Concentrationary Memories has, as its premise , the idea at the heart of Alain Resnais's film Night and Fog (1955) that the concentrationary plague unleashed on the world by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s is not simply confined to one place and one time but is now a permanent presence shadowing modern life. It further suggests that memory (and, indeed art in general) must be invoked to show this haunting of the present by this menacing past so that we can read for the signs of terror and counter its deformation of the human. Through working with political and cultural theory on readings of film, art, photographic and literary practices, Concentrationary Memories analyses different cultural responses to concentrationary terror in different sites in the post-war period, ranging from Auschwitz to Argentina. These readings show how those involved in the cultural production of memories of the horror of totalitarianism sought to find forms, languages and image systems which could make sense of and resist the post-war condition in which, as Hannah Arendt famously stated 'everything is possible' and 'human beings as human beings become superfluous.' Authors include Nicholas Chare, Isabelle de le Court, Thomas Elsaesser, Benjamin Hannavy Cousen, Matthew John, Claire Launchbury, Sylvie Lindeperg, Laura Malosetti Costa, Griselda Pollock, Max Silverman, Glenn Sujo, Annette Wieviorka and John Wolfe Ackerman.

In 1945, French political prisoners returning from the concentration camps of Germany coined the phrase 'the concentrationary universe' to describe the camps as a terrible political experiment in the destruction of the human. This book shows how the unacknowledged legacy of a totalitarian mentality has seeped into the deepest recesses of everyday popular culture. It asks if the concentrationary now infests our cultural imaginary, normalizing what was once considered horrific and exceptional by transforming into entertainment violations of human life. Drawing on the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and the analyses of violence by Agamben, Virilio, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, it also offers close readings of films by Cavani and Haneke that identify and critically expose such an imaginary and, hence, contest its lingering force.

Largely forgotten over the years, the seminal work of French poet, novelist and camp survivor Jean Cayrol has experienced a revival in the French-speaking world since his death in 2005. His concept of a concentrationary art—the need for an urgent and constant aesthetic resistance to the continuing effects of the concentrationary universe—proved to be a major influence for Hannah Arendt and other writers and theorists across a number of disciplines. Concentrationary Art presents the first translation into English of Jean Cayrol’s key essays on the subject, as well as the first book-length study of how we might situate and elaborate his concept of a Lazarean aesthetic in cultural theory, literature, cinema, music and contemporary art.

Since its completion in 1955, Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) has been considered one of the most important films to confront the catastrophe and atrocities of the Nazi era. But was it a film about the Holocaust that failed to recognize the racist genocide? Or was the film not about the Holocaust as we know it today but a political and aesthetic response to what David Rousset, the French political prisoner from Buchenwald, identified on his return in 1945 as the ‘concentrationary universe’ which, now actualized, might release its totalitarian plague any time and anywhere? What kind of memory does the film create to warn us of the continued presence of this concentrationary universe? This international collection re-examines Resnais’s benchmark film in terms of both its political and historical context of representation of the camps and of other instances of the concentrationary in contemporary cinema. Through a range of critical readings, Concentrationary Cinema explores the cinematic aesthetics of political resistance not to the Holocaust as such but to the political novelty of absolute power represented by the concentrationary system and its assault on the human condition.

Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust is a decisive text of intellectual reflection after Auschwitz, in which Bauman rejected the idea that the Holocaust represented the polar opposite of modernity and saw it instead as its dark potentiality. Bringing together leading scholars from across disciplines, this volume offers the first set of focused and critical commentaries on this classic work of social theory, evaluating its ongoing contribution to scholarship in the social sciences and humanities. Addressing the core messages of Modernity and the Holocaust that continue to sound amidst the convulsions of the present, the chapters situate Bauman’s volume in the social, cultural and academic context of its genesis, and considers its role in the complex processes of Holocaust memorialisation. Offering extensions of Bauman’s thesis to lesser-known and undertheorised events of mass violence, and also considering the significance of Janina Bauman’s writings in their own right, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, intellectual history, Holocaust and genocide studies, moral philosophy, memory studies and cultural theory.

Jewish identity, memory, and place deftly revealed through the lens of Jewish women's graphic narratives. An exploration of the work of Jewish women graphic novelists and the intricate Jewish identity is complicated by gender, memory, generation, and place—that is, the emotional, geographical, and psychological spaces that women inhabit. Victoria Aarons argues that Jewish women graphic novelists are preoccupied with embodied memory: the way the body materializes memory. This monograph investigates how memory manifests in the drawn shape of the body as an expression of the weight of personal and collective histories. Aarons explores Jewish identity, diaspora, mourning, memory, and witness in the works of Sarah Lightman, Liana Finck, Anya Ulinich, Leela Corman, and more. Memory Spaces begins by framing this research within contemporary discourse and reflects upon the choice to explore Jewish women graphic novelists specifically. In the chapters that follow, Aarons relates the nuanced issues of memory, transmission of trauma, Jewish cultural identity, and the gendered self to a series of meaningful and noteworthy graphic novels. Aarons’s insight, close readings, and integration of contemporary scholarship are conveyed clearly and concisely, creating a work that both captivates readers and contributes to scholarly discourse in Jewish studies, women’s literature, memory studies, and identity.

Concentration camps are a relatively new invention, a recurring feature of twentieth century warfare, and one that is important to the modern global consciousness and identity. Although the most famous concentration camps are those under the Nazis, the use of concentration camps originated several decades before the Third Reich, in the Philippines and in the Boer War, and they have been used again in numerous locations, not least during the genocide in Bosnia. They have become defining symbols of humankind's lowest point and basest acts. In this book, Dan Stone gives a global history of concentration camps, and shows that it is not only "mad dictators " who have set up camps, but instead all varieties of states, including liberal democracies, that have made use of them. Setting concentration camps against the longer history of incarceration, he explains how the ability of the modern state to control populations led to the creation of this extreme institution. Looking at their emergence and spread around the world, Stone argues that concentration camps serve the purpose, from the point of view of the state in crisis, of removing a section of the population that is perceived to be threatening, traitorous, or diseased. Drawing on contemporary accounts of camps, as well as the philosophical literature surrounding them, Stone considers the story camps tell us about the nature of the modern world as well as about specific regimes.

During August 1942 several women jumped to their deaths from a second story window at the tile factory in the small town of Milles near Aix-en-Provence. Between 1939 and 1942 the factory assumed various roles as internment camp, transit camp and ultimately deportation camp. This book is about the view from the ‘suicide window’ as it is presented within the Camp des Milles memorial museum which opened in 2012. It explores how this view might help us to understand and imagine the world of internment and deportation camps operating in France during the Second World War and their memorial today. The book uses the views framed by the window to think critically about the museography of the memorial within the wider context of France’s relatively late acknowledgment of its role in the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War.

In 1945, French political prisoners returning from the concentration camps of Germany coined the phrase 'the concentrationary universe' to describe the camps as a terrible political experiment in the destruction of the human. This book shows how the unacknowledged legacy of a totalitarian mentality has seeped into the deepest recesses of everyday popular culture. It asks if the concentrationary now infests our cultural imaginary, normalizing what was once considered horrific and exceptional by transforming into entertainment violations of human life.

This book addresses the centrality of race and racism in consolidating the nationalisms currently prominent in Brexit Britain. Particular attention is given to the issues of refugees, borders and bordering, and the wider forms of nativist and anti- Muslim sentiments that anchor today’s increasingly populist forms of nationalist politics. It is argued that the forms of scapegoating and alarmism integral to the revival of nationalism in British politics are fundamentally tied to racialised processes. Equally however, it is argued that such a political climate is not simply discursive, but also yields acute forms of governance, wherein an increasingly violent attention is given by the state to the border. The chapters in the book do however also attempt to think through the possibilities of a constructive response to this moment. Emphasis is given here to the everyday cultural textures that might help shape a popular opposition to racial nationalism. Similarly, the book attempts to unpack the appeal of today’s distinctive populism in ways that might be more responsive to anti-racist and anti-nationalist sentiments. Racial Nationalisms will be of interest to academics and researchers studying postcolonialism, nationalism, ethnic and racial studies, and to advanced students of sociology, political science and public policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.