Guilt and defense : on the legacies of national socialism in postwar Germany

Select an Action

Title:

Author:

Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969.

ISBN:

9780674036031

Personal Author:

Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969.

Uniform Title:

Schuld und Abwehr. English

Publication Information:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, c2010.

Physical Description:

[xiii], 233 p. ; 25 cm.

General Note:

Translated from the German.

Contents:

PART ONE. Introduction -- Guilt and Defense: Theodor Adorno and the Legacies of National Socialism in German Society / Andrew J. Perrin -- PART TWO. Guilt and Defense / Theodor W. Adorno -- Final Version of the Basic Stimulus (Colburn Letter) -- Preface -- Guilt and Defense -- I. Knowledge of the Events -- II. Guilt -- III. The Self-Image of the Participants -- IV. The Reality behind Defensiveness: Truth and Ideology -- V. Defense -- VI. Elements of National Socialist Ideology -- VII. The Ambivalent Ones -- VIII. Open-minded Participants -- PART THREE. The Debate with Hofstatter -- "On Group Experiment by F. Pollock: A Critical Appraisal" / Peter R. Hofstatter -- "Reply to Peter R. Hofstatter's Critique of Group Experiment" / Theodor W. Adorno -- PART FOUR. Working Through the Past -- "The Meaning of Working Through the Past" / Theodor W. Adorno.

Abstract:

"Beginning in 1949, Theodor W. Adorno and other members of the reconstituted Frankfurt Institute for Social Research undertook a massive empirical study of German opinions about the legacies of the Nazis, applying and modifying techniques they had learned during their U.S. exile. They published their results in 1955 as a research monograph edited by Friedrich Pollock. The study's qualitative results are published here for the first time in English as Guilt and Defense, a psychoanalytically informed analysis of the rhetorical and conceptual mechanisms with which postwar Germans most often denied responsibility for the Nazi past. In their editorial introduction, Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin show how Adorno's famous 1959 essay "The Meaning of Working Through the Past" is comprehensible only as a conclusion to his long-standing research and as a reaction to the debate it spurred; this volume also includes a critique by psychologist Peter R. Hoffstatter as well as Adorno's rejoinder. This previously little-known debate provides important new perspectives on postwar German political culture, on the dynamics of collective memory, and on Adorno's intellectual legacies, which have contributed more to empirical social research than has been acknowledged. A companion volume, Group Experiment, will present the first book-length English translation of the Frankfurt Group's conceptual, methodological, and theoretical innovations in public opinion research."--BOOK JACKET.

Corporate Subject:

Institut für Sozialforschung (Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

Subject Term:

National socialism -- Germany -- Public opinion.

Denazification -- Germany -- Public opinion.

Postwar reconstruction -- Germany -- History.

Public opinion -- Germany.

Geographic Term:

Germany -- Politics and government -- 1945-1990.

Germany -- History -- 1945-1990.

Added Author:

Olick, Jeffrey K., 1964-

Perrin, Andrew J., 1971-

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168025562253	943.086 A239G 2010	1	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Beginning in 1949, Theodor W. Adorno and other members of the reconstituted Frankfurt Institute for Social Research undertook a massive empirical study of German opinions about the legacies of the Nazis, applying and modifying techniques they had learned during their U.S. exile. They published their results in 1955 as a research monograph edited by Friedrich Pollock. The study's qualitative results are published here for the first time in English as Guilt and Defense, a psychoanalytically informed analysis of the rhetorical and conceptual mechanisms with which postwar Germans most often denied responsibility for the Nazi past. In their editorial introduction, Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin show how Adorno's famous 1959 essay "The Meaning of Working through the Past," is comprehensible only as a conclusion to his long-standing research and as a reaction to the debate it stirred; this volume also includes a critique by psychologist Peter R. Hoffstater as well as Adorno's rejoinder. This previously little-known debate provides important new perspectives on postwar German political culture, on the dynamics of collective memory, and on Adorno's intellectual legacies, which have contributed more to empirical social research than has been acknowledged. A companion volume, Group Experiment and Other Writings, will present the first book-length English translation of the Frankfurt Group's conceptual, methodological, and theoretical innovations in public opinion research.