Norman Finkelstien Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Norman Finkelstien - Essay Example It was not simply writing on the Holocaust that Finkelstein saw to be fraudulent, but an entire â€Å"Holocaust industry† pushing this particular past on the present for both ideological and financial gain. Finkelstein's criticisms of what were perceived to be misuses of the Holocaust were neither the first word nor the last on this subject. As the accusations leveled at Leai suggest, right from the outset, questions were raised about the mixed motives behind representing this particular past. With the increasing prominence of the Holocaust in popular discourse since the 1960s, those dissenting voices have gotten louder, reaching a deafening crescendo in Finkelstein's damning critique of the Holocaust industry. But Finkelstein's claims of the existence of a Holocaust industry drew on a much longer tradition of critical reflection on the popularization of the Holocaust. Much longer history of the criticism of Holocaust representation can be seen developing alongside the history of that representation. There are two broad strands in this disparate literature. One strand has questioned what has been seen as an overemphasis on the Holocaust in general, and by Jews in particular. Another strand has not questioned all contemporary concerns with the Holocaust per se, but has critiqued specific representations of the Holocaust—movies, museum exhibits, and books—in large part on the grounds of inauthenticity. What unifies these two broad strands—and such diverse writers as Norman Finkelstein and Elie Wiesel—is a refusal to accept any cultural product that draws on the history of the Holocaust as by definition a good thing, simply because it makes this past known. Within the more restricted criticism of someone like Wiesel, there can be, and have been, inappropriate Holocaust representations. From the more radical perspective of Finkelstein, all the products of the Holocaust industry are rejected as little more than attempts at â€Å"J ewish aggrandizement.† 4 While these two critical strands differ quite markedly, beneath both lies the deeper question of whether all the more recent talk about the Holocaust is a good thing in general, and whether it is a good thing for Jews and non-Jews in particular. However, such criticisms have recently been themselves subject to criticism. In the aftermath of the publication of Finkelstein's book in particular, voices were raised against the questioning of both specific Holocaust representations, and the perceived centrality of the Holocaust. The attack on the Holocaust industry by Finkelstein and others has been challenged and critiqued, perhaps most importantly, in an essay written by Alvin Rosenfeld in the American Jewish Year Book for 2001. There, Rosenfeld argued that the criticism of what was perceived to be a contemporary overemphasis on the Holocaust amounted, explicitly or implicitly, to calls for forgetting. If the Holocaust was to be increasingly forgotten, as critics of the Holocaust industry advocated, the result would be, Rosenfeld suggested, that Jews would â€Å"return to the kind of vulnerability that preceded Auschwitz and helped bring it about.† 27 However, before reflecting on the recent debate over the broader critique of the Holocaust industry, there are narrower criticisms of the specific products of the H