Ladies and Gentlemen, your final blog prompt

Taduesz Borowski's short story, "Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber" depicts daily life in Auschwitz as described by the story's unnamed protagonist, a non-Jewish Polish prisoner who works in the concentration camp gas chambers. The main character does anything within his power to appeal to the prison guards and work his way up in the camp's hierarchy to improve his material situation and thus guarantee his own survival.

As we saw in class, in Claude Lanzmann's 1985 Holocaust documentary "Shoah," Lanzmann interviews gentile Polish villagers living in close proximity to the Chelmno death camp. It is striking to see how much hatred and stereotyping by the villagers seems to stem from economic disparity. This very famous scene is touched upon in a 2009 article by "The Nation:"

"Shoah's largely unsympathetic portrait of the Poles is the more disturbing for their having escaped historical condemnation thus far, and speaks volumes about the deep roots of anti-Semitism in Poland, both before and after 1945. Yet, the scandalous attacks on Lanzmann in the official Polish press, and the ensuing furor, have almost obscured the significance of Polish anti-Semitism within Shoah itself.

The anti-Semitism of the Poles is primordial, raw and unprocessed, while the Germans filter their reactions through the bureaucratic screen of modern language and precensored speech. The Poles are traditional anti-Semites, unable to conceal their resentments and prejudices, while the Germans are calculating and unrepentant killers hiding behind rational and bureaucratic masks. Apart from demonstrating the persistence of anti-Semitism in contemporary Poland, and apart from documenting the cordon sanitaire it provided for the killing, Shoah draws a sharp contrast between Poles and Germans and accentuates the primeval character of Christian anti-Semitism by contrast with the technological modernity of the Nazi murder machine."

If you are interested you can read more here:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/19860315/rabinbach

My question for you is:
Please share your reactions to "Ladies and Gentelmen, to the Gas Chamber," and Shoah. How do you understand Borowski's narrator? Can you excuse his emotional distancing for the sake of self preservation? And similarly, do you find the nonchalance of the Polish villagers toward the fate of their Jewish contrymen excusable, or maybe understandable? Is Borowski's character and are the Polish villagers complicit in what took place by not standing up?

Please freely share your opinions and reactions.

An adventure in hyper-textuality

As we didn't get a chance to discuss the Borges short story in class on Monday, I would be interested to hear what you thought of "The Garden of Forking Paths." Did you enjoy the text? What elements of his philosophy made sense to you, or what did you find to be confusing? Borges' story is described as a "hyper-text;" what is the significance of this term in relation to the story? And as usual, feel free to share any other connections you might see.

Freud and Proust

For this blog post, I would like you to simply compare the writing of Freud and Proust. What similar themes do you see in both Sigmund Freud's "Dora" and Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past?" Do you see elements of psychoanalysis in Proust's writing? Are there any similarities in form or narrative structure? Feel free to make any additional comments about these two writers.

American Modernism

In Monday's class we discussed Europe's arguably first "modern" poet, Charles Baudelaire. In our discussion of Baudelaire's writing, we focused on his preoccupation with city life and appreciation of a newly emerging mass society. In consideration of Baudelaire's respect for modernity, I would like you to watch this brief 10 minute introduction to a BBC documentary on the rise and fall of Detroit (it actually has a hopeful message). This is an absolutely fascinating film and if you are interested in the topic, the full version is available on youtube. (Sorry I can't embed in Blogger for some reason!) The video link is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReqG6qbx_c0

Detroit is presented in the documentary as the "birthplace of the American modern." In the height of its prosperity it was eerily called the "Paris of the mid-west" as it was the location of unprecedented urban growth. In its post-industrial life, however, it has left a landscape of abandoned buildings and the highest employment numbers in the country. Detroit is of course just a single example, but it shows the fragility of such a rapid, urban growth.

In your opinion, what are the potential positives and negatives of living in a mass society? As we invest more in technological and scientific progress, is the dream of modernism going to bring society to a better place? Is there a positive side to living as an anonymous "man of the crowd"? Is community still possible in city life? You can respond to the video and prompt in any way that you feel is most productive.