Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 20:23:41 EET+200
Subject: MT: Re:Re: Goldhagen 


Well... 

perhaps there is something to that? 

> So my sneers at "French" philosophy are neo-racist? Incidentally I disavow
> any general contempt or dislike for the French. Paris is one of my
> favorite cities. But recent French philosophy is for the birds. I think
> James H's remarks about "German irrationalism" are in the same vein. All
> of us here honor, among other Germans, one Karl Marx and his pal Engels.

No, the point is not with a 'race', but rather with 'nation' or 
'culture' that is put under the same kind of procedures as earlier 
was done with different 'races'. After ww2 it's been clear that in 
Europe Germans have been under certain scrutiny. And not only that, 
actually they've been stigmatized: they've been made questionable 
figure's in whole European imaginary, all the way from popular 
entertainment to modes of "higher culture". It may be that in North 
America such stigmatization haven't been so forceful? 

"Race science" wasn't exactly German invention, though German 
scientists were one leading group involved. English and Swedish 
scientists were heavily involved in it. - Today it's seen as one 
shameful thread with Swedish welfare state that they continued forced 
sterilisation of handicapped and such persons up until sixties... it 
has popped up to publicity once again recently. 

After the breakdown of Berlin wall, when the reunification seemed to 
make sense, one of the first questions expressed, also publicly, was 
whether Germans will try *it* again... meaning conquering the world, 
Holocaust & such. Psychologists have explained it: own feelings of 
guiltiness (and such) are processed by projecting to Germans own 
aggressions and (more or less well-known) cruelty of own group 
('nation' or whatever). I think that sort of social psychological 
phenomena must be taken under consideration in order to make sense of 
the status of Germans in western imagination. 

I don't pretend to know what really was behind nazism and holocaust. 
Sad part of the story is that, throughout the centuries, in German 
countries anti-semitism wasn't at all that strong and widespread as 
in some other countries, esp. in eastern Europe. Yet exactly some 
Germans did what they did. To me it's dubious to blame all Germans 
for that and to refer to it as some unique process, whatever term we 
may use to characterise such "remembering". 

Jukka