Holokaust a kwestia narracyjnej przedstawialności rzeczywistości historycznej
The Holocaust and the Question of Narrative Representation of Historic Reality

Summary/Abstract: The author reviews the study by A. Ziębińska-Witek “Holocaust. Problemy przedstawiania” [The Holocaust: the Problems with Presentation], which he uses as a springboard for the critique of the post-modernist reflexion over the historiography of the Holocaust. The critical arguments refer to questions of inner cohesion of the narrative constructivist approach to historical activities by the author of the study, the direct relationship between modernity as a cultural formation and the Holocaust assumed by her and the arguments advanced by her in favour of developing new ways of presenting the Holocaust, in which the question of formulating and using metaphors would play a crucial role. The author points out that the intellectual instruments of social sciences have little to do with the naive “mimetic” or “positivistic” approach attributed to them by the author of this study, whereas the post-modernist abandoning of the approach to the socio-historic reality as an objective structure is conducive to cognitive irrationalism, which is particularly dangerous in relation to Holocaust problems. The author juxtaposes the tradition of post-enlightenment, left-wing social critique to post-modernist “radical” criticism of modernity (including modern science).

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