University Press of Mississippi, c1989. In this article I examine how students' readings of Art Spiegelman's MAUS, a comic-book genre depiction of his father's survival of Nazi Germany, produces the Aristotelian version of empathy advocated by Nussbaum. This 'passive empathy', I argue, falls far short of assuring any basis for social change, and reinscribes a 'consumptive' mode of identification with the other. I argue that educators need to encourage what I shall define as 'testimonial reading' which requires the reader's responsibility. The relationship of a father and son are shown as well as the father's, Vladek Spiegelman's, story of survival.
Animal imaging intensifies the horror of the Holocaust and of family tensions.
All faces of Jews are mouse faces, and those of Germans are cat faces. Poles are seen as pigs. Comedic Distance in Holocaust Literature. Journal of American Culture vol. Maus,' a comic book by Art Spiegelman focusing on the horrors of the holocaust with cartoon type illustrations remains a puzzle for critics in terms of placing the work into an established genre.