Reconciling Community and Subjective Life

Magdalena Zolkos is research fellow in political theory at the Center for Citizenship and Public Policy, University of Western Sydney. She has published on issues of reconciliation, collective trauma, community and testimony.

• Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part I: On Jean Amery: "I say 'I'... merely out of habit"; Chapter 1 - Resentment, Trauma Subjectivity and the Ordering of Time; Chapter 2 - "A Wound Was Inflicted on Me" - Amery's Testimony to Torture; Chapter 3 - Thanatic Reconciliations in On Aging and On Suicide; Part II: On Imre Kertesz: "I don't know how I should continue"; Chapter 4 - Fateless: Being "Without Fate," Without the Help of Another; Chapter 5 - Apocalypse, Testimony, and Love in Kaddish for a Child Not Born; Epilogue - On Irreversibility; Notes; Bibliography.

Reconciling Community and Subjective Life offers a careful and profound investigation of the testimonial address by Jean Améry and Imre Kertész. Zolkos' book is not an easy read, but if we live, as it has been suggested, in the era of the witness, it is indispensable and deeply thought-provoking. It offers a much needed and highly qualified corrective to current debates on trauma and subjectivity, resentment and reconciliation. --Thomas Brudholm, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen. Author of Resentment's Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive.