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IPP WORKSHOP SERIES | Archana Ravi: “Forms of Perpetration in Contemporary Second World War Fiction”

When

Nov 28, 2024 from 02:00 to 04:00 (Europe/Berlin / UTC100)

Where

SR 109

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The proposed Workshop aims to examine the representation of the different forms of perpetration in literary fiction. Perpetrator fiction, as opposed to being an oversimplified depiction of an archetypal ‘evil’ perpetrator, attempt to “engage with the immense suffering of the victims and reflect on the human capacity for cruelty that enabled such extreme acts of perpetration to occur in the first place.” (Pettitt, 361) The workshop will engage with texts that deal with perpetrators and the layered, forms of perpetration on a spectrum, by looking at their ‘motivations’, their agency (and the lack of it) which occurs while they are positioned in a larger totalitarian structure that encourages perpetration.
The workshop will be divided into two sections. The first would be a general introduction to perpetrator narratives and the depiction of perpetrator/perpetration in contemporary Second World War Fiction. It will also introduce the participants to how authors engage in narrative processes of simultaneous identification and dis-identification with perpetrator characters. (McGlothlin) The second part of the workshop would be practical. Participants will be given readings (sections from selected novels) that they would be expected to read prior to the workshop. During the workshop, the participants would be encouraged to discuss how they view and differentiate between the different forms of perpetration, discuss notions of culpability, and the ethical implications of humanizing perpetrators by means of reflecting, for instance, on their trauma and situating them and their acts of perpetration within a violent political structure.

 

Works Cited
McGlothlin, Erin. “Narrative Perspective and the Holocaust Perpetrator: Edgar Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber and Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones”. The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature edited by Jenni Adams, London, New York, Bloomsbury, 2014, pp. 159-178.
Pettitt, Joanne. “What Is Holocaust Perpetrator Fiction?” Journal of European Studies, vol. 50, no. 4, Dec. 2020, pp. 360–72. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1177/0047244120965268

 

To register: Winter Term 2024/25 — The Graduate Centre (uni-giessen.de)