Abstract

Postmodernism and deconstruction have been viewed by many of those committed to the project of modernity as being complicitous with Nazism. The charge of irrationalism has been leveled against postmodernism, and has been seen as linking it to fascism and Nazism. The rejection of realism and foundationalism, which are elements of postmodernism, has been linked to an inability to resist racist or totalitarian political movements. This essay challenges such claims, and argues that postmodernism and deconstruction may, indeed, illuminate aspects of the Holocaust and modem genocide that the discourse of modernity has itself occluded. Far from being complicitous with Nazism, postmodernism may clear the space to confront the horrendous implications of the Zivilisationsbruch symbolized by the smokestacks of Auschwitz.