The book introduces a novel theory of political responsibility by exploring the concept of the implicated subject, challenging traditional categories of victim, perpetrator, and bystander. It examines how individuals are entangled in historical violence and contemporary inequality, suggesting that our roles are more complex and interconnected than previously understood. This perspective invites readers to reconsider their own positions and responsibilities within societal structures.
Multidirectional Memory brings together Holocaust studies and postcolonial studies for the first time to put forward a new theory of cultural memory and uncover an unacknowledged tradition of exchange between the legacies of genocide and colonialism.
Drawing on a wide range of texts, Michael Rothberg puts forth an overarching framework for understanding representations of the Holocaust. Through close readings of such writers and thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Ruth Klüger, Charlotte Delbo, Art Spiegelman, and Philip Roth and an examination of films by Steven Spielberg and Claude Lanzmann, Rothberg demonstrates how the Holocaust as a traumatic event makes three fundamental demands on representation: a demand for documentation, a demand for reflection on the limits of representation, and a demand for engagement with the public
Holocaustgedenken im Zeitalter der Dekolonisierung