The Memorial Ethics of Libeskind's Berlin Jewish Museum

This book is a detailed critical study of Libeskinds Berlin Jewish Museum in its historical, architectural and philosophical context. Emphasizing how the Holocaust changed our perception of history, memory, witnessing and representation, it develops the notion of memorial ethics to explore the Museums difference from more conventional post-World War Two commemorative sites. The main focus is on the Museum as an experience of the materiality of trauma which engages the visitor in a performative duty to remember. Arleen Ionescu builds on Levinass idea of ethics as optics to show how Libeskinds Museum becomes a testimony to the unpresentable Other. Ionescu also extends the Museums experiential dimension by proposing her own subjective walk through Libeskinds space reimagined as a literary museum. Featuring reflections on texts by Beckett, Celan, Derrida, Kafka, Blanchot, Wiesel and Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (Celans cousin), this virtual tour concludes with a brief account ofLibeskinds analogous healing project for Ground Zero.