The Holocaust Industry: The (American) Debate on the Instrumentalization of the Shoah
At the core of the debate about the “Holocaust industry” are questions of uniqueness, the (im)possibility of universalization, Americanization, and instrumentalization of the Shoah. Following a heated public controversy, resulting in ruined careers and political consolidation, these questions have remained as threatening signifiers of the Zeitgeist of contemporary memory culture. The translated excerpts of texts by prominent Holocaust theorists, gathered in this book, testify to its instrumentalization and ritualization. Hilene Flanzbaum discusses the “Americanization” of the Holocaust, the process, and examples of the massification of Holocaust memory through media and popular culture; Peter Novick addresses the commodification of Holocaust memory in the American Jewish community in the 20th and 21st centuries; Finkelstein finds the Holocaust industry in the entire memorial culture of the Holocaust: in individuals and institutions that build and preserve it, in the political and economic instrumentalization of history, as well as in the entire “market” of content and services that accompany such a culture. They all raise the issue of the “Holocaust industry” as yet another iteration of the decades-long dispute over the ethics of Holocaust representation and its “singularity” or universality.
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