The Aesthetic Transformation of the Image of the Unimaginable: Notes on Claude Lanzmann's "

Shoah"
Author(s): Gertrud Koch, Jamie Owen Daniel and Miriam Hansen
Source: October, Vol. 48 (Spring, 1989), pp. 15-24
Published by: MIT Press
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 The AestheticTransformationof
the Image of the Unimaginable:
Notes on Claude
Lanzmann's Shoah

GERTRUD KOCH

translatedby JAMIE OWEN DANIEL and MIRIAM HANSEN

For instance,iftheimageofa dead loved

oneappearstomesuddenly, I haveno need
of a "reduction" to feel the ache in my
heart: it is a part of the image,it is the
directconsequence ofthefactthattheimage
presentsits objectas notexisting.
-Jean-Paul Sartre,
The Psychology
ofImagination

If we recall the debates thathave revolvedforseveraldecades, withgreater

or lesserintensity, around the question of an aestheticsafterAuschwitz,we find
that theydivide along the lines of a moral and a materialquestion. The moral
question would be whether,afterall hope forthe stabilityof the human founda-
tion of civilizationhad been destroyed,the utopia of the beautifulillusionof art
had not finallydissolved into false metaphysics- whether,generally,art is still
possibleat all. The second, materialquestion concernswhetherand how Ausch-
witzcan and has been inscribedin aestheticrepresentationand the imagination.
In his "Meditations on Metaphysics,"which conclude his NegativeDialectics,
Theodor W. Adorno providesa succinctresponseto thosewho triedto construct
a normativemoral taboo upon his earlier apercu that,afterAuschwitz,poetry
could no longer be written."Perennial suffering has as much rightto expression
as a torturedman has to scream; hence it may have been wrongto say thatafter
Auschwitzyou could no longer writepoems."I
But, Adorno continues,the question thatarises afterAuschwitzis not only
that of the survivalof art, but also the survivalof those marked by the guilt of
havingsurvived:"[Their] mere survivalcalls forthe coldness,the basic principle

1. Theodor Adorno, NegativeDialectics,trans.E. B. Ashton, New York, Seabury, 1973, p. 362.

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16 OCTOBER

of bourgeois subjectivity,withoutwhich there could have been no Auschwitz;

thisis the drasticguiltof him who was spared."' The moral question cannot be
isolated as an aestheticone, but we can determinewhere aestheticsdegenerates
into bad metaphysics:whereverthe aestheticimaginationextortsmetaphysical
meaningfromthe mass annihilations.This tendencymanifestsitselfearlyon, in
the firstliterarytestimoniesdealing with mass annihilation,in theological or
metaphysically oriented,existentialist
interpretations.Even independentlyof the
concreteaestheticstructureof individualworks,the metaphysicalanchor is cast
wherevermassannihilationsbecome a subject.The factthatthe majorityof these
early literaryworks were writtenby authors who had themselvesescaped or
evaded the machineryof annihilationappears to be of centralimportancehere.
Thus, the "screams of the tortured"are indeed expressedin theirworks,but so
in fact are the feelingsof "the drastic guilt of the survivor[s]."This entails a
manic search for "innocence" and transfiguration, whetherin a theologicalor a
moral sense. These manic attemptsto findconfirmationof the moral substance
of the human in the veryhell organized by human beings,as ifthe perspectiveof
survivalcould therebybe broughtintoa meaningfulcontextfreeof the universal
feelingof guilt,have not diminished.Thus Sami Nair, in his essay on Claude
Lanzmann's filmShoah in Les TempsModernes,can still allow himselfto get
carried away by metaphysicaltropes when he writesthat Lanzmann "rehabili-
tates the survivorsfromthe Jewishwork commandos who assistedthe Nazis in
murderingtheir [Jewish]brothersand sisters . . . and transfiguresthem here
into saintsby revealingtheirinner innocence..
..*"s
What makes Nair's argumentso unfortunateis itsimpliedassumptionof an
inner margin of moral choice withinthe frameworkof which someone could
become guiltyor remain innocent.To be sure, the moral dimensionof human
action is based on the capacity to decide and on the decision to do what one
considersright.Yet, wherethe possibilityof makinga decisionis destroyedto the
extremedegree thatit is withinthe terroristicconfinesof a concentrationcamp,
the celebration of minimalizedprocesses of consciousnesscan only appear as
metaphysical.Even if one considersthis "inner" marginas a relevantfactor,as
Bruno Bettelheimdoes, it stilldoes not offera sufficient standardby whichone
could morallyrehabilitateor, by the same token, discreditthe victimsof the
concentrationcamps. This is not to deny that there were actual differencesin
behavior; but the individual's"inner" potentialforresistancecannot be used to
inferthateveryoneconductshim-or herselfmorallyin situationswhicheliminate
everyhuman measure of freedom.No doubt Nair owes thisimplicitidea of an
intact"inner" freedomto the premisesof a one-sided,dogmaticallyconstrued

2. Ibid., p. 363.
3. Sami Nair, "Shoah, une le4on d'humanith,"Les TempsModernes,no. 470 (September 1985),
p. 436.

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The Aesthetic of theImage of theUnimaginable
Transformation 17

existentialism, whichhas its foundationsin Sartre's fatalparadigmthatfreedom

of choice exists even under torture-a paradigm that accompanied the above
mentioneddebates.
In the aestheticrealm thisparadigm,whichwas influentialin the debates of
the 1950s, has led to an affirmative transfiguration even of terror.As Adorno
notes in a rejectionof Sartre'sconcept of engaged literature-a rejectionthatis
not always fairto its object-this transfiguration
implies,whetherintentionallyor not, that even in so-called extreme
situations,indeed, preciselyin these situations,humanityflourishes.
Sometimesthisdevelops into a dismal metaphysicswhichdoes itsbest
to pare down atrocitiesinto "limitsituations,"whichit thenaffirms to
the extent that theyreveal human authenticity.4
At thispoint I would like to suggestthatNair's commentsmayapplyto the
general tone of the 1950s and to the topos of the limitsituationin particular,but
not to the aestheticconstructionof Lanzmann's film.The filmtakes up neither
the constrictedsituationalcontextnor the theologicalvariationof those literary
treatmentsof the death camps which attributeaffirmative meaning to them,a
meaning at the highestaesthetic permeatesthe poetryof
that--even
Sachs. Besides, the various of level--still
inscribedin the representa-
Nelly patterns meaning
tions of the death camps cannot be distinguishedaccording to literaryformsor
genres.Justas purelyautobiographical,documentaryliteratureis not freeof the
compulsionto search formeaning,aestheticallywroughtworkslike Paul Celan's
do not necessarilylapse into affirmative idealization because of their aesthetic
stylization.In his discriminatingstudy,VersionsofSurvival,whichincludes liter-
ary as well as documentaryand psychologicaltestimonypertainingto the mass
annihilations,Lawrence L. Langer concludes,
We need to measurethe variousversionsof survivalby theirfidelityto
the ethical (and physical)complexitiesof the death camp experience,
not by their success in repairing the ruptured connection between
human will and human fate until it is restored to its pre-Auschwitz
condition.If our age of atrocityhas taughtus anything,it has taught
us that the certaintyof that connectionwill never be as firm.5

Authenticity as a criterionindeed encompassesmanyformsand genres.Yet

it unmistakablyopts for a modernistaestheticwhich aims at expressionrather
than communication.If the affirmative aspects of the metaphysicaland/or theo-
logical imputationof patternsof meaningto mass annihilationcan be linkedto a
premodern aesthetic,there are, on the other side of the scale, the unresolved

4. Theodor Adorno, "Commitment," trans. Frances McDonagh, in Ronald Taylor, ed., Aes-
thetics& Politics,London, Verso, 1977, p. 189 (translationmodified).
5. Lawrence L. Langer, VersionsofSurvival,New York, 1982, p. 216.

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 18 OCTOBER

Claude Lanzmann. Shoah. 1985. Dr. Franz Grassler,

of theWarsawghetto.
Nazi commissioner

aporias of autonomous art. The latterobtains its power fromthe theoryof the
imagination,the notionof artas idea or image (Vorstellung)ratherthanrepresen-
tation(Darstellung),expressionratherthan illustration.The imaginationclaims
its own autonomy; it can project, annihilate social existence, transcendit to
become radically other, while allowing the speechless, hidden substratumof
nature in the mute body to reappear. At firstglance, the autonomous freedom
of the imagination,whichdoes not allow itselfto be confinedby any conceptof
meaning,seems far less burdened withthe tendencyto suffocate,throughaffir-
mation,the claims to expressionmade by the oppressed and tormented.
The autonomyof art, however,is itselfnot unlimited.In a certainsense it
findsitslimitsin the capacityof the human imagination.It is thereforeappropri-
ate that Langer places a quotation fromSamuel Beckettat the beginningof the
firstchapter of his book: "I use words you taught me. If they don't mean
anythinganymore,teach me others.Or let me be silent."6 The increasingsilence,
the hermeticcharacterof modern art is itselfalready a reflectionon thislimit.
The followingpassage from Adorno's "Meditations on MetaphysicsI: After
Auschwitz,"cited earlier,also toucheson thisaestheticnerveof the imagination:
"The earthquakeof Lisbon sufficedto cure Voltaire of the theodicyof Leibniz,

6. Ibid., p. 1.

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The Aesthetic of theImage oftheUnimaginable
Transformation 19

ClaudeLanzmann.Shoah. 1985. FilipMuller,

survivor
ofAuschwitz.

and the visibledisasterof the firstnaturewas insignificant

in comparisonwiththe
second, social one, whichdefieshuman imaginationas it distillsa real [reale]hell
fromhuman evil."7
The limitsof the imaginationof a human evil are those of society,which
allows whatcan stillbe conceived of by the imaginationas humanevil to become
a real hell. This accounts for the difficultand tenacious strugglefor "inner
innocence," the desire to push the outer limitsof the imaginationback within.
Alas, in the face of this historicaldimensionof an insurmountabledifference
betweenwhatcan be humanlyimaginedand whathas been provento be socially
possible, even the attemptto posit evil as an absolute category,at least within
aesthetics,as Karl Heinz Bohrer has recentlyattemptedto do, seems almost
touchinglyantiquated. The satanicevil of the imaginationisjust as incapable as
the Beelzebub of theologyor the negativeabsolute of metaphysicsof surpassing
real hell throughaestheticillusion. In order to be able to maintainhis theory,
Bohrer mustconjure up the "disquietingstep into the namelessnessof an unlim-
ited power of imaginationwhich can no longer be controlledby any familiar
discourse,"8whereashistoricallythe limitsof imaginativepower have long since
7. Adorno, NegativeDialectics,p. 361 (translationmodified).
8. Karl Heinz Bohrer, "Das B6se-eine Asthetitische Kategorie?"Merkur,vol. 39, no. 6 (June
1985), p. 472.

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20 OCTOBER

been delineated, and not in terms that are defined by aesthetic content,but
rathersocially.
But the argument-itself not entirelyfree of false pathos-that the at-
temptto imaginethe annihilationaestheticallyshould thereforebe discontinued
altogetheris even more misguided,directed as it is against legitimateclaims to
expression. The desire to establisha normativeaestheticsof content froman
objective social limitis an authoritarianlonging; rather-and above all-we
should investigatehow this limitis reflectedand re-markedin art itself.What
nonethelessconstitutesthe skandalon,as the irreduciblecondition of the aes-
thetic, is the pleasure contained even in the most resistantwork of art-a
pleasure culled fromthe transformation into theimaginarythatenables distance,
the coldness of contemplation.
In the followingI would like to show how a radical aesthetictransformation
of this problematicis achieved in Claude Lanzmann's filmShoah. The debate
about this film,especiallyin West Germany,has in most cases refrainedfrom
aestheticcriticismand insteadpresentedthe filmas a "stirringdocument" from
whichwe can extractvarious historical,political,and moral dynamics.The fact
that it is also a work of art is acknowledged only in passing and almost with
embarrassment.Puristsof the documentaryformcame closestto acknowledging
the problem,since theywere struckby the factthatlong stretchesof the filmare
not "documentary"at all.
Lanzmann himselfhas leftno doubt thathis conceptionof the filmextends
farbeyond the portrayalof eyewitnesses.He would argue thatthe people in his
filmare acting; theyare playingout what theyhave lived through,le vecu.But,
this implies somethingother than "remembering." To remember can mean,
"Oh, yes, I remember,it was a hot day, I found myselfin such and such a
situation,"etc. Such a statementof memoryneed not containanythingof how I
experiencethissituation.For thisreason Lanzmann mustinsistthatthe people in
his filmdo not narrate memoriesbut ratherreexperiencesituations.What this
entailscan be illustratedby a crass example. In a long sequence of the film,the
exiled Polish politicianJan Karski says that he has never spoken about his
experienceof the Warsaw Ghetto.As a memorythisis questionable-historians
know thatKarskireportedon his visitto the ghettoimmediatelyafterward,that
he even publishedsuch a report.But what is expressed in his formulationis the
feelingof being able to speak onlywithdifficulty about whathe had experienced
-the shockhe feltin the ghettothatrenderedhimspeechlesswhen he saw what
was to be seen there.
It is crucial to Lanzmann's strategythathe encourage a certainmarginfor
play. He allows entire scenarios to be played out in a borrowed railroad car,
challenging his protagoniststo reenact particular gestures and actions. This
strategyis no doubt indebted to the concept, central to Sartrean existential
psychoanalysis, that there is a physicalmaterialityeven prior to the symbolizing
processof language- an impudentlaugh, the barelyrepressedsadisticglee over

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The Aesthetic of theImage of theUnimaginable
Transformation 21

a threateninggesture. Such materialitybreaks through only when gestures,

physicalmovements,are repeated. In playingtheseeveryoneagain becomes who
he is- thatis Shoah'scriterionforauthenticity, thatis the immensevisualpower
of this film,which so clearly sets it apart from other "interview" films.The
smilingmaskthatcoversthe petrifiedinnerworldof the formerMussulman,who
could only survive in the concentrationcamp by adopting an expression that
anticipated rigor mortis,is no less an authentic expression than a dramatic
breakdown. It is preciselythis transformationinto play which determinesthe
seriousnessof the representation(Darstellung).Indeed, Lanzmann seduces,lures,
and cajoles the protagonistsinto doing and sayingthingswhichwould otherwise
have remainedsilencedand hidden. This strategyhas made Lanzmann the target
of a moralcriticismwhichreveals much of the old resentmentagainsteverything
aesthetic,thatthe stolen image entrapped the soul of whateverit portrayed.To
some extent,everyaestheticimage containsthe spoils wrestedfromsocial exis-
tence, but it is thereforeno less legitimate.This is in no sense an example of
aestheticcoquetryor the vain presumptionof a directorwho does not want to
give up control over his production. What Lanzmann is aiming at here is pre-
cisely the problem of the imagination-whenever somethingis narrated, an
image (Vorstellung)is presented,the image of somethingwhich is absent. The
image, the imaginary- and here Lanzmann is a loyal Sartrean- is the presence
of an absence which is located outside the spatiotemporalcontinuum of the
image.
Lanzmann remains strictlywithinthe limitsof what can be imagined: for
that whichcannot be imagined,the concreteindustrialslaughterof millions,he
suspends the concrete pictorial representation.There are no images of the
annihilationitself;itsrepresentabilityis never once suggestedby using the exist-
ing documentaryphotographs that haunt everyother filmon thissubject. In this
elision, Lanzmann marks the boundary between what is aestheticallyand hu-
manlyimaginable and the unimaginable dimension of the annihilation.Thus the
filmitselfcreatesa dialecticalconstellation:in the elision,it offersan image of the
unimaginable.
But the filmalso approaches the problem from another angle: it begins
quite literallywiththe aesthetictransformation of the statementthatthe annihi-
lation "took place," in that it projects this statementinto spatial visibility.It
travels to the locations of the annihilation. The spatializationoccurs in the
present; what remains absent is what is temporallyremoved, the annihilation
itself.The latteris narrated(oftenfromoff-screen)only fragmentarily fromthe
imaginationsof the protagonists.The lengthof the filmmay have obscured, for
manyviewers,itscomplex montagestructure,whichplayson multiplelevelswith
real and filmictime. The juxtapositions,on the same temporal plane, of real
eventsseparatedby verydistantlocations- such as, forexample, the voice of the
narratorfromIsrael on the soundtrackand a walk throughthe forestedterrain
of a death camp- are designed to irritateour realisticsense of spatiotemporal

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 22 OCTOBER

certainty:the presence of an absence in the imaginationof the past is bound up

withthe concretenessof imagesof present-daylocations.Past and presentintert-
wine; thepast is made present,and the presentis drawnintothe spell of the past.
The long pans thatrealize the real timeof the gaze remaintrappedin historical
space. What manyof these shotsconveyis a sense of not being able to run away,
of being closed in. Wheneverthe camera does not assume the subjectivegaze, it
may, for instance, move in such a way that, as in one particularlyextreme
longshot,a group of people approachingus froma distantedge of the woods are
neverreallyable to come closer,but are again and again keptat a distancein the
fieldby the camera. The camera's movementis aestheticallyautonomous; it is
not used in a documentaryfashion,but imaginatively.
This methodis at its mostradical when Lanzmann uses camera movement
for fictivescenarios of reenactmentinto which he manipulatesnot only the
protagonists,but himselfand the viewers as well. As the railroad car enters
Treblinka, it does so in a subjectiveshot. The vieweris driven along withthe
train:thisis also an insidiousseduction.FirstLanzmann has the formerengineer
of the trainreenacthis run once again, thenit is Lanzmann himselfwho is doing
so, and, aftera delayed second of horror,the viewerfinallyrealizes that he or
she, too, is sittingin the train that unremittingly followsthe tracksinto the
enclosureof the death camp. Yet thesubjectivecamera neverexceeds the limit;it
takesus just farenough to allow us to sense,on the edge of the imagination,the
reality of the annihilation, the frictionless matter-of-factnessof its

-EBLINKA
Claude Lanzmann. Shoah. 1985. HenrikGawkowski,
Polish locomotive
engineer.

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The Aesthetic of theImage of theUnimaginable
Transformation 23

implementation - withoutlapsing into the embarrassmentsof gruesome shock

effects.
In the montageof space and timedescribedabove, Lanzmann aesthetically
organizesthe experience of the mostextremediscrepancybetweenwhatthereis
to see and the imagination(Vorstellung)triggeredby that seen. It is the experi-
ence of the discrepancybetween the indifferenceof the firstand the horrorsof
the second. Thus Lanzmann resumes representationalstrategieswhich appear
earlyon in literarytreatmentsof the annihilation.I am remindedhere above all
of the storiesof Tadeusz Borowski,in particularthe followingpassage froma
storyentitled"This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen":
A smallsquare; ruinssurroundedby the green of tall trees. In former
times,this was a tinylittletrainstationsomewhere in the provinces.
Somewhat offto the side, close to the road, there is a tumble-down
shack, smaller and uglier than the smallest,ugliest shack I've ever
seen. A littlefartheron, behind the wooden shack,entirehillsidesof
railroad ties are piling up, mountainsof tracks,enormous piles of
splinteredboards, bricks,stones,and well rings. This is the loading
dock foreverythingdestinedforBirkenau. Materialsforbuildingthe
camp and human materialforthe gas ovens. It was a workingday like
any other: trucks drive by and load up with boards, cement, and
people.9
If we substitute"today" for "formertimes" and read what followsin the
past tense, Lanzmann's scenario emerges. This effectis even more pronounced
in other passages of the same story:
We pass by all the sectionsof Camp II B, the uninhabitedSection C,
the Czech camp, the quarantine,and thenwe plunge into the green of
the apple and pear trees that surround the troop infirmary.This
green,whichhas burstforthin these fewhot days,seems to us like an
unfamiliarlandscape on the moon.'0
And even the church,to whichLanzmann cuts fromtheJewishcemetery,is
presentin Borowski:
Idle and indifferent,their eyes followed the majestic figuresin the
green uniforms,driftingto the near and yetunattainablegreen of the
trees,to the church steeple, fromwhicha late Angelus rang out."

9. Tadeusz Borowski,"Die Herrschaftenwerden zum Gas gebeten," in Marcel Reich-Ranicki,

ed., 16 polnischeErzahler,Reinbek, 1964, p. 111. (An Englishtranslationappeared in the collection
ThisWayfor theGas, Ladies and Gentlemen, trans.Barbara Vedder, New York, Penguin Books, 1967;
since this English translationdeviates radically from the German version quoted in this article,
however,the translationshere and followingare our own.-Translators.)
10. Ibid., pp. 110-111.
11. Ibid., p. 113.

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24 OCTOBER

This is not to say that Lanzmann has filmedBorowski'sstory.Rather,the

comparisonis meantto emphasizethatthereis an aesthetictransformation of the
experience of the annihilationthatdoes not permititselfto become ensnared in
the pitfallsof the usual indictmentsand paradigms.Claude Lanzmann's Shoah,I
would argue, is partof thistraditionof the aesthetictransformationof the image
of the unimaginable. Without question, the film also contributessignificant
materialto the necessarypoliticaland historicaldebates. But the fascinationit
exerts, its melancholybeauty, is an aesthetic quality that we cannot affordto
suppress or displace onto subliminal resentmentagainst the character of its
author.

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