaust, have also been adopted to portray the group of violent events, collectively called Foibe. First, we should distinguish between symbolic and literal Foibe. By symbolic we speak about mass violence against civilians and soldiers of primarily Italian background, which was unleashed during the fall of 1943 and the spring of 1945 in various areas of Venezia Giulia and conducted by the forces of the Yugoslav partisans. By literal Foibe, however, we are referring to natural sinkholes typical of the karst terrain, that dive underground often for many tens of meters, with vertical shafts and repeated shelves, which have been used to hide things people intended to get rid of: this could mean objects [...] but also people, victims of private tragedies or violent historical events. This notwithstanding, the Foibe immediately rose as a symbol of all that happened near the border during those years. In the collective memory, in fact, the infoibati – the victims of the Foibe – have included: a) all those who died at the hands of the Slovene, Croat and Italian communist partisans between the fall of 1943 and the spring-summer of 1945; b) the victims of the brutalities of the last two years of war in the entire upper Adriatic region, including Dalmatia; c) the victims of the violence suffered by the Italian population during the long post-war period in Istria (1945-1956), culminating in more than 250,000 people fleeing to Italy. This public discourse have been particularly reaffirmed during the last thirty years. Initially, we will introduce the subject with a brief historiographical reconstruction of how the theme of the Holocaust has been compared to the Foibe by historians. A second part will follow in which we will dive into the institutional politics that have been bent to the creation of public memory of the Foibe based on that comparison. In the final part, we will analyse the modalities through which the paradigm of the Foibe/Holocaust has found effective expression in live TV and TV series on the subject. Via the analysis of several moments, we will see how certain rhetorical and metaphorical themes persist out of preceding representations of the Holocaust, which were facilitated by the same media channels.

Emiliano Perra (University of Winchester ) Damiano Garofalo (Sapienza University of Rome) Abstracts: We will explore how the memory of the Holocaust is reinterpreted and reshaped in Italy and Britain. Emiliano Perra: The Holocaust and British National Identity in Peter Kosminsky’s The Promise (2011) Peter Kosminsky’s miniseries The Promise (Channel 4, 2011) generated intense public responses upon its broadcast, predominantly around the representation of the Palestinian Jews in the Mandate years and of Israel in the more recent past. This paper discusses the somewhat less debated but equally important theme of how the miniseries takes the lead from the paradigmatic British Holocaust memory of the liberation of Belsen to engage with issues of British national self-perception. The paper draws on Michael Rothberg’s concept of ‘multidirectional memory’ and Astrid Erll's 'travelling memory' and situates them within a broader postcolonial theoretical framework, in particular Paul Gilroy’s ‘post-imperial melancholia’. In thus doing, the paper argues that The Promise explores important issues related to Britain’s past and present, in particular the lasting heritage of Empire. With relation to the Holocaust, the paper will argue that The Promise problematises conventional public narratives about Britain’s subject position at the end of WWII and in its aftermath. In linking the Holocaust to broader British history, the miniseries thus offers an important contribution towards making the Holocaust less foreign and keeping it relevant for Britain in the present. Damiano Garofalo: Foibe. Public Memory and Media Representations. The Myth-Building of An Italian Holocaust The object of this paper is to illustrate how the memory of the Foibe has been spread in the Italian media since the end of WWII. In particular, Damiano will explore how certain paradigms of representation, which are characteristic of the memory of the Holocaust, have also been adopted to portray the group of violent events, collectively called Foibe. First, we should distinguish between symbolic and literal Foibe. By symbolic we speak about mass violence against civilians and soldiers of primarily Italian background, which was unleashed during the fall of 1943 and the spring of 1945 in various areas of Venezia Giulia and conducted by the forces of the Yugoslav partisans. By literal Foibe, however, we are referring to natural sinkholes typical of the karst terrain, that dive underground often for many tens of meters, with vertical shafts and repeated shelves, which have been used to hide things people intended to get rid of: this could mean objects [...] but also people, victims of private tragedies or violent historical events. This notwithstanding, the Foibe immediately rose as a symbol of all that happened near the border during those years. In the collective memory, in fact, the infoibati – the victims of the Foibe – have included: a) all those who died at the hands of the Slovene, Croat and Italian communist partisans between the fall of 1943 and the spring-summer of 1945; b) the victims of the brutalities of the last two years of war in the entire upper Adriatic region, including Dalmatia; c) the victims of the violence suffered by the Italian population during the long post-war period in Istria (1945-1956), culminating in more than 250,000 people fleeing to Italy. This public discourse have been particularly reaffirmed during the last thirty years. Initially, we will introduce the subject with a brief historiographical reconstruction of how the theme of the Holocaust has been compared to the Foibe by historians. A second part will follow in which we will dive into the institutional politics that have been bent to the creation of public memory of the Foibe based on that comparison. In the final part, we will analyse the modalities through which the paradigm of the Foibe/Holocaust has found effective expression in live TV and TV series on the subject. Via the analysis of several moments, we will see how certain rhetorical and metaphorical themes persist out of preceding representations of the Holocaust, which were facilitated by the same media channels.

Abstract There are only a handful of (West) German public TV programs that focus squarely on the perpetrators of the Final Solution and most of the programs fail to develop narrative and aesthetic strategies that render said perpetrators clearly visible to the audience as a distinct historical-political challenge. Before the invention of the Holocaust paradigm, the perpetrators disappear in a fog of tact, disinformation, and helplessness; with the development of the Holocaust frame they recede behind the figure of the survivor; and after the height of self-reflexive Holocaust memory they vanish in the moral maelstrom of Knopp TV. Hence Unser Mütter, unsere Väter marks a real turning point in perpetrator TV narratives and yet another instance of highly selective remembering. Wulf Kansteiner is Associate Professor of Memory Studies and Historical Theory at Aarhus University and Associate Professor of European History at Binghamton University (SUNY). Trained at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and UCLA, he has published widely in the fields of Holocaust studies, media history, historical theory, and memory studies. He is the author of In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz (2006); co-editor of The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (2006), Historical Representation and Historical Truth (2009); and Den Holocaust erzählen: Historiographie zwischen wissenschaftlicher Empirie und narrativer Kreativität (2013). He is also co-editor and co-founder of the Sage-Journal Memory Studies (published since 2008).

Abstract There are only a handful of (West) German public TV programs that focus squarely on the perpetrators of the Final Solution and most of the programs fail to develop narrative and aesthetic strategies that render said perpetrators clearly visible to the audience as a distinct historical-political challenge. Before the invention of the Holocaust paradigm, the perpetrators disappear in a fog of tact, disinformation, and helplessness; with the development of the Holocaust frame they recede behind the figure of the survivor; and after the height of self-reflexive Holocaust memory they vanish in the moral maelstrom of Knopp TV. Hence Unser Mütter, unsere Väter marks a real turning point in perpetrator TV narratives and yet another instance of highly selective remembering. Wulf Kansteiner is Associate Professor of Memory Studies and Historical Theory at Aarhus University and Associate Professor of European History at Binghamton University (SUNY). Trained at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and UCLA, he has published widely in the fields of Holocaust studies, media history, historical theory, and memory studies. He is the author of In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz (2006); co-editor of The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (2006), Historical Representation and Historical Truth (2009); and Den Holocaust erzählen: Historiographie zwischen wissenschaftlicher Empirie und narrativer Kreativität (2013). He is also co-editor and co-founder of the Sage-Journal Memory Studies (published since 2008).

Anna Menyhért (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) ) Abstract Hungarian literary history tends to forget about women writers, they are not included in school curricula, even if they had been well known and highly appreciated in their own times. Anna Menyhért's book Női irodalmi hagyomány (Women's Literary Tradition) was the first to explore the reasons for the amnesia. Her talk will introduce the book, participants can read and discuss Hungarian women poets in translations by George Szirtes made specially for the occassion. Anna Menyhért is an academic and a writer, a researcher at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She used to be the vice president of the European Writers's Council. Her research interests include women's literature, 20th century literature, cultural studies, gender studies, trauma studies, (digital) memory studies. She is the head of the Trauma and Gender in Literature and Culture Research Group. The research group works on a webpage of 20th century Hungarian women writers similar to today's social media pages. Anna Menyhért's publications include Women's Literary Tradition (Női irodalmi hagyomány, 2013) and Speaking the Unspeakable: Trauma and Literature (Elmondani az elmondhatatlant: Trauma és irodalom, 2008). She has published a volume of poetry and several books for children as well. She has recently finished writing the fictional biography of Renée Erdős, a 20th century Hungarian women writer. Further information http://www.menyhertanna.hu http://www.mannamesek.hu CRASSH is not reponsible for the content of external websites

Anna Menyhért (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) ) Abstract Hungarian literary history tends to forget about women writers, they are not included in school curricula, even if they had been well known and highly appreciated in their own times. Anna Menyhért's book Női irodalmi hagyomány (Women's Literary Tradition) was the first to explore the reasons for the amnesia. Her talk will introduce the book, participants can read and discuss Hungarian women poets in translations by George Szirtes made specially for the occassion. Anna Menyhért is an academic and a writer, a researcher at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She used to be the vice president of the European Writers's Council. Her research interests include women's literature, 20th century literature, cultural studies, gender studies, trauma studies, (digital) memory studies. She is the head of the Trauma and Gender in Literature and Culture Research Group. The research group works on a webpage of 20th century Hungarian women writers similar to today's social media pages. Anna Menyhért's publications include Women's Literary Tradition (Női irodalmi hagyomány, 2013) and Speaking the Unspeakable: Trauma and Literature (Elmondani az elmondhatatlant: Trauma és irodalom, 2008). She has published a volume of poetry and several books for children as well. She has recently finished writing the fictional biography of Renée Erdős, a 20th century Hungarian women writer. Further information http://www.menyhertanna.hu http://www.mannamesek.hu CRASSH is not reponsible for the content of external websites