SOURCE: “After Adorno: Culture in the Wake of Catastrophe,” in New German Critique, Vol. 72, Fall, 1997, pp. 45-81.

In the following essay, Rothberg discusses the legacy and frequent misinterpretations of Adorno's assertion that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”

I. Introduction: the Politics of Commemoration

In January 1995 a controversy erupted in connection with the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Upset that the Polish government seemed to be slighting the specifically Jewish elements of the Nazi extermination at Auschwitz, Jewish leaders and spokespeople, including Elie Wiesel, threatened to boycott the ceremonies. In the end, many Jewish groups attended, but they also organized an alternative ceremony that took place while Polish President Lech Walesa was opening the official Government commemoration with a speech that made no specific mention of Jewish victims.¹ This controversy constitutes one more episode in a half-century history of struggle over...