The Holocaust as a metanarrative of collective memory: problems of deconstruction

Identificator

EDN: MFTPWN ; УДК: 94(4)

Authors

Khodyachikh Sergey Sergeevich, PhD in Historical Sciences, independent researcher. Russia, Moscow. ResearcherID: 873177. ORCID: 0000-0002-8823-886X. E-mail: hodyachih@yandex.ru

Journal

HERALD OF HUMANITARIAN EDUCATION №4 (40), 2025

Section

GENERAL HISTORY

Pages

64-68

Abstract

The focus of this article is the concept of metanarrative in relation to the Holocaust in the post-non-classical type of scientific rationality. The reasons why the Holocaust cannot be deconstructed as a metanarrative of collective memory are analyzed, and the author also tries to answer the question of what are the consequences for science and memory when rejecting the metanarrative. The political, ethical, methodological and cultural contexts that do not allow the researcher to construct a metanarrative are considered. The opinions of historians and philosophers who consider the Holocaust from the standpoint of cultural, philosophical and political approaches are given. Also, in the issue of creating a metanarrative, an important role is played by the ethical aspect, most fully studied by Hannah Arendt. She argues that the main risk in studying this topic is the maximum generalization, namely, the transformation of the fates of millions of victims of National Socialism into statistics or a simplified scheme, which is ethically unacceptable. From a methodological point of view, attempts to construct a universal metanarrative about the Holocaust prove untenable due to the commitment of historians to a microhistorical approach, which significantly simplifies complex realities and does not take into account many local factors. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that within the framework of post-non-classical rationality, the creation of a metanarrative regarding the Holocaust proves impossible due to the uniqueness of the event, the multiplicity of testimonies and ethical obligations to the victims. The results of the study may be significant for specialists studying memory issues – historians, philosophers, sociologists and political scientists.

Keywords

Holocaust metanarrative post-nonclassical rationality commemoration microhistory trauma

Recieved

23.05.2025

Published

19.02.2026

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