Launch of Eva Mona Altmann’s Das Unsagbare Verschweigen

On 31 March, 2022 at 17.00 CET our PSN Book Launch Series will feature a discussion of Eva Mona Altmann’s Das Unsagbare Verschweigen: Holocaust-Literatur aus Täterperspektive (Concealing the Unspeakable: Holocaust-Literature from the Perpetrators’ Perspective,  Transcript, 2021).

Perpetrators are everywhere in contemporary popular culture — and in scholarship. This omnipresence of perpetrator representations calls for critical reflection, particularly in cases where they invite identification. A paradigmatic case of this ambivalent trend is the recent proliferation of Holocaust literature told from the perpetrators’ perspective.

In this book, Altmann develops an interdisciplinary model of close textual analysis that pays careful attention to perpetrator rhetoric, the role of empathy and sympathy in perpetrator representation, and to how literary devices such as unreliable narration allow for an immanent deconstruction of perpetrator discourse.

Respondents will be Juliane Prade-Weiss and Brigitte Jirku.

The event will be moderated by Susanne Knittel.

The book is written in German, but the presentation and discussion will take place in English.

This event will take place online, on Zoom. Please register via this link.

This series is organised by Susanne Knittel and Timothy Williams.