In this Book
- Speaking the Unspeakable in Postwar Germany: Toward a Public Discourse on the Holocaust
- Book
- 2015
- Published by: Cornell University Press
- Series: Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought

Speaking the Unspeakable in Postwar Germany is an interdisciplinary study of a diverse set of public speeches given by major literary and cultural figures in the 1950s and 1960s. Through close readings of canonical speeches by Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno, Ingeborg Bachmann, Martin Buber, Paul Celan, Uwe Johnson, Peter Szondi, and Peter Weiss, Sonja Boos demonstrates that these speakers both facilitated and subverted the construction of a public discourse about the Holocaust in postwar West Germany. The author's analysis of original audio recordings of the speech events (several of which will be available on a companion website) improves our understanding of the spoken, performative dimension of public speeches.
Speaking the Unspeakable in Postwar Germany emphasizes the social constructedness of discourse, experience, and identity, but does not neglect the pragmatic conditions of aesthetic and intellectual production—most notably, the felt need to respond to the breach in tradition caused by the Holocaust. The book thereby illuminates the process by which a set of writers and intellectuals, instead of trying to mend what they perceived as a radical break in historical continuity or corroborating the myth of a "new beginning," searched for ways to make this historical rupture rhetorically and semantically discernible and literally audible.
Speaking the Unspeakable in Postwar Germany is an interdisciplinary study of a diverse set of public speeches given by major literary and cultural figures in the 1950s and 1960s. Through close readings of canonical speeches by Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno, Ingeborg Bachmann, Martin Buber, Paul Celan, Uwe Johnson, Peter Szondi, and Peter Weiss, Sonja Boos demonstrates that these speakers both facilitated and subverted the construction of a public discourse about the Holocaust in postwar West Germany. The author's analysis of original audio recordings of the speech events (several of which will be available on a companion website) improves our understanding of the spoken, performative dimension of public speeches.While emphasizing the social constructedness of discourse, experience, and identity, Boos does not neglect the pragmatic conditions of aesthetic and intellectual production—most notably, the felt need to respond to the breach in tradition caused by the Holocaust. The book thereby illuminates the process by which a set of writers and intellectuals, instead of trying to mend what they perceived as a radical break in historical continuity or corroborating the myth of a "new beginning," searched for ways to make this historical rupture rhetorically and semantically discernible and literally audible.
Table of Contents

- Cover
- p. i
- Title Page
- p. iii
- Dedication
- pp. v-vi
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Abbreviations
- pp. xi-xiv
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- List of Abbreviations
- pp. xi-xii
- Part I. In the Event of Speech: Performing Dialogue
- Introduction
- pp. 1-22
- 1. Martin Buber
- pp. 25-51
- Part I. In the Event of Speech
- pp. 23-24
- 2. Paul Celan
- pp. 52-69
- 1. Martin Buber
- pp. 25-51
- 3. Ingeborg Bachmann
- pp. 70-84
- 2. Paul Celan
- pp. 52-69
- Part II. “Who One Is”: Self-Revelation and Its Discontents
- 3. Ingeborg Bachmann
- pp. 70-84
- 4. Hannah Arendt
- pp. 87-113
- Part II. “Who One Is”
- pp. 85-86
- 5. Uwe Johnson
- pp. 114-134
- 4. Hannah Arendt
- pp. 87-113
- Part III. Speaking by Proxy: The Citation as Testimony
- 5. Uwe Johnson
- pp. 114-134
- 6. Peter Szondi
- pp. 137-158
- Part III. Speaking by Proxy
- pp. 135-136
- 7. Peter Weiss
- pp. 159-194
- 6. Peter Szondi
- pp. 137-158
- 7. Peter Weiss
- pp. 159-194
- Bibliography
- pp. 211-224
- Conclusion
- pp. 195-210
- Bibliography
- pp. 211-224
- Index
- pp. 225-229
- Seriespage
- p. ii
- Copyright
- p. iv