Occasional Papers

Complex Histories, Contested Memories
Eva Hoffman || download

Eva Hoffman considers the current preoccupation with memory—as opposed to its referents (history, experience)—and particularly with memory of the Holocaust. She proposes that the intense absorption with memory has largely emerged from the “second generation,” i.e., from those for whom the Holocaust (or other disturbing pasts) has been a crucially formative event, yet one that they themselves did not experience.

In asking what it means to stand in that kind of relationship to a significant past, Hoffman suggests that we must acknowledge our distance—both generational and culturalfrom the events that we’re trying to comprehend. We can use that distance to see aspects of the past that may not have been perceptible at other moments and from other perspectives: in other words, to press the questions raised by memory, to examine the past more strenuously.

Eva Hoffman was the Una’s Lecturer in 2000-2001.

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ISBN 1-881865-23-1; September 2000.