Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin: Spheres of Speakability (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies)

Analyzing action at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, this first ethnography of the site offers a fresh approach to studying the memorial and memory work as potential civic engagement of visitors with themselves and others rather than with history itself. Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin offers a novel approach to the memorial and its study through the focus on performances. Based on extensive ethnographic research, and drawing on dramaturgic theory, memory studies and theories of the public sphere, the book offers a fresh theorization of memorial experience by analyzing interaction between guides, memorial workers and visitors. Moving away from models of postmemory and post trauma approaches, the book recognizes the precariousness and variation of memory work done at the memorial through the ways visitors engages with the act of remembrance rather than with its object, namely the history of Jewish persecution and the Holocaust. This engagement explores how visitors present and perform their 'moral career' at the site, whose codes have been shaped by knowledge about and visits in this and other sites of Holocaust remembrance Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin offers a novel approach to the memorial and its study through the focus on performances. Based on extensive ethnographic research, and drawing on dramaturgic theory, memory studies and theories of the public sphere, the book offers a fresh theorization of memorial experience by analyzing interaction between guides, memorial workers and visitors. Moving away from models of postmemory and post trauma approaches, the book recognizes the precariousness and variation of memory work done at the memorial through the ways visitors engages with the act of remembrance rather than with its object, namely the history of Jewish persecution and the Holocaust. This engagement explores how visitors present and perform their 'moral career' at the site, whose codes have been shaped by knowledge about and visits in this and other sites of Holocaust remembrance--Back cover Review: "Dekel focuses on the participation in memory work as a potential act of citizenship - citizenship defined in cosmopolitan and inclusive terms - and, by exploring the different stages of participation in memory work, she is able to theorise the 'moral career' of visitors. Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin moves us away from the restrictive notions of the Holocaust sublime and towards the Holocaust's speakability through performances of memory."--Richard Crownshaw, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-24 Navigating Experience....Pages 25-64 Spheres of Speakability: Old and New Discursive Modes....Pages 65-117 Memory in Action: New Ethics of Engagement with Holocaust Memory....Pages 118-148 Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial....Pages 149-171 Conclusion....Pages 172-175 Back Matter....Pages 176-196