Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of California, Irvine, 1992. The essays discuss culture and the growth of cultural studies over the past 50 years. Ch. 4 (pp. 99-140), "Language and Culture after the Holocaust, " suggests that the Holocaust is a reference point in cultural history - there is a before and an after. Though some have said that after Auschwitz no narrative is possible, without narrative it is much harder to keep the event in mind. Discusses philosophers' problems with the Holocaust - especially the "nonresponse" of Heidegger and the responses of Adorno, Celan, and Derrida. After the Nazi experience, culture can no longer claim to represent a definitive triumph of the spirit; Auschwitz cannot be integrated into culture. The war against the Jews left a grim intellectual legacy.