Witness through Fiction
Holocaust, Conflict and Genocide in Cinema and Literature
Fiction comme témoignage
Holocauste, conflit et génocide en littérature et au cinéma
Colloque à l’Université de Limoges
organisé par
EHIC (Limoges) et l’ University of North Carolina Charlotte
The Holocaust represents an historical occurrence seemingly beyond comprehension. Literature and film help us remember and make sense of this tragedy. Their works inform, teach, and serve as a moral lesson. Writers and filmmakers intend that these events are truly “never again.” Yet despite George Santayana’s warning about the consequences of forgetting the past and Martin Niemöller’s about indifference and lack of empathy, abuses of human rights and dignity continue. The murder of millions of Jews and lesser numbers of Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, because of who they were and not because they were an external threat continue to shock us. The collective murder of millions by a criminal government may even have created an awareness that encourages people to condemn other atrocities, those that preceded the Holocaust, those that came after and those that continue to occur. Yet abuse of human rights persists. In spite of an apparent inability of humans to learn from history, artists continue to bear witness to the past in hopes of influencing the present and the future.
The colloquium on Witness through Fiction will explore the role of the fictional narrative and feature film in helping readers/filmgoers discover, understand, and come to terms with crimes of horror committed against members of a collective ethnic or cultural community. On the one hand, stories organize and give a sense of connectedness to events, thereby clarifying relationships and cause and effect. On the other hand, the process of creating story distorts. Factual material is dropped, abbreviated, and conflated. Dramatic tension is added in the form of close escapes, espionage, or love affairs. More troubling perhaps is the changing of factual material. Events, persons, and outcomes are distorted. Fictional counterparts are invented, in order to control how a story is received or understood. It is open to debate whether the deviation from history or received history in these works hides the truth or helps reveal it.
In line with the above, the Colloquium on Witness through Fiction is calling for twenty minute original papers that address the issue of the relationship between ethics and the aesthetics of artistic creation. News reports, documentaries, photo exhibits and eye witness accounts relate the reality of atrocity. What, however, is the role of fiction in acting as witness to the atrocities of history? How does the passing of time affect presentation of content and form of the work? Eli Wiesel’s novel Night, although a fictionalized telling of his experiences in Auschwitz, is accepted as truth because of the author’s status as an eye witness. Whereas the concentration camp memoires of Benjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, published in 1995, and first praised by critics, who thought it based on first hand experiences, was then condemned by the same critics, when they discovered the memories were a fabrication. Other critics, however, contended the words were the same before and after the revelation. Controversy befell Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (1996) for different reasons. The book’s narrator, a Nazi war criminal, justifies his crimes through rationalizing and relativizing them.
Cinema in particular is subject to how time remembers. Ostatni Etap (1948), by Polish director and camp survivor Wanda Jakubowska, reconstructed Auschwitz barracks near the actual site to film her story of camp life. J. Morgenstern set his short film Ambulance (1969), about children gassed in a van, in a barren landscape. Twenty five years later, Roberto Bengini set La vita è bella, in a fairy tale like camp, which generated debate about the appropriateness of such a light approach to tragedy. A decade later, without generating much controversy, Quentin Tarrantino gave his epic an essentially happy end by setting it in an alternate historical world.
The above examples focus on the Holocaust. Yet other genocides and abuses of human rights and dignity have occurred, for example in the republics of the former Yugoslavia and in the African countries of Uganda and Rwanda. Contributions on how literature and cinema have treated these tragedies and other historical transgressions against the other are therefore very much encouraged.
Directeurs : Robert Reimer (Charlotte) et Till Kuhnle (EHIC)
Jeudi 09 avril – Matin Tuesday 09 april – Morning
Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines (FLSH : Campus Vanteaux), Salle des Actes
9h00 Accueil – Welcoming
Philippe Allée (doyen de la FLSH)
Robert Reimer / Till Kuhnle : présentation et remerciements – Presentation and aknowledgements
9h30 1ère session 1st session : 6 conférences (30min, discussion comprise) – 6 presentations (30 min including discussion)
- Sylvie Périneau, CeReS : L’instauration des spectateurs en témoin collectif de l’Histoire. L’exemple de la Saint Barthélémy dans « La Reine Margot » (Patrice Chéreau)
- Jean-Marie Grassin, EHIC : Le péché originel d'une République. La Guerre de Canudos (1893-1897), une ‘Vendée brésilienne’, dans la littérature et le cinéma (Da Cunha, reportage, 1901 ; Varga Llosa, roman, 1981 ; Rezende, film, 1997)
- Norbert Barbe : Romantisme et guerre: la Vendée, l'héritage régional et le discours politique/national
Pause-café de 30 min – coffee break
- Lauren Lydic, EHIC (post-doc associé) : Denial and Secondary Witnessing in Višegrad, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Representations of the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Emir Kusturica’s Andrićgrad; Jasmila Žbanić’s « For Those Who Can Tell No Tales»; and Kym Vercoe’s Seven Kilometres North East: Performance on Geography, Tourism and Crime
- Roxana Bauduin - Université de Versailles St. Quentin - en – Yvelines : Faire figurer le corps humain dans le contexte génocidaire
- Cheikhna Aliou Diagana, EHIC (doctorant): Rwanda ou l’impossible esthétisation. Lecture de « L’Ainé des orphélins » de Tierno Monembo et « Murambi : le livre des ossements » de Boubacar Boris Diop
13h Repas – lunch : buffet à la FLSH
Après-midi Afternoon
Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines (FLSH), Salle des Actes
14h30 2nde session – 2nd session : 6 conférences (30mn, discussion comprise) – 6 presentations (30 min including discussion)
- Jasmin Hammon, EHIC (doctorante): Speaking of the Unspeakable – Witnessing apocalypse in contemporary international literature
- Ruszniewski Dahan, ENSAAMA Paris : La réalité à droit au mauvais goût ,la fiction non.
- Till Kuhnle, EHIC: Is kitsch better than not talking about the Holocaust? The Weisses in Germany of the late 70s. A personal survey
Pause-café de 30 min – coffee break
- Robert Reimer, University of North Carolina at Charlotte: From Fairy Tale to Horror: Strategies of Helping Viewers Remember the Past
- Sina Zietz, EHIC (doctorante) : « Avez-vous lu Platon ? » - Littérature, musique et philosophie face aux crimes de la Shoah dans « Les Bienveillantes » de Jonathan Littell
- Tomislav Brlek , Zagreb : Radical Literature: « Les bienveillantes »
20h Diner : L’Escapade des Gourmets
Vendredi 10 avril – Matin Friday 10 april - Morning
Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Économiques, site du Forum (salle 306)
(près de l’Hôtel de ville – close to the townhall)
9h30 3ème session – 3rd session : 5 conférences (30mn, discussion comprise) – 5 presentations (30 min including discussion)
- Nenad Ivić, Zagreb : Une descente en enfer: l'opération testimoniale du Kaputt de Curzio Malaparte
- Eileen Jakeway (Levine Scholar) and Angela Jakeway: (Lecturer, Coordinator of German) University of North Carolina at Charlotte : From Fact to Fiction in Joseph Vilmaier’s “Herbstmilch:Lebenserrinerungen einer Bäuerin”: The Role of One Family’s Narrative in Understanding Germany’s Collective Past”
- Renate Overbeck, PH Ludwigsburg (Prof.em.): Robert Antelme – Georges Perec: comment communiquer la vérité des camps.
Pause-café de 30 min – coffee break
- Pascal Plas, Université de Limoges (Directeur de la Chaire d’excellence Gestion du conflit et de l’après-conflit) : La mise en fiction d’un crime de guerre : le cas du film de Giorgio Diritti « L’homme qui viendra » (Italie, 2010, 115’)
- Bobby Hobgood , University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Director Language Resource Center): Digital Literacy, Ubiquitous Technology, and the Holocaust in Cyberspace
12h30 : Repas – lunch : buffet à l’Espace Détente, site du Forum
Après-midi Afternoon
Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Économiques, site du Forum (salle 306)
14h15 4ème session – 4th session : 3 conférences (30mn, discussion comprise) – 3 presentations (30 min including discussion)
- Béatrice Finet , ESPE de l’Académie de Caen (doctorante au CERSE) : Les récits de la Shoah pour les enfants : un genre particulier ?
- Alfred Strasser, Université de Lille 3 : La représentation des Juifs dans la Vienne des années 80 dans le roman de Robert Schindel, « Gebürtig »
- Till Kuhnle, EHIC: Il ne suffit pas de tirer avec un vieux fusil.
15h45 Clôture du colloque – Closing
16H30-18h30 Musée de la Résistance de la ville de Limoges
La publication des actes est prévue dans la collection Irrésignations.
We intend to publish the papers of the colloqium in the collection Irrésignations.