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7 - After 1945: Holocaust Memory, Postcoloniality, and World History

from Part I - Genealogies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

By
Sonali Thakkar
Edited by
Debjani Ganguly
Debjani Ganguly
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

This chapter makes a case for the persistent salience of the Jewish Holocaust in postcolonial cultural discourse and especially literary production. It adopts the term contrapuntal memory to describe these entanglements, and considers what figures of world and history this archive offers. It is organized into three sections. The first examines how the colonial ordering of the world globalized the Holocaust, and considers two novels about Jewish internment in the British colonies. The second concerns the role of Holocaust memory in postcolonial Europe, as a means for both the assimilation and exclusion of migrant and minoritarian subjects. The final section reconsiders 1945 as a temporal threshold and historical rupture, and examines how the Holocaust might be situated in relation to the longue durée of racial modernity.

Keywords

Holocaust memorycontrapuntal memorypostcolonial theoryracial modernityEdward Said
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 163 - 179
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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