Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Animals and the Holocaust in Hebrew Literature: From Yoram Kaniuk’s Fiction to Alona Frankel’s Memoirs

Sun, December 16, 12:30 to 2:00pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Backbay 2 Complex

Abstract

Yoram Kaniuk's ADAM BEN KELEV (1969; ADAM RESURRECTED), David Grossman's AYEN 'EREKH AHAVAH (1986; SEE UNDER: LOVE), Nava Semel's TSHOK SHEL AKHBAROSH (2001; AND THE RAT LAUGHED), and Alona Frankel's memoirs, YALDAH (2005, GIRL) NA'ARAH (2009, Teen Years), and ISHAH: HAYIM UVA"ALEI HAYIM(2014, Woman: Life and Living Creatures) are canonical works of Israeli literature, celebrated as important responses to the Holocaust. However, surprisingly little critical attention has gone to the ways these texts blur boundaries between human and non-human animals. Whether through anthropomorphisms or metamorphoses, the authors give voice to a spectrum of creatures. An animal studies approach can help us discern how the texts speak back against anti-Semitic discourse that equates Jews with dogs, apes, and vermin. In addition, interaction with animals in these texts is paired with innovative narrative technique and with efforts to stretch the limits of representation. By challenging and dismantling the notion of the “dumb” animal, such writing signals that it attempts to venture into a realm beyond human language. The writers all eschew plausibility and verisimilitude as they grapple with trauma and extremes of experience. The vantage point of the non-human animal helps them enter into previously unspoken territory, to sound suppressed voices, to counteract silences surrounding Holocaust victims and survivors, or to critique and repudiate atrocities of the human world.
Drawing on conceptual frameworks developed by critical animal studies, this paper considers how Hebrew literature has confronted preoccupation with the categories “human,” “subhuman,” “animal,” “masters,” beasts,” the “Master Race” and the “Nazi Beast.” The discussion will include comparisons between Hebrew literature and literature in other languages that likewise combines treatment of the Holocaust with a central focus on animals (for instance, in Kosinski’s PAINTED BIRD, I. B. Singer’s “The Letter Writer,” Coetzee’s ELIZABETH COSTELLO, Spiegelman’s MAUS, and Ackerman’s THE ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE).

Author