Abstract

This study explores George Steiner's approach to the historical and literary representation of the Shoah. Steiner's conception of human language as a vibrant living organism, the prime carrier of both civilization and its opposite--nihilism, is foundational to his thought on Holocaust representation and, therefore, forms the spine of this thesis. Initially calling for silence in relation to the Shoah, Steiner has modified his conception of "silence" now to act as a metaphor, warning against the use of ordinary linguistic techniques when speaking or writing about the tremendum, the Holocaust. He argues that much of what is produced on the subject of the Holocaust is inadequate, even harmful in its tendency to add a kind of acceptability to the phenomenon by reducing and reproducing it within normal, articulate, acceptable language. Based on his own controversial theory of the causes of antisemitism in Western culture, "the blackmail of transcendence", Steiner argues that the only language into which the essential Shoah experience can be translated is theological.