The Holocaust Object in Polish and Polish-Jewish Culture [Hardcover]

In stark contrast to the widespread preoccupation with the wartime looting of priceless works of art, Boena Shallcross focuses on the meaning of ordinary objectspots, eyeglasses, shoes, clothing, kitchen utensilstangible vestiges of a once-lived reality, which she reads here as cultural texts. Shallcross delineates the ways in which Holocaust objects are represented in Polish and Polish-Jewish texts written during or shortly after World War II. These representational strategies are distilled from the writings of Zuzanna Ginczanka, Wadysaw Szlengel, Zofia Nakowska, Czesaw Miosz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Tadeusz Borowski. Combining close readings of selected texts with critical interrogations of a wide range of philosophical and theoretical approaches to the nature of matter, Shallcross's study broadens the current discourse on the Holocaust by embracing humble and overlooked material objects as they were perceived by writers of that time.

The Totalized Object: An Introduction

On Jouissance
1. A Dandy and Jewish Detritus
2. The Material Letter J
On Waste and Matter
3. Holocaust Soap and the Story of Its Production
4. The Guilty Afterlife of the Soma
On Contact
5. The Manuscript Lost in Warsaw
6. Things, Touch, and Detachment in Auschwitz

Coda: The Post-Holocaust Object
Acknowledgments and Permissions
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Shallcross . . . is to be congratulated for bringing to the attention of the world these literary remnants by translating these Polish-lanaguage testimonies and interpreting them with great learning and skill.Honorable Mention, 2011 Kulczycki Book PrizeHere, as aptly as she has in her previous work, Shallcross looks at depictions of the depths of suffering through the 'dispossession' of belongings when a prisoner entered a concentration camp. This is a brilliant analysis. ...Highly recommended.October 2011Brilliant and ambitious . . . approaches [the] topic from a fresh and intellectualll#R