Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide

For Lang (humanities, Trinity College) the Nazi genocide of the Jews raises questions both in its historical existence and in attempts to represent it in discourse of scholarship and literature. He accordingly divides his work into two parts, the first of which approaches, from angles of subordinate questions, the general question of what it is that identifies, historically and morally, the phenomenon of genocide. The second question of discourse and representations is devoted to how the moral status of genocide should cause reevaluations of standard requirements of scholarly disinterest or aesthetic distance. Originally published in 1990 (U. of Chicago Press). Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)