History and Memory After Auschwitz

Dominick LaCapra is Bryce and Edith Bowmar Professor in the Humanities, and Director of the Society for the Humanities, at Cornell University. He is the editor of two books and the author of nine books published by Cornell, including Representing the Holocaust.

LaCapra demands that we not shy away from making judgments and applying to scholarly research and teaching a rigorous and normative code of ethics, one that not only transforms the institutions in which we work, but also facilitates communication between those within and outside the academy. It is refreshing to be reminded of this by LaCapra in such eloquent language. LaCapra has laid out the groundwork upon which we can test the relations between history and memory after Auschwitz.(Holocaust and Genocide Studies) Concerned primarily with the generations of individuals who did not experience Nazi horror directly yet who have lived with its memory all of their lives, the book launches a thoughtful probe into some of the ensuing problematics.... LaCapra's admission, that memory work even succeeds against the grain of temporal progression, is key to understanding the power with which memory and history proceed. And in History and Memory after Auschwitz, he displays that paradox in compelling detail.- Barbie Zelizer, University of Pennsylvania (Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature) LaCapra's argument that Camus must be read in light of the Holocaust is definitely thought-provoking.(Jewish Book World) LaCapra's conclusions are convincing.... A rewarding... intellectual exercise.(Times Literary Supplement) Profoundly thoughtful and humane reflections on a subject of utmost importance, not only to Jews and Jewish culture, but to Western culture itself.- Emily Miller Budick, The Hebrew University (Studies in Contemporary Jewry, An Annual)