Abstracts of Papers
Mara Dettmann, Susan Eckelmann:
American Exceptionalism - Holocaust Exceptionalism?
An Analysis of the Public Response to the Exhibition "Mirroring Evil"
The Holocaust, albeit an event that occurred in Europe, has emerged as a focal point of American culture. American Exceptionalism, the conviction in the righteousness of American values such as the nation's specific brand of democracy, has cast the Holocaust as its totalitarian and anti-democratic antipode. Conversely, the response to the Holocaust in America echoes the American Exceptionalist doctrine in that it accentuates the "exceptional" nature of the Holocaust. Accordingly, the American reaction to the exhibition "Mirroring Evil" epitomizes the confrontation of two conflicting models of Holocaust perception. While the exhibition itself embodied the constructivist approach, a more recent development, which sees the Holocaust as aligned with other "atrocities," the reaction to "Mirroring Evil" echoed the exceptionalist approach to the Holocaust, which sees the Holocaust as unique in its enormity.
The exhibition "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery / Recent Art," which opened in New York in 2002, was comprised of recent works by thirteen internationally recognized Jewish-American artists who used imagery from the Nazi era to explore the "nature of evil." The pieces - such as a build-it-yourself "LEGO Concentration Camp" and the "Gas Gift Set" - constituted a radical departure from previous art invoking the Holocaust. While earlier Holocaust-related art in the United States focused on exulting victimhood, "Mirroring Evil" used the Holocaust and its related images as a synecdoche for critiquing other perceived wrongs of society, especially as concerns consumer culture and capitalism, thus representing the constructivist approach.
In the United States, "Mirroring Evil" met public outrage. Due to its alleged depravity, many Holocaust survivors advocated boycotts and demonstrations protesting the content and perceived message of the exhibition. Thus, the exhibition's constructivism collided with the audience's exceptionalist-based response. The exceptionalist response to "Mirroring Evil" reflected American Exceptionalism; in this regard, the public reaction to the exhibition manifests the proliferation of the Americanization of the Holocaust.
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