Abstract

The Holocaust puts ethical constraints upon representation because the elements of the representation are inadequate to what is represented. Yet, because we are a historical society, the Holocaust must become historical for its memory to survive. Berel Lang and Hayden White have separately suggested that a special kind of representation may suit the special nature of this event. They see the key to preserving the "responsible," "proper" representations of the Holocaust in maintaining a restricted discourse before it. Something must be silenced, and each of them conceives of that something as a form of language use.Martin Jay and others believe that the methods of critical history will protect the memory of the Holocaust. The critical dynamism of the profession, however, is driven by professionalism itself. Proximate truth results from constant historical revision. Rewards exist to keep the structure moving. It is the dynamism of the structure, its strength, however, that should undermine any confidence one might place in it of maintaining the memory of any event whatever.It is not that the system of modern research and institutional verification does not work. It works all too well, producing an endless supply of competing, verifiable accounts, the significance of which is always in question. If the modern historical profession cannot well serve any memorializing function, nor sustain a stable referent, and if there is no particular form of writing that naturally suits the sort of event exemplified by the Holocaust, then we must conclude that there is no escape from the risks of representation, no limit that will guarantee any witness. The work must be recommenced within a changing discourse, always differently. And so, with all its paradoxes, "'Never Again' is Now."