Jeffrey C. Alexander

“Indeed, a symptom of post-Holocaust trauma is that normative assumptions about the human species are questioned more than ever. Can human nature still be trusted? The breach of civilized values was too great—and in a nation that had produced so many significant philosophers, scientists, scholars, and artists. The intellectual shock—a secondary trauma, as it were—is not only that it happened but also that it happened with only scattered pockets of resistance and even a degree of cooperation among the cultured classes.”
― Jeffrey C. Alexander, Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate

“We have also finally become aware that something is indeed wrong with most “grand narratives” or upward generalizations. Too much death and suffering accompany these comprehensive and often grandiose ideologies. No wonder that within the Holocaust trauma-drama there lodges a radical—and completely rational—suspicion concerning the demagogic abuse of collective superstitions often accompanying such schemes. There is, in particular, a bitter memory of the pernicious power of stereotypes.”
― Jeffrey C. Alexander, Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate