The present paper attempts to cast light on an important aspect of Holocaust literature. Basically, it is anudinvestigation into two ideological responses to the Shoah that, though characterised by the dominant element ofudsilence, both are marked by essential discrepancies. One sort of responses finds in silence a trope for theudincommunicability of the trauma; the counter response professes silence as a fragile way of protest andudresistance. This paradoxical dialectic of silence is traced in both Jewish-American and Arab-American literaryuddiscourses as emblematic contexts of the discrepancy in the Holocaust representation. Silence, as examinedudherein, is found to typify a meta-narrative arising from the tension between sacred memory and subversiveudamnesia. It effectively re-enacts the conflicting histories of loss and trauma where the deliberate absence ofudvoice is believed to convey what words mostly fall short of and thus it could enhance one’s status of victimhood.
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