Foundational Pasts (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521736329)

Alon Confino seeks to rethink dominant interpretations of the Holocaust by examining it as a problem in cultural history. As the main research interests of Holocaust scholars are frequently covered terrain - the anti-Semitic ideological campaign, the machinery of killing, the brutal massacres during the war - Confino's research goes in a new direction. He analyzes the culture and sensibilities that made it possible for the Nazis and other Germans to imagine the making of a world without Jews. Confino seeks these insights from the ways historians interpreted another short, violent, and foundational event in modern European history - the French Revolution. The comparison of the ways we understand the Holocaust with scholars' interpretations of the French Revolution allows Confino to question some of the basic assumptions of present-day historians concerning historical narration, explanation, and understanding.

Author: Alon Confino
ISBN-10: 0521736323
ISBN-13: 9780521736329
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/30/2011
Pages: 192
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.98h x 6.33w x 0.49d