Michael Rothberg

The Implicated Subject

Beyond Victims and Perpetrators

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Arguing that the familiar categories of victim, perpetrator, and bystander do not adequately account for our involvement in historical violence and contemporary inequality, this book introduces a new theory of political responsibility through the figure of the implicated subject.

Produktdetails

• Cultural Memory in the Present
• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. August 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 226mm x 153mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 424g
• ISBN-13: 9781503609594
• ISBN-10: 1503609596
• Artikelnr.: 53540942

Autorenporträt

Michael Rothberg is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
IntroductionFrom Victims and Perpetrators to Implicated Subjects
chapter abstract
This chapter introduces the conceptual framework of the book. Starting from
a discussion of responses to the killing of Trayvon Martin and other
examples of racist violence, the chapter argues that the familiar
categories of victim, perpetrator, and bystander do not adequately account
for our connection to injustices past and present and proposes a new theory
of political responsibility through the figure of the implicated subject.
The chapter distinguishes an approach based on implication and implicated
subjects from related approaches to complicity, postmemory, and the
beneficiary; it lays out the stakes of the book; and provides an account of
the chapters to come.
1The Transmission Belt of Domination: Theorizing the Implicated Subject
chapter abstract
This chapter discusses thinking on intersectionality, complicity, and
responsibility that contributes to an understanding of the implicated
subject. It considers reflections on victimhood, perpetration,
responsibility, and memory that have emerged in the field of Holocaust
studies, and supplements it with approaches to structural injustice and the
Black feminist theory of intersectionality. Drawing on these diverse
sources, the chapter formulates a theory of implication and the implicated
subject that offers an alternative to the usual accounts of human rights
violations and their aftermaths. Above all, this theory leaves behind the
detached and disinterested spectators who dominate discussions of distant
suffering in favor of entangled, impure subjects of historical and
political responsibility. The implicated subject, the chapter argues, is a
transmission belt of domination.
2On (Not) Being a Descendant: Implicated Subjects and the Legacies of
Slavery
chapter abstract
This chapter begins by considering what the concept of the "implicated
subject" can lend to the debates about historical redress, restitution, and
reparations that have accompanied attempts to confront the long-distance
legacies of transatlantic slavery. Next, in order to assess those legacies,
it reflects on the very word "legacy" along with its conceptual kin. In a
third section, the chapter turns to a literary example, Jamaica Kincaid's A
Small Place, in order to think further about how the category of the
descendant functions in the aftermath of traumatic histories. Kincaid's
powerful polemic provides a visceral and affectively charged example of
what implication might mean for the beneficiaries of slavery's legacies.
Finally, the chapter considers Kincaid's text in dialogue with Catherine
Hall and Nicholas Draper's Legacies of British Slave-Ownership project in
order to distinguish between two forms of implication: the genealogical and
the structural.
3Progress, Progression, Procession: William Kentridge's Implicated
Aesthetic
chapter abstract
This chapter considers the implicated aesthetic of the Jewish South African
artist William Kentridge. Kentridge's work serves as inspiration for
thinking about the narrative form embedded in transitional justice-a
politico-legal regime that has emerged in response to transformations like
the one in South Africa. The chapter provides a brief introduction to the
"narratology" of transitional justice. It argues that transitional justice
brings with it a fundamental narrative tension involving the negotiation
between continuity and discontinuity, on the one hand, and between
implicated and disembedded subjects, on the other. This framework helps
open up the narrative dimensions of Kentridge's experiments in animated
filmmaking, where he first begins to explore the minimally narrative genre
of the procession. The two final sections of the chapter illustrate how
Kentridge's quasi-autobiographical exploration of "complex implication"
opens up a deep, multidirectional history of race that is simultaneously
post-slavery and post-Holocaust.
4From Gaza to Warsaw: Multidirectional Memory and the Perpetuator
chapter abstract
This chapter reflects on complex implication through the example of Jewish
diasporic critique of Israel. It focuses on a controversy that arose when a
radical American sociology professor declared that "Gaza is Israel's
Warsaw" and forwarded students a photo essay with "parallel images of Nazis
and Israelis," several of which depict the Warsaw Ghetto. Through this
example, the chapters maps the range of forms that public memory can take
in politically charged situations in which complex forms of implication are
at play. That mapping includes an extended discussion of artist Alan
Schechner. A concluding section turns to two Jewish critics of Israeli
policy, Judith Butler and Ariella Azoulay, to argue that thinking through
implication-rather than vulnerability or perpetration-represents the most
productive avenue for solidarity. The concept of implication, the chapter
concludes, offers an opportunity to confront the role of perpetuators of
injustice.
5Under the Sign of Suitcases: The Holocaust Internationalism of Marceline
Loridan-Ivens
chapter abstract
This chapter considers the life of filmmaker Marceline Loridan-Ivens.
Loridan-Ivens was a Holocaust survivor who experienced the emancipatory and
destructive possibilities of revolutionary struggle when she took up
anticolonial causes. The chapter begins by exploring relevant varieties of
internationalism: socialist and anti-imperialist internationalism and human
rights. It recounts how Loridan-Ivens first entered the public sphere
through the testimony she gave in the film Chronicle of a Summer about her
deportation to Auschwitz. Later, Loridan-Ivens went on to make films in
such political hotspots as Algeria, Vietnam, and China. The chapter focuses
especially on the film about the Vietnam War she made with her partner
Joris Ivens and argues that it involves a shift on Loridan-Ivens's part
from the position of surviving victim to implicated subject offering
internationalist solidarity. Yet, the chapter concludes, such solidarity
comes with its own pitfalls that also deserve critical exploration.
6"Germany is in Kurdistan": Hito Steyerl's Images of Implication
chapter abstract
This chapter addresses project undertaken by the internationally prominent
German artist and theorist Hito Steyerl. In the video November, and in
subsequent videos, performances, and essays, Steyerl explores the life and
death of her childhood friend Andrea Wolf, a radical activist who joined
the PKK (Kurdish militants), and was killed in battle by the Turkish state.
In Steyerl's hands, Wolf's life becomes an opportunity to reflect on
questions of internationalism and political solidarity. While Wolf's
comrades have celebrated her as a martyr and internationalist hero and the
dominant media have typically labeled Wolf a terrorist, Steyerl comes to a
more complex and ambivalent verdict about her friend and her commitments.
In refusing binary simplifications and highlighting how the complexities of
Wolf's story intersect with her own story, Steyerl's project helps us
interrogate the implicated subject as a figure of historical responsibility
and internationalist solidarity in a time of globalization.
7Conclusion: Transfiguring Implication
chapter abstract
The conclusion considers what it means to call the implicated subject a
"figure" and addresses the widespread, but uneven nature of implication
along with the possibilities for transfiguring it in the direction of
long-distance solidarity. Reflecting back on the preceding chapters, it
offers eleven theses that synthesize the argument of the book.