Spiral Coercion: Nazi Power and Family Authority in Charlotte Salomon’s Autobiographical Work Life? Or Theatre?
Spiral Coercion: Nazi Power and Family Authority in Charlotte Salomon’s Autobiographical Work Life? Or Theatre?
Author(s): Eleftheria KaragianniSubject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Gender Studies, Visual Arts, Governance, Jewish Thought and Philosophy, German Literature, Politics and society, History and theory of political science, Studies in violence and power, Family and social welfare, Nationalism Studies, Sociology of Culture, History of Antisemitism, Ethnic Minorities Studies
Published by: Universitatea Hyperion
Keywords: Charlotte Salomon; Life or Theatre; autobiography; Nazism; power; authority;
Summary/Abstract: Life? or Theatre? is a visual-theatrical, textual, and auto-biographical play of Charlotte Salomon, a Jewish talented artist, executed at a very young age in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In this paper, I consider Salomon’s work a document of life, and a testimony of her personal intra-familial, and personal experience of “the before—Auschwitz” (Jenn-Gastal 228) depicting, among others, historical and socio-political facts articulated and expressed through narrative and painting. Since in Sociology life stories or autobiographical narratives constitute a valuable tool, I will employ Salomon’s drawings, captions and texts as a “synergetic fusing of social sciences and the arts” (Bagley 34), in order to shed ample light on her reconstructed lived experience. This research aims at examining Salomon's autobiographical work from a sociological and philosophical perspective, referring to the views of great theorists, such as Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman, and the founders of the Frankfurt School, who tried to explain the origins of totalitarianism, power relations and the causes of the Holocaust.
Journal: HyperCultura
- Issue Year: 2022
- Issue No: 11
- Page Range: 1-17
- Page Count: 17
- Language: English