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HU Credits:
2
Degree/Cycle:
2nd degree (Master)
Responsible Department:
Communication & Journalism
Semester:
1st Semester
Teaching Languages:
Hebrew
Campus:
Mt. Scopus
Course/Module Coordinator:
Prof. Raya Morag
Coordinator Office Hours:
Tuesday, 10:00-11:00
Teaching Staff:
Prof Raya Morag
Course/Module description:
To date, no comprehensive study on the representation of the bystander figure and the phenomenon of complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity, state mass killings, and gross violations of human rights has emerged out of the substantial twentieth-century literature on the paradigmatic triad of the perpetrator, the victim, and the bystander. Post- WWII Holocaust studies, followed by genocide, trauma, and postcolonial studies, set the triangulation of perpetrator, victim, and bystander at the heart of their discussion of both the ethical legacy of the Holocaust and the aftermath of the twentieth-century's catastrophes. It is my claim that both the vast Holocaust and post-Holocaust literatures, rightly committed to suffering, focus mainly on the figure of the victim; though to some degree they attempt to decipher the perpetrator figure as well, which, as an 'ordinary man', I argue, is still considered the major enigma of the twenty-century. Nevertheless, they fail to propose sufficient elucidation of another enigma – unrecognized as such – of either the bystander figure or the bystanding phenomenon, which in many respects epitomizes the twentieth-century moral failure of Western civilization. The course will examine this yet under-theorized phenomenon of bystanding and complicity through two paradigmatic cases: (1) The Holocaust; (2) Colonialism – Israeli and Palestinian complicity cinemas, including the extreme cases of films dealing with the bystanding of Israeli security institutions and decision-makers and (forced) Palestinian collaboration with Israeli institutions.
Course/Module aims:
Discussion of major issues regarding the subject positions represented in these corpora. Familiarity and understanding of the central models in trauma studies and their application in cinema.
Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
At the end of this course, students will be capable of independently analyzing Holocaust and/or Israeli and Palestinian films through discussion of the major ethical issues presented in them and in relevant theoretical models.
Attendance requirements(%):
100
Teaching arrangement and method of instruction:
Lectures, discussions, students' presentations
Course/Module Content:
1. Introduction: the perpetrator-victim-bystander triangle
2. The Europization of the Holocaust – 1945
3. Collaboration in Israeli Cinema – Foxtrot.
4. The rebel – Nasty Girl
5. The Whistleblower – The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
6. Students’ referats. Discussion.
7. continued.
8. continued.
9. continued.
10. continued.
11. continued.
12. continued.
13. continued.
14. Summary
Required Reading:
Hilberg, R. (1992) “Preface” in Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe
1933–1945. New York: Harper Perennial: ix-xii.
Levi, Primo (1986) “Gray Zone” The Drowned and the Saved New York: Simon & Schuster
Moussa, Emad S. (2017) “Understanding Israel’s Normalisation and Masculinisation of Trauma: A Psychosocial Analysis of Samuel Maoz’s Film Foxtrot”
Cohen, Hillel & Dudai, Ron (2007) "Triangle of Betrayal: Collaborators and Transitional Justice in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" Journal of Human Rights 6.1: 37-58.
Barnett, Victoria J. (2017) "The Changing View of the “Bystander” in Holocaust Scholarship: Historical, Ethical, and Political Implications" Utah Law Review 4.1: 633-647.
Esquith, Stephen L. (2013) "Reframing the Responsibilities of Bystanders through Film" Political Theory 41.1: 33–60.
Verdeja, Ernesto (2012) "Moral Bystanders and Mass Violence" in Jones, Adam (ed.) (2012) New Directions in Genocide Research New York: Routledge: 153-168.
Additional Reading Material:
Additional Reading
Baum, Steven (2008) The Psychology of Genocide: Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Rescuers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Borer, Tristan Anne (2003) "A Taxonomy of Victims and Perpetrators: Human Rights and Reconciliation in South Africa" Human Rights Quarterly, 25.4: 1088-1116.
Brown, Adam (2011) "Screening Women’s Complicity in the Holocaust: The Problems of Judgement and Representation" Holocaust Studies 17 2.3: 75-98.
Browning, Christopher (1996) "Daniel Goldhagen’s Willing Executioners" History & Memory 8: 89–108.
Browning, Christopher (1998a) "Ordinary Germans or Ordinary Men? A Reply to the Critics" in M. Berenbaum and A. J. Peck (eds) The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 252–65.
Browning, Christopher (1998b) ‘Afterword’, in Ordinary Men, 2nd ed. New York: Aaron Asher Books.
Caruth, Cathy (ed.) (1995) Trauma Explorations in Memory, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Caruth, Cathy (1996) Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Cohen, Stanley (2001) States of Denial Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering Cambridge UK: Polity Press.
Craps, Stef (2015) Postcolonial Witnessing Trauma Out of Bounds New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ehrenreich, Robert M. and Cole, Tim (2005) "The Perpetrator-Bystander-Victim Constellation: Rethinking Genocidal Relationships" Human Organization Fall 64.3: 213-224.
Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub (1992) Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History, New York: Routledge.
Felman, Shoshana (2002) The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Friedlander, Saul (1994) "Trauma, Memory, and Transference" in G. H. Hartman (ed.) Holocaust Remembrance. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell: 252–63.
Goldhagen, D. J. (1996) "Motives, Causes, and Alibis: a Response to Critics", The New Republic 215: 37–45.
Goldhagen, D. J. (1997) Hitler’s Willing Executioners. New York: Vintage.
Goldhagen, D. J. (1998) "Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans?" in M. Berenbaum
and A. J. Peck (eds) The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the
Disputed, and the Reexamined. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 301–7.
Greenfield, Daniel M. (2008) "The Crime of Complicity in Genocide: How the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia Got It Wrong, and Why It Matters" Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 98.3: 921-952.
Greif, Gideon (2014) We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz New Haven: Yale University Press.
Herman-Lewis, Judith (1992) Trauma and Recovery New York: Basic Books.
LaCapra, Dominique (2001) Writing History, Writing Trauma, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Levi, Primo (1986) The Drowned and the Saved Trans. by Raymond Rosenthal Introduction by Paul Bailey London: Abacus.
Lifton, Robert Jay (1986/2000) The Nazi Doctors Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide USA: Basic Books.
Morag, Raya (2020) “Post-Cultural Revolution Chinese Cinema of Betrayal: The Figure of the Collaborator and the Doubling Paradigm,” Continuum Journal of Media & Cultural Studies: 1-20.
Morag, Raya (2020) Perpetrator Cinema. Confronting Genocide in Cambodian Documentary, New York: Columbia University Press.
Wieviorka, Annette (2006) The Era of the Witness (trans. Jared Stark), Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
Wieviorka, Annette (2006) “The Witness in History” trans. Jared Stark, Poetics Today 27.2: 385-397.
Grading Scheme :
Essay / Project / Final Assignment / Referat 60 %
Presentation / Poster Presentation / Lecture/ Seminar / Pro-seminar / Research proposal 40 %
Additional information:
Course Requirements:
1. Active participation. Required reading.
2. Required viewing of the films on the course website.
3. Presentation of 2 mid-term presentations: (40% of final grade) –Topic of referat: film’s title, subject, main theses, 2 sources of bibliography list. Explain the contribution of each of the bibliographic sources to the discussion of your theses. Submission deadline: TBA.
4. Submission of final paper (60% of the final grade): Analysis of an Israeli film and/or a Palestinian film and/or a Holocaust film (please ask me for approval of the films). Bibliographic sources – at least 4 more items. Length of the paper – up to 10 pages. (12 point font, double spaced). Deadline for submission: before 13:00 on Feb. 2, 2024, to Moodle.
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