Overview

The Sense of Semblance is the first book to incorporate contemporary analytic philosophy in interpretations of art and architecture, literature, and film about the Holocaust. The book’s principal aim is to move beyond the familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of alternative theories of meaning and understanding from the Anglophone analytic tradition. The book takes as its starting point the claim that Holocaust artworks must fulfill at least two specific yet potentially reciprocally countervailing desiderata: they must meet aesthetic criteria (lest they be, say, merely historical documents) and they must meet historical criteria (they must accurately represent the Holocaust, lest they be merely artworks). I locate this problematic within the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and aesthetic heteronomy, and claim that Theodor W. Adorno’s “dialectic of aesthetic semblance” describes the normative demand that a successful artwork maintain a dynamic tension between these dual desiderata. While working within a framework inspired by Adorno, the book further claims that certain concepts and lines of reasoning from contemporary philosophy best explicate how individual artworks fulfill these dual desiderata, including the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre’s theory of the imaginary, work in the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin’s theory of dialectical images. Individual chapters provide close readings of lyric poetry by Paul Celan (including a critique of Derridean deconstruction), Holocaust memorials in Berlin, texts by the Austrian quotational artist Heimrad Bäcker, Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah and Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus. The result is a set of interpretations of Holocaust artworks that, in their precision, specificity and clarity, inaugurate a dialogue between contemporary analytic philosophy and contemporary art.

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Reviews

Successfully blending insights from continental and Anglophone philosophy, Pickford's Sense of Semblance establishes a new methodology in the field of philosophical inquiry into Holocaust representation. Indeed, this wholly original study positions itself as nothing less than a systemic analysis of the first principles of aesthetic representation of catastrophic phenomena, and as such seems certain to make an enduring contribution to the field. -R. Clifton Spargo, author of The Ethics of Mourning, Vigilant Memory: Emmanuel Levinas, the Holocaust, and the Unjust Death Pickford's work is an ambitious and highly original interdisciplinary examination of Holocaust art and the challenges it poses to philosophical analysis. Pickford offers penetrating analyses of some of the most important and controversial works of Holocaust art among them the poetry of Paul Celan, the Neue Wache and Bavarian Quarter memorials in Berlin, the aesthetics of historical quotation in Heimrad Backer's 'system nachschrift,' and the testimonial art of Claude Lanzmann and Art Spiegelman as well as to his ongoing engagement with various modes of philosophical analysis in both the Analytic and Continental traditions. The book deals with complex issues in an extremely lucid manner and is meticulous in its interweaving of philosophical, historical and literary approaches to the Holocaust in art. -Michael Levine, Rutgers University Drawing on Adorno's aesthetic theory, Benjamin's notion of dialectical images, and insights from contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, Henry Pickford provides a trenchant and original analysis of the struggle of artists to do justice to the memory of the Holocaust. Examining a wide range of both familiar and unfamiliar material from poetry and film to graphic novels and memorial installations, he shows that against all odds some have succeeded in fashioning both imaginative works of art and powerful reminders of the horrors they urge us never to forget. The Sense of Semblance is a work fully adequate to its demanding subject, an exemplary application of philosophical theory to artistic practice. -Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley When addressing the Holocaust, philosophers tend to raise broad questions regarding ethics, history, and epistemology. Henry Pickford has chosen a very different approach. He has turned his critical attention to individual works of art and literature. The Sense of Semblance offers fascinating and persuasive insights into the vexed and highly controversial problems of the truth content of art dealing with the Holocaust. What distinguishes Pickford's excellent book from preceding studies is its rigorous, yet differentiated use of continental and analytic philosophy to address the challenging problems of representation, expression, performance, and historical veracity. The truth becomes legible through the patient study of the detail. The author has greatly advanced our understanding of Holocaust art and its role in the public sphere through his persistent emphasis of the fundamental epistemological questions. -Peter Hohendahl, Cornell University ...Offers a convincing approach for both philosophical thinking and for coming to terms with art about the Holocaust. --Robert Eaglestone, Times Literary Supplement At times the prose is dense, but overall Pickford develops clear argumentative paths and admirably manages to elucidate continental philosophers' arguments that are relevant for art criticism. --The British Journal of Aestheticism Pickford's masterful discussion of the philosophical questions inherent in Holocaust art is thought-provoking and challenging, of value to those in a variety of disciplines from art history to philosophy and literature. -Holocaust and Genocide Studies

While Henry Pickford's work tells us about Holocaust art, perhaps it tells us more about our methodologies. Facing the extreme moments of human history seems to make unusual demands on the humanities. Historians facing the Holocaust have had to question their founding historiographical assumptions and to pioneer new ways of writing history; this process is also analogous in other disciplines. This book, in its dialogue between traditions in philosophy, attempts to face these demands and - even if it's not successful in every case - offers a convincing approach for both philosophical thinking and for coming to terms with art about the Holocaust. - Robert Eaglestone, Times Literary Supplement, September 27th 2013

Author Information

Henry Pickford is Associate Research Professor of German at Duke University. He is the editor and translator of Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords by Theodor W. Adorno.

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