Abstract

An introduction to the following cluster of articles, this essay explores a number of "departures," most importantly that within the field of feminist Holocaust studies from an early fascination with women's "different voice," to address far-reaching ethical and theoretical debates about representation. Specifically, this introduction and the essays that follow challenge the commonsense notion of representation as standing for an absent object, event, or experience. Using such concepts as "postmemory," "trauma," and "second-generation survivors," the authors examine the role that the repetition and circulation of images and public narratives play in constituting what gets taken for granted as "the past." (LD and LM)

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