Author: Musolff A.

Title: Politicheskaia terapiia posredstvom genotsida: antisemitskie kontseptualТnye obrazy v knige Gitlera УMein KampfФ

Journal: Proceedings of Ural State Pedagogical University. Linguistics.

Year: 2006

Volume: 19

Pages: 167-186

Language of publication: Russian

 

 

MUSOLFF A.

 

POLITICAL УTHERAPYФ BY WAY OF GENOCIDE: ANTI-SEMITIC CONCEPTUAL IMAGERY IN HITLERТS MEIN KAMPF

 

The study applies methods of cognitive metaphor analysis to HitlerТs anti-Semitic imagery in Mein Kampf, especially to the conceptualization of the German nation as a (human) body that had to be cured from a deadly disease, which was caused by Jewish parasites. The relevant expressions from the conceptual domains of biological and medical categories form a partly narrative, partly inferential-argumentative source УscenarioФ, which centered on a notion of blood poisoning that was understood in three ways: a) as a supposedly real act of blood defilement, i.e. rape, b) as a part of the source scenario of illness-cure, and c) as an allegorical element of an apocalyptic narrative of a devilish conspiracy against the Сgrand design of the creatorТ. The conceptual differences of source and target levels were thus short-circuited to form a belief-system that was no longer open to criticism. The results cast new light on central topics of Holocaust research, such as the debates between more СintentionalistТ and more СfunctionalistТ explanations of the origins of the Holocaust, and the question of how the Nazi metaphor system helped to gradually СinitiateТ wider parts of the German populace to the implications of the illness-cure scenario as a blueprint for genocide. The Nazi anti-Semitic metaphor system thus provides a unique example of the cognitive forces that can be unleashed in the service of racist stigmatization and dehumanization.