Guilt and/or Responsibility?

World War II / Második világháború

Interview with Michael Rothberg conducted by Hedvig Turai.Michael Rothberg, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies, UCLA, has major contributions to trauma and memory studies. The present interview is mostly connected to his latest book, The Implicated Subject. Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, as he considers questions of guilt, responsibility, contemporaneity, burning issues for all of us. What do we have to do with the past that we did not participate in, we did not do anything but we are still granddaughters and grandsons of perpetrators or victims? What do we have to do with distant sufferings, including wartime rape? In all his works, Michael Rothberg pays special attention to art, to contemporary art that he considers theoretical objects that are important parts of Holocaust Studies as well.