Traumatic encounters: Holocaust representation and the Hegelian subject

Argues for an alternative memorial path in Holocaust and cultural studies - one that shows the vital necessity of thinking in a universal way about an event like the Holocaust. Relying on Hegel's notion that the particular is already universal, Eisenstein shows how the encounter with trauma transpires not in the universalizing gesture but rather in its wholesale embrace. This encounter with a structural trauma is at the centre of four titles examined: Spielberg's Schindler's List, D.M. Thomas's 'The White Hotel, Thomas Mann's 'Doctor Faustus' and Grossman's 'See Under: Love.'