Holocaust and Herring: The Resuscitation of the Silenced in W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn

Blumenthal-Barby, Martin

doi:10.1353/mon.2011.0110

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Following Benjamin, and in line with Arendt's representation of him, Sebald makes it his goal to return justice to the "tradition of the oppressed" by allowing the voices of the dead and silenced to interrupt the victor's triumphalist, self-justifying narrative of progress. 56 It is a perspective that often enough "casts the narrator and others in the role of the shipwrecked at sea, rather than as spectators of ruin" who merely observe the calamity from the safety of distant shores. 57 For some, moreover, Sebald's writing even evokes Kafka's "real survivor," or eigentlich Überlebende, in its representation of both author and protagonist as "the sole survivor," der einzige Überlebende, of an on-going catastrophe.…”

Section: VIIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Theses on the Philosophy of Survival

Stern¹

2022

Theory & Event

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Beginning with Walter Benjamin's famous essay, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," this paper unfolds a supplementary set of theses on the genealogy of a different concept (survival) and different figure (the survivor). Benjamin's distinction between the "victor" and the "angel" serves as a binary framework for an understanding of the philosophical legacy of survival in the twentieth century-as it runs through the philosophy of history and across a tradition that continually imagines the survivor as historian. The paper traces this narrative through selected readings in the writings of major figures, from Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Blanchot to Hannah Arendt and W.G. Sebald. The question throughout is whether the survivor-historian writes the history of the ruling class or the history of the defeated. The paper concludes by offering some reflections on the ramifications of this genealogy of survival for recent debates about the legacy and ongoing practices of settler colonialism.

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Section: VIIImentioning

confidence: 99%