The historical uncanny: disability, ethnicity, and the politics of Holocaust memory

Abstract

Reviews the book, The Historical Uncanny: Disability, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Holocaust Memory by Susanne C. Knittel (2014). The book emphasizes the need to consider intersections between disability, memory, ethnicity, and history in order to comprehend 'uncanny' contours of Holocaust memory. Such an inter-disciplinary and intersectional approach, a foundational tenet of a feminist epistemology, is effective to recognize the ways in which hegemony and able-bodiedness take precedence over commemorative practices surrounding the two 'sites' of memory. Knittel's book is a significant contribution to disability studies and memory studies, both of which have hitherto paid little interest to the historical trajectory of the international eugenics movement, its ideological influence on the Nazi euthanasia program, the silenced victims, and their marginalized memories. On the one hand, the book expands the scholarship on disability studies by critics such as Sharon Snyder, David Mitchell, and Paul Gilroy. The book transcends the disciplinary boundaries of memory and disability, and offers a postcolonial reading as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)