Surreal Geographies

<i>Surreal Geographies</i> recovers a forgotten archive of Holocaust representation. Examining art literature and film produced from the immediate postwar period up to the present moment Kathryn L. Brackney investigates changing portrayals of Jewish victims and survivors. In so doing she demonstrates that the Holocaust has been understood not only through the documentary realism and postmodern fragmentation familiar to scholars but also through a surreal mode of meaning making. From an otherworldly Planet Auschwitz to the spare intimate spaces of documentary interviews Brackney shows that the humanity of victims has been produced undermined and guaranteed through evolving scripts for acknowledging and mourning mass violence.<br> <br> Brackney offers a new look at familiar works by authors and artists such as Claude Lanzmann W. G. Sebald and Paul Celan while making surprising connections to contemporary scholars like Timothy Snyder and Donna Haraway and events such as the Space Race. In the process she maps out a decades-long process through which transnational conventions of mourning have emerged in Western Europe North America and Israel functioning to constitute Jewish victimization as grievable life. Ultimately she shows how the Holocaust has developed into a figure for the destabilization and reformulation of the category of humanity and the problem of mourning across difference.