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188 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 .circles in which she traveled, presenting a strong picture of the world of French royalism and counter-revolution. Silverman makes no attempt to treat Gyp any better, or worse, than she deserves. Unlike many biographers who become deeply involved with their subject, Silverman does not pretend that Gyp has been dealt a cruel blow by history. Gyp is forgotten for a reason; this book is not a battle to resurrect a forgotten reputation. Silverman recognizes that Gyp's works are not the stuff of genius, and many are hardly worth a second glance. Her political beliefs are notable . only insofar as they that they formed part of a larger and more dangerous movement. As her antisemitism became more extreme and her moderate friends dropped away, Gyp wedded herself increasingly to authoritarianism and to those people whose progeny would spawn Vichy's National Revolution. Silverman shows that among such people hatred of the Jews was not only considered essential for the salvation of France but became an item of fashion. And it provided Gyp with the dubious benefit of being accepted as "one of the boys." Wm. Laird Kleine-Ahlbrandt Department of History Purdue University Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture and "the Jewish Question" in France, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman. New York: Routledge, 1995. 335 pp. $17.95 (P). This volume has a number ofgoals, perhaps too many. As the subtitle suggests, it explores how Jews have been understood, by themselves and others, in France since 1945, although of necessity many of the articles range back into the nineteenth century. The editor has put together 19 rather disparate selections, divided into five general parts, ranging from "Philosophy and the Jews" to "Literary Representation" to "Cinematic Images." Some are scholarly articles by American academics, others excerpts from larger works by prominent French authors (tevinas, Lyotard, Vidal-Naquet, Finkielkraut). The tilt is almost entirely toward literature and theory, with no historians (except for Vidal-Naquet, whose expertise is actually in ancient history) and one anthropologist. "Theory" in this context has come to be an incendiary term, suggesting many things, among which are a radical denial of the poSSibility of objective observation and a tendency to murky, jargonized writing. Book Reviews 189 There are several anicles in the collection that are classics of the genre, promising to puzzle, exasperate, or perhaps amuse readers unfamiliar with the field. The editor, identified as someone who has "written extensively ... on French culture and intellectual thought" [as distinguished from non-intellectual thought?], provides as clear an introduction as might be expected, given the subject matter, but his writing, too, is marked by the current fashions, especially in the anicle he contributes to the collection. He does not deign to refer to "themes"; they are topoi. "Dialogic rappon" is the term he uses' for "discussion," and he replaces that old-fashioned word "original" with "originary," one of many words he and others in the collection use that are not in the dictionary-not even the Oxford Unabridged-at least not with the special meaning they have in this field (e.g., defocalized, ideologemes, rhizomes). How does one find out what they mean? Good question. Such stylistic tendencies and the penchant for formulations that revel in contradiction and an often bogus subtlety characterize a fair amount of the writing by the French masters of the genre, whose own neologisms and arcane tangents don't always translate well. Their frequent disregard for stylistic economy has also been picked up by some of their admirers in the United States. But a funher source of confusion exists, in that the literature of the Holocaust, in whatever tongue, has a tendency toward mystical claims, incautious use of terms, and irresponsible striving for effect. Given the sympathy properly extended to those who bear witness to the murder of Europe's Jews, criticism of such lapses is often muted or itself ensconced in crippled, barely penetrable language. A number ofwriters have presented"Auschwitz" as a cosmic intrusion of some son, beyond human ken, comparable to the CrucifIxion-another cosmic, ineffable episode, concerning which normal historical reasoning is impotent and critical thought always on the edge of sacrilege...

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