Holocaust artworks intuitively must fulfill at least two criteria: artistic (lest they be merely historical documents) and historical (lest they distort the Holocaust or become merely artworks). The book locates this problematic within philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and heteronomy, and argues that Adorno’s dialectic of aesthetic semblance describes the normative demand that artworks maintain a dynamic tension between the two. It aims to move beyond familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of contemporary theor ... More

Holocaust artworks intuitively must fulfill at least two criteria: artistic (lest they be merely historical documents) and historical (lest they distort the Holocaust or become merely artworks). The book locates this problematic within philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and heteronomy, and argues that Adorno’s dialectic of aesthetic semblance describes the normative demand that artworks maintain a dynamic tension between the two. It aims to move beyond familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of contemporary theories of meaning and understanding, including those from the analytic tradition. It shows how the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, the analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre’s theory of the imaginary, the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin’s dialectical image can help explicate how individual artworks fulfill artistic and historical desiderata. The book is comprised of a theoretical introduction and conclusion, and chapters devoted to close readings of Celan’s poetry, Holocaust memorials in Berlin, Heimrad Backer’s quotational texts, Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah, and Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus.