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6 - The Holocaust and Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2025

By
Mark Roseman
Edited by
Mark Roseman  and
Dan Stone
Mark Roseman
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Dan Stone
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
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Summary

This chapter examines the way in which the Holocaust has been brought into conversation with understandings of the modern world, with a strong focus on historical and sociological accounts (though recognizing the place of the Holocaust in postmodern literary and critical theory.) It shows the multiple ways in which concepts of modernization, modernity, and the modern have been deployed, be it to establish the Holocaust’s paradigmatic or normative character, or the reverse. It illustrates the paradoxical character of efforts to highlight the Holocaust’s distinctiveness while harnessing it to a pervasive and generic “modernity.”

Keywords

ModernitymodernizationMarxismFrankfurt Schoolbarbarism and civilization“gardener state”Auschwitzuniqueness of the HolocaustDialectic of the EnlightenmentOrigins of TotalitarianismtotalitarianismGerman “special path”intentionalism and functionalismrationalization“spirit of science”reactionary modernismpostmodernitypostcolonialismcomparative approachesgenocide and modernityhumanity versus modernity
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Holocaust , pp. 113 - 133
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

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