Sonja Boos is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Oregon.

"Speaking the Unspeakable in Postwar Germany is a well-honed, meticulously researched, and theoretically grounded study of public speeches that sought to intervene into the memory culture of postwar West Germany. By considering a wide range of sources, Sonja Boos manages to establish the public speech as a genre in its own right, one that became crucial in challenging the biases and blind spots of West German Vergangenheitsbewälitgung. Indeed, Boos's book confers upon the public speech an entirely new status in the study of postwar German culture, history, and memory. From political to psychoanalytical theory, from discourse analysis to memory studies, Boos brings a range of theoretical approaches to bear in her insightful readings of the speeches at hand. The successful integration of classical rhetoric, speech act theory, and public sphere theory in Boos's theoretical framework is particularly laudable."

• Introduction: An Archimedean PodiumPart I. In the Event of Speech: Performing Dialogue1. Martin Buber2. Paul Celan3. Ingeborg BachmannPart II. "Who One Is": Self-Revelation and Its Discontents4. Hannah Arendt5. Uwe JohnsonPart III. Speaking by Proxy: The Citation as Testimony6. Peter Szondi7. Peter WeissConclusion: Speaking of the Noose in the Country of the Hangman (Theodor W. Adorno)BibliographyIndex

Sonja Boos is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Oregon.

"Speaking the Unspeakable in Postwar Germany is a well-honed, meticulously researched, and theoretically grounded study of public speeches that sought to intervene into the memory culture of postwar West Germany. By considering a wide range of sources, Sonja Boos manages to establish the public speech as a genre in its own right, one that became crucial in challenging the biases and blind spots of West German Vergangenheitsbewälitgung. Indeed, Boos's book confers upon the public speech an entirely new status in the study of postwar German culture, history, and memory. From political to psychoanalytical theory, from discourse analysis to memory studies, Boos brings a range of theoretical approaches to bear in her insightful readings of the speeches at hand. The successful integration of classical rhetoric, speech act theory, and public sphere theory in Boos's theoretical framework is particularly laudable."

• Introduction: An Archimedean PodiumPart I. In the Event of Speech: Performing Dialogue1. Martin Buber2. Paul Celan3. Ingeborg BachmannPart II. "Who One Is": Self-Revelation and Its Discontents4. Hannah Arendt5. Uwe JohnsonPart III. Speaking by Proxy: The Citation as Testimony6. Peter Szondi7. Peter WeissConclusion: Speaking of the Noose in the Country of the Hangman (Theodor W. Adorno)BibliographyIndex