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Offering the first full reconstruction of the transnational history of Arendt's writing on Brecht, this article shows instead that Arendt's essay was a defense of Brecht against the polemics it is often taken to exemplify. Ludz , Ursula and Nordmann , Ingeborg , vol.
See also Willett , Brecht in Context: Kessler , Mario , Ruth Fischer: Ein Leben mit und gegen Kommunisten Cologne , Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat seit Berlin , , —7. For the idea that Arendt identified Brecht's sin with his praise of Stalin or his return to East Germany see e.
Knott , Marie Luise Berlin , , —82, at Young-ah Gottlieb , Susannah Stanford , Anxiety and Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W. The Story of a Friendship New Haven , , —78 , and also infers from the appearance of Arendt's address in Brecht's notebooks that they met in Berlin in , in Wizisla , Benjamin und Brecht: Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft Frankfurt , , and Abbildung 37; but Arendt wasn't in Berlin until and didn't see Brecht there; the notation was probably from a meeting between Brecht and Gershom Scholem: Deutsches Tagebuch , ed.
Schuller , Wolfgang , trans. Kohler , Lotte and Saner , Hans , trans. See also Lasky to Macdonald, 22 Nov.
Cover of Theaters of Justice by Yasco Horsman. Theaters of Justice. Judging, Staging, and Working Through in Arendt, Brecht, and Delbo. Yasco Horsman. Buy Theaters of Justice: Judging, Staging, and Working Through in Arendt, Brecht, and Delbo (Cultural Memory in the Present) by Yasco Horsman (ISBN.
A Literary Life London , , Ralph Manheim New York, , —5, —8. A Bilingual Text , ed. Lawrence, KS , , 84 —5.
Briefe an die Freunde , ed. Nordmann , Ingeborg Munich , , 86 —8, at Peter Constantine New York , , Friedrich Torberg, — Vienna , , —21 ; on Lasky's rejection of the boycott see Lasky, letter to the editor, Times Literary Supplement , 3 Feb.
Willett , John and Manheim , Ralph London , , —20, at After Arendt's death, Heller recalled their discussions of Brecht without mentioning any fundamental disagreement between them: What role do legal trials have in collective processes of coming to terms with a history of mass violence? How does thetheatricalstructure of a criminal trial facilitate and limit national processes of healing and learning from the past?
This study begins with the widely publicized, historic trials of three Nazi war criminals, Eichmann, Barbie, and Priebke, whose explicit goal was not only to punish, but also to establish an officially sanctioned version of the past. The Truth and Reconciliation commissions in South America and South Africa added a therapeutic goal, acting on the belief that a trial can help bring about a moment of closure.
Horsman challenges this belief by reading works that reflect on the relations among pedagogy, therapy, and legal trials. Philosopher Hannah Arendt, poet Charlotte Delbo, and dramaturg Bertolt Brecht all produced responses to historic trials that reopened the cases those trials sought to close, bringing to center stage aspects that had escaped the confines of their legal frameworks.
Reviews " Theater of Justiceis an important and highly readable in-depth study of post-war legal and literary events that continue to exert their influence on the contemporary understanding of justice and historical truth. Horsman is concerned with those aspects of reality that are negotiated and expressed in a trial but cannot be dealt with adequately within the categories of the law; he shows that literature commemorates and conveys dimensions of the past that do not fit easily into the idiom, structure, or purpose of legal discourse.
Please enter a valid email address Email already added. Nordmann , Ingeborg Munich , , 86 —8, at Hannah Arendt's essay on Bertolt Brecht has often been understood as an indictment of Brecht's postwar accommodation with the Stalinist regime in East Germany, in line with Arendt's supposed commitment to a firm separation between poetry and politics. Ludz , Ursula and Nordmann , Ingeborg , vol. Horsman challenges this belief by reading works that reflect on the relations among pedagogy, therapy, and legal trials. Silberman , Marc London , , —99, at —5. What function do criminal trials have in collective techniques of coming to phrases with a background of mass violence?
Horsman claims that Arendt's laughter 'allows her to face the scandal of Eichmann's banality without completely reconciling herself with it' In a distinction worthy of Aristotle's 'Poetics', Horsman notes that different genres seek different audiences. Poetry addresses individuals; novels explain the social dimensions of being; plays speak to citizens or members of a community When Horsman seeks to characterize working through the past not as a means of closure but as a didactic event, one that escapes legal symbolization but enables mourning and lamentation, he is at his best.