The Holocaust object in Polish and Polish-Jewish culture
By: Bożena Shallcross
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Bloomington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 200
ISBN-13: 9780253355645
Description: In stark contrast to the widespread preoccupation with the wartime looting of priceless works of art, Bozena Shallcross focuses on the meaning of ordinary objectsùpots, eyeglasses, shoes, clothing, kitchen utensilsùtangible vestiges of a once-lived reality, which she reads here as cultural texts. Shallcross delineates the ways in which Holocaust objects are represented in Polish and Polish-Jewish texts written during or shortly after World War II. These representational strategies are distilled from the writings of Zuzanna Ginczanka, Wiadyslaw Szlengel, Zofia Nalkowska, Czeslaw Milosz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Tadeusz Borowski. Combining close readings of selected texts with critical interrogations of a wide range of philosophical and theoretical approaches to the nature of matter, Shallcross's study broadens the current discourse on the Holocaust by embracing humble and overlooked material objects as they were perceived by writers of that time. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: On jouissance; title: A dandy and Jewish detritus; title: The material letter J; title: On waste and matter; title: Holocaust soap and the story of its production; title: The guilty afterlife of the soma; title: On contact; title: The manuscript lost in Warsaw; title: Things, touch, and detachment in Auschwitz; title: Coda: the post-Holocaust object.