"To Tell the Story": Cultural Trauma and Holocaust Metanarrative

This article explores the aporia between the alleged inexplicability of the Holocaust and the wealth of narrative that has proceeded from the event in the years since 1945, proposing the existence of a generic Holocaust metanarrative that has been adopted and inscribed into Western cultural memory as the accepted framework for interpretation. Taking as a starting point the idea that culture itself has been somehow ‘ruptured’ in the wake of the Holocaust, this article explores the ways in which this rupture manifests itself, viewing the shattering impact of the Holocaust on the Western cultural imagination as macrocosmically comparable to the impact of psychic trauma on the individual survivor of the Holocaust. Just as an individual act of narration (the act of testimony) is believed to provide a cure for trauma, so a collective act of narration may hold the key to repairing the post-Holocaust cultural rupture. During the exploration of this process, it becomes apparent that cultural memory of the Holocaust is in fact informed by a metanarrative account that appears to offer the possibility of an engagement with the Holocaust, but which in fact acts as a screen between the event itself and the culture that would seek to memorialize it. Finally, this article explores the notion that the most appropriate narrative response is one that accepts the impossibility of its own position, rejecting the easy redemption offered by the assimilation of Holocaust metanarrative and instead inhabiting the dialectic between knowing and understanding that the Holocaust presents

Understanding the connection between the supervisory relationship in social work field education and early career social workers\u27 self-efficacy beliefs in the work place : a relational study

The Council of Social Work Education has identified field education as the signature pedagogy of social work. The current study explored 674 early career social workers\u27 recollection of their second year supervisory relationship in an effort to clarify potential links between specific aspects of the relationship and workers\u27 self-efficacy beliefs relative to commonly practiced social work skills. The Sample was gathered from a larger sample of practicing Social Workers across the U.S., with between six months and five years of experience. The study implicitly examined the construct validity of an analogy between the therapeutic working alliance and the supervisory working alliance. Results revealed that a supervisor\u27s comfort with a supervisee\u27s negative feelings, a flexible and negotiable stance in supervision, and an agreement on tasks in supervision were significant predictors of subsequent self-efficacy beliefs. The affective bond between supervisor and supervisee was not a significant predictor of worker self-efficacy belief

Soi/Paysage/Échiquier

Des Pres Terrence, van Berg Pol Louis. Soi/Paysage/Échiquier. In: Les Cahiers du GRIF, n°41-42, 1989. L'imaginaire du nucléaire. pp. 23-32