Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, The Divinity School, Dec. 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

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My interest in the process and effects of the witnessing act guides the purpose of this study. Here, I initiate a deeper understanding of the vicarious witnessing experience from the perspective of the witnessing participant. My central question is: How do individuals make sense of vicariously witnessing trauma through narrative, visual, and evidence-based representations of traumatic events in the concentration camps of Europe? Vicarious witnessing begins with abstract representations of the event. The evidence is witnessed firsthand, but the event itself is represented through various perspectives such as photographic or artistic images, survivor stories, or physical remnants. Witnessing the evidence evokes a potent embodied experience, so that a person can make the statement, "I have imagined what another has experienced, hence I believe I know." It is through the imagination that a witness forms a picture of the trauma. Undoubtedly, there is immense power in meeting another's experience in the realm of imagination. Compassionate action and social justice is based in this area of human empathy. To best achieve my purpose, I use a narrative method that involves two types of analysis, interpretive readings and narrative instances, as an approach to understand the participant's experience of vicarious witnessing. Participants in this study construct three types of narrative texts-written, spoken, and visual. Each textual perspective shapes the meaning that the participant attempts to express. As a first level of analysis, interpretive readings of the texts include general, specific, visual, and relational readings. Secondly, through exploring the interaction between various parts of these texts, and between the texts themselves, I explore three types of narrative instances--single-text, intratextual, and intertextual. Each analysis of a narrative instance is matched specifically to each participant, and I believe, is uniquely adequate for understanding the experience of vicarious witnessing. My inquiry outlines how individuals make sense of vicariously witnessing trauma, clarifies the meaning that participants make of the vicarious witnessing experience, shows the risks and coping involved in vicarious witnessing, and presents the kinds of social action that vicarious witnessing evokes. In the field of counselling psychology, the witnessing experience is an important aspect of trauma theory that has been left unexplored by psychologists. My research enlarges the social and theoretical conversation concerning the vicarious witnessing experience.

This thesis analyzes the representation of the Shoah in French-language Quebec literature. It first presents the numerous difficulties involved in the fictional representation of this genocide, which relate primarily to writers' authority: lacking the legitimacy of "true" witnesses, writers who address the topic run the risk of betraying the memory of those who were persecuted. The thesis then demonstrates that, despite theoretical obstacles, many novels and poems from Quebec touch upon the Shoah and express a feeling of guilt towards the victims as early as the 1950's. The last chapter postulates that since the 1980's, fiction has acquired a greater legitimacy and narrative forms used to represent the Shoah have diversified, due to the gradual disappearance of direct witnesses as well as the interval of time separating writers from the tragedy.

Kurt Gerstein entered the Waffen-SS in 1941 with the intention of working against the Nazi regime from the inside. Despite being required to participate in some of the criminal activities of the SS, Gerstein believed he could be most effective for the resistance if he remained in the SS. This thesis examines the evidence presented in and the results of three separate legal proceedings (a criminal trial, a Denazification hearing and a rehabilitation and compensation case) which took place in the 24 years following Gerstein's death in 1945. Each of the three proceedings was brought about for a different legal purpose, and therefore involved different laws and standards for judgment. However, all of the proceedings dealt with the problem of balancing the incriminating nature of Gerstein's means of resistance against what he had hoped to accomplish, or did accomplish, from that position.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-240). / Microfiche. / xx, 240 leaves, bound ill., maps (some folded) 29 cm

This research documentation explores representations of the Holocaust in the visual arts in relation to the post-Holocaust ??ripple effect????the impact of the Holocaust on the world today, in both the wider arena of global political conflicts and in the lives of individuals. In the following chapters, I address the complex ethical and political aspects of representations of the Holocaust in the context of the evolution of Holocaust awareness and memorialisation. I also investigate recent developments in art and theory that challenge prevailing conventions governing Holocaust representation, especially how the relationship between the perceived political exploitation of the Holocaust and the intergenerational effects of Holocaust trauma is addressed. Given these are sensitive and contentious issues I discuss my studio work in terms of how trauma affects the political rather than as an overt polemically/politically motivated art. I examine my attempts to bypass controversy (maintaining respect for victims and survivors), yet maintain engagement with these issues in my art. In doing this I aim to liberate both my art and the viewer from habits of perception in regard to the subject. From this principle I propose a ??strategic?? form of self-censorship that paradoxically gives me the freedom to do this. This strategy enables me to create an art of ambiguity, which exists in an amoral zone. The art evokes reflective thought, uncertainty and ambivalence, where references to the Holocaust or political content are often not explicit, leaving room for lateral and open readings. My work, which incorporates interdisciplinary methods, is often based on photographs from a variety of sources. I also create three dimensional constructions. The sourced images and the constructions are disguised, decontextualised, cropped, erased or digitally altered, and also experiment with optical illusion. Through transformative processes these images are changed into drawings, paintings, photographs. This research documentation acknowledges the gap between the gravitas of the subject with its ethical and geo-political complexities and my idiosyncratic, subjective, introverted approach to making art. I conclude that there is potential in the exploration of an ??anxiety of representation?? in relation to the Holocaust in the contemporary context.

Univ., Diss.--Klagenfurt, 2002. / Literaturverz. S. 351 - 384.