PERFORMATIVITY, SENSOGRAPHY AND MUSIC: LEARNING AND TEACHING THE ‘OTHER’ HOLOCAUST AT A JEWISH INN

Abstract

The article reflects on my teaching experiences and the increased difficulty of teaching notions such as biopolitics and death politics to anthropology students. Such notions sound quite abstract and difficult to grasp. Nevertheless, they are essential in understanding the Holocaust, the Nazis’ mass production of death and the control of the human body and mind by this fascist-bureaucratic regime. Presenting the Shoah to anthropology students via lectures seems quite partial; apart from describing it from a macro-perspective, it would be more enlightening to introduce students to the sensual and bodily aspects of the topic. Thus, it would be easier to approach notions such as affect/affectivity and embodiment that lie at the centre of contemporary anthropological thinking. The anthropology of performance, theatre and drama could provide the anthropologist with experimental methods of teaching and learning and could be used as loci of reflection and critique. Such a performance may have a more significant impact on academic and non-academic audiences. Benssoussan Han, an old Jewish inn at the centre of Thessaloniki built at the end of the 19th century, seems the ideal place to combine learning and teaching through performance. Several experimental performances have taken place there in recent years. After presenting some of them, I will briefly discuss a teaching scenario, a performative experiment in progress. The proposed pedagogical scenario deals with dystopic memories emotional and sensual silences. It is an attempt to understand the “other” Holocaust, unquestionably the less studied aspects of this regime, including the music produced in the Terezin camp, and to reflect on notions of biopolitics and death politics. The project will be a joint one: bodies, movement, music, logos and a video projection about life in Terezin. As Dorita Hannah and others argue, it might prove an opportunity to 'make space speak' and for the audience to reflect and interact.