Historical Analogy and the Politics of Holocaust Memory
Why do we turn to the past in order to confront the crises of the present? Michael Rothberg approaches this question from the perspective of “comparison controversies”: impassioned public debates that emerge from provocative historical comparisons. Since October 7, 2023, political speeches, protests, magazine articles, and social media posts have generated controversy by connecting recent events in Israel and Gaza to the Holocaust. In this Humanities Without Boundaries talk, Rothberg will consider post-October 7 examples in relation to a larger context of comparison controversies and a longer trajectory of Holocaust memory in order to reflect more generally on the possibilities and pitfalls of historical analogy.
Michael Rothberg (1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies and Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles) researches the social and cultural implications of political violence and its afterlives. His books include The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (2019), and Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000). The 2021 German translation of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), prompted a national debate about the relationship between the Holocaust and colonialism. His current work on comparison controversies grows out of that experience.