Theodor W. Adorno on state-mediated Holocaust commemoration in Germany: Towards a negative geography of memory

This paper draws on Theodor W. Adorno’s work to develop a negative geography of state-mediated Holocaust commemoration in contemporary Germany. Departing from Adorno’s public interventions in post-war Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, when commemoration remained marginal and was frequently confronted with outright denial, this paper examines the current shape of state-mediated Holocaust commemoration, which now lies at the heart of German national identity. Considering recent debates about Holocaust commemoration in Germany, the paper draws on Adorno’s social theory as an analytical framework for rethinking state-mediated Holocaust commemoration through the lens of negative geography. Highlighting how the integration of remembrance into national identity and state-mediated memory culture, materialised through Staatsräson , is increasingly enforced in authoritarian ways against ambivalent and resistant memory discourses, I argue, drawing on Adorno, that this development can be understood as part of underlying social dynamics – namely, the contraction of society into totality and its inherent authoritarian tendency. Contradictory forms of remembrance are not thereby rendered impossible, but their societal realisation, for example through the institutionalisation of anti-racist politics, becomes increasingly foreclosed.