Category: The Objects That Remain

For people who haven’t read the book yet, can you talk a little bit about the relationships that you make between the types of evidence that you discuss? What are the connections that you make between criminal evidence that exists in police custody and then the types of evidence that you’re interested in in museums and archives?

I’m really interested in tainted objects, objects that have been brushed by violence. I was looking particularly at the Holocaust Museum, and the conservators working there. They had to adapt the practices of conservation for objects from the concentration camps — shoes, hair, clothing — which are in many ways criminal evidence. They testify to the crimes of genocide, some more intimately than others. I am particularly interested in clothing — in Jane Mixer’s clothing, in my own clothing that was taken from my crime scene, and which I hoped was in police storage somewhere. I think these tainted objects have a lot in common, but what’s different is that the objects that are in police storage are not accessible to the public. Occasionally, criminal evidence can become available, but in most cases it is not. And so we have only our imaginations. We remember those objects but we don’t physically see them.

To READ MORE: https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/tainted-objects-a-conversation-with-laura-levitt/?fbclid=IwAR1ogrAofJlPgSAxiJ4vkXAjfggYYvTy8GR7ZoCYP2irU68MjGpt8zY332s

“I challenge the notions of both legal and even theological justice as the only ways of imagining justice. Instead, what I explore is a more active, immanent form of doing justice through the crafting, telling, and sharing of stories that animate the objects transformed by violence. I think about the ways that these objects become sacred through our tender regard, the care of those police property managers, conservators, collections managers, curators, archivists, and librarians who are in custody of these collected artifacts, and those who tell their various stories, the poets and writers, artists, historians, journalists, and performers who continue to breathe new life into these otherwise inanimate objects. What makes these objects animate, meaningful, compelling, and indeed, holy are all of these human engagements.”

For the full text, https://pennstateuniversitypress.tumblr.com/

May 4th, 12pm CT/1 pm EST

In The Objects That Remain (2020), Laura Levitt (Temple University) draws on her own experience as a victim of rape as she revisits the material remains of acts of violence and their place in Holocaust memory. The “essence of this volume,” she writes, is the “resonance between artifacts and their power to witness to the crimes against humanity, against individuals, and their ability to make holy the profane.” It is a “meditation on the allure of once ordinary artifacts that were brushed by violence: on where they take us and how they become animate, the rites and rituals around them, and the arts of holding that transform them into sacred objects through our tender care.”

Respondents: Bevin Blaber (Teaching Fellow, Divinity School) and Tahel Goldsmith (PhD student, Dept. of History).
Moderator: Leora Auslander, Professor of Modern European Social History, Dept. of History.

This event is part of the series “Greenberg Book Conversations” sponsored by the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies and the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. It is open to the public, but registration is required (see the link below).

Register in advance for this meeting:https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpfuivqTwuHNyZtGJuok6wfShA_CZu77gF
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Levitt writes in her introduction to The Objects that Remain, “This book is a meditation on the allure of once ordinary artifacts that were brushed by violence: on where they take us and how they become animate, the rites and rituals around them, and the arts of holding that transform them into sacred objects through our tender care,” alerting readers that she will begin by examining objects through the lens of a scholar of religion. She starts this journey by looking at sacred objects in the Judeo-Christian tradition such as garments stained by the blood of Jewish martyrs and relics of medieval saints, and then relates these objects to the idea of divine justice.  As Levitt writes, because she did not receive justice in the legal sense – her case never went to trial and all remaining physical evidence of the crime vanished – she “wanted to legitimate [her] own contemporary longings by placing them in this tradition.” But her efforts take a different turn.

To read all of this story, go to: http://js.emory.edu/news/news-stories-container/laura-levitt.html

To hear this conversation https://humanities.ucla.edu/event/the-objects-that-remain-laura-levitt/

“When we consider criminal evidence—proof positive that terrible things happened—we often imagine their role in a courtroom. But not all evidence operates that way. Most of the tainted objects held even in police property rooms never make their way to court. In the case of the vast trove of rescued Holocaust objects held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), which have likewise never been to court, we often think about their role as empirical, historical evidence of the crimes of genocide perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators. And yet there are those intangible qualities that attract us to such objects, that draw our attention.”

Read More at Penn State University Press, Tumblr! https://pennstateuniversitypress.tumblr.com/

By Kali Handelman and Laura Levitt

Published on February 4, 2021

Kali Handelman interviews Laura Levitt about her new book, The Objects That Remain

To Read the Full Interview:

https://therevealer.org/on-objects-trauma-and-loss/