Positionality and Postmemory in Scholarship on the Holocaust

For scholars who work within German literature and culture of the twentieth century, the topic of the Holocaust is hard to ignore. The confrontation with this topic is a complex one, however, as the magnitude of its severity and the scale of its brutality make the Holocaust difficult to approach neutrally. Through a discussion of the feminist concept of positionality, the notion of "autobiographical reading," and the concept of "postmemory," this essay examines critically the issue of personal investment in the study of the Holocaust, and the particular role that positionality, personal and cultural memory, and identification and empathy play in this work. (PB)