Was bedeutet Wiederlesen? Jean Améry's Literary Criticism.

This essay examines Jean Améry's largely unknown work as a reader and literary critic, focusing in particular on his engagement with Thomas Mann and Knut Hamsun as part of a project in which Améry sought to “reread”—Wiederlesen—a series of literary texts that had shaped his identity and self-understanding before the advent of German Fascism. The literary essays that resulted from this project illuminate the centrality of literature for Améry's thinking and writing and bring into focus the subjective, historical, and dialogic dimensions of a critical reading practice that went against the grain of then-contemporary interpretive trends. Conceived as an intervention in literary history, thisWiederlesenaimed to rescue forgotten books by highlighting their relevance in and for the present; at the same time, it would serve as a means to self-reflection for a reader whose subjectivity had been irreparably damaged by the experience of the Shoah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]