After the Holocaust: The Book of Job, Primo Levi, and the Path to Affliction

by C. Fred Alford

Overview

The Holocaust marks a decisive moment in modern suffering in which it becomes almost impossible to find meaning or redemption in the experience. In this study, C. Fred Alford offers a new and thoughtful examination of the experience of suffering. Moving from the Book of Job, an account of meaningful suffering in a God-drenched world, to the work of Primo Levi, who attempted to find meaning in the Holocaust through absolute clarity of insight, he concludes that neither strategy works well in today’s world. More effective are the day-to-day coping practices of some survivors. Drawing on testimonies of survivors from the Fortunoff Video Archives, Alford also applies the work of Julia Kristeva and the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicot to his examination of a topic that has been and continues to be central to human experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521766326
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/27/2009
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

C. Fred Alford is Professor of Government and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland, College Park. A recipient of three awards from the Fulbright Commission, he is the author of more than a dozen books in moral psychology, most recently, Psychology and the Natural Law of Reparation.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Job, transitional space, and ruthlessness; 3. Holocaust testimonies: after the silence of Job; 4. Sisyphus, Levi, and Job at Auschwitz; 5. Conclusion: beyond the silence of Job.

Editorial Reviews

Applying the most recent theoretical tools to the most ancient of problems—the inexplicability of radical evil and unjustified suffering—C. Fred Alford casts light on the darkest corner of the human condition. Comparing the senseless afflictions of Job in the Hebrew Bible with the ‘surplus absurdity’ of the Holocaust, unsuccessfully mastered even by the efforts of a Primo Levi, he helps us see the difference between a world in which faith in ultimate meaning, however ineffable, still endures and one in which all our consolations fail. No longer able to attribute our pain to a God who nonetheless deserves our praise, we are left with the meaningless misery caused only by the unfathomable depravity of our fellow humans. And yet, Alford won’t let us forget, even those who suffer the greatest damage can manage somehow to go on living.”
—Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley


“The Holocaust’s unmerited, unwarranted suffering points toward unredeemed, unredeemable oblivion. Concentrating on the biblical Book of Job, the post-Auschwitz reflection of Primo Levi, and the testimony of other Holocaust survivors, C. Fred Alford’s unsparing analysis of the overwhelmingly abject suffering inflicted by human-created ‘surplus absurdity’ emphasizes paying attention. Responding to a world so fraught with suffering as to be morally incomprehensible, paying attention, which Alford calls ‘an alternative for living within and amid absurdity,’ becomes a credible, countervailing ethical stance. Alford shows how carefully attending to our post-Holocaust predicament enables us to appreciate and share our humanity in ways that resist perverse forces intent on degrading and destroying human existence. Recognizing our finitude and fallibility while holding humankind accountable, Alford’s flashes of insight are scarcely comforting, but they provide much-needed guidance that can bring us to our senses.”
—John K. Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College


“After the Holocaust offers an extended meditation on the emotional trajectory of holocaust survivors. At the book’s core are the survivors’ testimonies, provided not to belabor the horrors that are already so well known but to explore the impact on their lives of the experience of abjectness that they have undergone. These testimonies are measured against two literary treatments of the experience of abjectness: From the ancient world, the book of Job provides a parallel case, while for our own time, the writings of Primo Levi afford the perspective a supremely articulate survivor. A work of literary sensitivity and erudition, After the Holocaust deepens our understanding not only of Holocaust survivors but of all who have been confronted by the unthinkable.”
—Raymond Scheindlin, Jewish Theological Seminary and translator of a new edition of the Book of Job


C. Fred Alford's After the Holocaust takes the Holocaust seriously and is among the most thoughtful and important books written on the subject. Aflord's work is informed by a vast array of sources drawn from philosophy, theology, and psychology and provides an example of contemporary political thought at its best."
—Elliot Bartky, The Review of Politics

From the Publisher