Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

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.

"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

"Irit Dekel's book presents an innovative approach to the study of memorials and the memory that they embody, applied to the ideal memorial for such a study...As memorials and other mechanisms for dealing with the past change, so too must the methods we use to study them. Dekel's book provides one such new approach to studying engagement with the past as it occurs in the Holocaust Memorial, and it is to be hoped that it will pave the way for future ethnographic studies of the interactions between memorials and their visitors, and between past and present." - Amy Sodaro, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 2014

Autorentext

Irit Dekel is Postdoctoral fellow in the Social Sciences department in Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany and teaches at ECLA of Bard in Berlin. She has published on memory politics in Germany and Israel, media, and memory tourism.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements List of Figures Introduction 1. Navigating Experience: Studying the Holocaust Memorial 2. Spheres of Speakability: Old and New Discursive Modes 3. Memory in Action: New Ethics of Engagement with Holocaust Memory 4. Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial Conclusion