Michael Rothberg

The Implicated Subject: Rethinking Memory and Responsibility

Memory Studies Association

Warsaw 2021
 The Central Question:
how to conceptualize historical & political responsibility

William Kentridge, Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old (1991)

 The Central Wager:
moving beyond victims, perpetrators, and bystanders

Left: Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford.

Right: Anti-Asian violence in NYC, March 29, 2021
A shift of focus…

Left: The audience responds as Trump mocks Christine Blasey

Ford at a Mississippi rally.
Right: NYC doormen shut the door after racist attack in March
2021.
 New categories:
We must enlarge our understanding of the actors involved in injustices
beyond the most often invoked figures of victims, perpetrators, and
bystanders.

Key terms:
implicated subject: a subject position not an essential identity; an
umbrella term
implication: from implicare, to be folded into events and structures

Key argument:
The subject is a “transmission belt” of domination (Simona Forti).
Enablers Beneficiaries Successors
Perpetuators
 Beneficiaries Beyond Borders

Hilal and Varatarajah: “People with a

Nazi Background” (2021)
 Beneficiaries

Genealogical Structural
implication implication
Intimate, yet diffuse Diffuse, but intimate
Mapping
Complex Implication
Examples of
Complex Implication
Racialized Racialized
immigrants immigrants in post-
in settler Holocaust Germany
colonies

Post-Holocaust American Jews

Jews & Israeli & slavery
Occupation
 What Is To Be Done?
Transfiguring Implication

12
 Feeling Implicated:
Between Subjects and Structures
Exploring the role of affect as …

1. A vector of implication (e.g. love of country, hatred of others)

2. An (un)conscious reaction to implication (e.g. guilt, shame, resentment)

3. A motivation for turning against implication (e.g. anger, love, shame)

 Feeling Implicated:
Jewish Americans and Israel/Palestine