The Rhetoric of Shimon Wincelberg’s Resort ‘76 and the Aesthetics of Atrocity in Drama of the Holocaust

Abstract

Summary The question of whether or not it is proper to create fictionalised works of art out of traumatic episodes of human history such as the Nazi Holocaust of the 2nd World or the Rwandan genocide of 1994 is one which continues to trouble mankind. This dilemma was famously posed by Theodor Adorno (1965) and Lawrence Langer (1975) when they questioned the potential dangers and the morality of “re-victimising the victim” (Hove 2015) through the production and propagation of artistic works that depict intense human suffering such as that which is wrought by genocide. Although Langer poses the question; is it possible and ethical to depict human tragedy without trivialising or exploiting the scale of the suffering and; what moral responsibility do artists have in undertaking such a task, he nevertheless suggests the adoption of an ‘aesthetics of atrocity’ which will enable these art forms to present landscapes of despair in such a way as to coax the reader into a mixture of credulity and complicity even as they also assist humanity to engage and transcend these tragic events in a more positive way.