This reminds me of two texts that you're probably aware of, but which discuss the legacy of 1942 (the year of the Wannsee Conference) and its consequences: Jean Améry's "At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities" and Zygmunt Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust." There are clear and problematic mo…
This reminds me of two texts that you're probably aware of, but which discuss the legacy of 1942 (the year of the Wannsee Conference) and its consequences: Jean Améry's "At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities" and Zygmunt Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust." There are clear and problematic modernist and capitalist facets to the way the Nazis approached the destruction of an entire people, and to your point, the fundamental dangers of that system are still ever-present. I find it telling that so many folks are once more interested in learning about the history of WWII, and that folks like me and you spend inordinate amounts of time writing novels about the subject. We have much to learn from that period, still. The lessons are forever easy to forget. You're fighting to the good fight, good sir--is it the same "good fight" as your grandfather? I wonder. While he fought for "good", in a literal sense, against a Manichean sense of "evil," we find ourselves in a historical moment once more ... our fight, perhaps, is about reminding others just how easy it is for society to slip.
Thank you Samuél and look forward to reading your book! I forgot that we've been messing around in the same period. I kind of didn't want to get pulled into it but then found myself getting utterly absorbed. I keep having the sense that, in some way, that was the last major historical "event" and we are still very much dealing with the psychic wounds of it.
This reminds me of two texts that you're probably aware of, but which discuss the legacy of 1942 (the year of the Wannsee Conference) and its consequences: Jean Améry's "At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities" and Zygmunt Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust." There are clear and problematic modernist and capitalist facets to the way the Nazis approached the destruction of an entire people, and to your point, the fundamental dangers of that system are still ever-present. I find it telling that so many folks are once more interested in learning about the history of WWII, and that folks like me and you spend inordinate amounts of time writing novels about the subject. We have much to learn from that period, still. The lessons are forever easy to forget. You're fighting to the good fight, good sir--is it the same "good fight" as your grandfather? I wonder. While he fought for "good", in a literal sense, against a Manichean sense of "evil," we find ourselves in a historical moment once more ... our fight, perhaps, is about reminding others just how easy it is for society to slip.
Thank you Samuél and look forward to reading your book! I forgot that we've been messing around in the same period. I kind of didn't want to get pulled into it but then found myself getting utterly absorbed. I keep having the sense that, in some way, that was the last major historical "event" and we are still very much dealing with the psychic wounds of it.