The major essays of Dan Diner are finally collected in this English edition. They reflect the author's belief that the Holocaust transcends traditional patterns of historical understanding and requires an epistemologically distinct approach. One can no longer assume that actors as well as historians are operating in the same conceptual universe, sharing the same criteria of rational discourse. This is particularly true of victims and perpetrators, whose memory shapes the distortions of historical narrative in ways often diametrically opposed.
Author(s): Dan Diner
Edition: 1
Publisher: University of California Press
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 290
Preliminaries......Page 1
CONTENTS......Page 7
Introduction......Page 9
1. On the Brink of Dictatorship......Page 19
2. Knowledge of Expansion: On the Geopolitics of Karl Haushofer......Page 34
3. Norms for Domination: Nazi Legal Concepts of World Order......Page 57
4. The Catastrophe before the Catastrophe:......Page 86
5. The Limits of Reason......Page 105
6. Beyond the Conceivable......Page 125
7. Historical Understanding and Counterrationality......Page 138
8. On Rationality and Rationalization......Page 146
9. Historical Experience and Cognition......Page 168
10. Varieties of Narration......Page 181
11. Nazism and Stalinism......Page 195
12. Cumulative Contingency......Page 209
13. On Guilt Discourse and Other Narrations......Page 226
Notes......Page 239
Index......Page 281
