Filozofija i drustvo 2020 Volume 31, Issue 4, Pages: 629-648
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID2004629T
Full text ( 354 KB)
Share of death: Care crosses camp
Tsagdis Georgios (Institute of Philosophy, Leiden University + School of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam + Architectural Association, London), georgiostsagdis@outlook.com
The essay thematises the question of care in conditions of total power - not
merely extra muros, in the everyday life of the Third Reich, but in its most
radical articulation, the concentration camp. Drawing inspiration from
Todorov’s work, the essay engages with Levinas, Agamben, Derrida and Nancy,
to investigate Heidegger’s determination of Dasein’s horizon through a
solitary confrontation with death. Drawing extensively on primary
testimonies, the essay shows that when the enclosure of the camp became the
Da of existence, care assumed a radical significance as the link between the
death of another and the death of oneself. In the face of an apparatus of
total power and its attempt to individuate and isolate death, the sharing of
death in the figure of care remained one’s most inalienable act of
resistance and the last means to hold on to death as something that could be
truly one’s own.
Keywords: care, death, concentration camps, witness, totalitarianism, Todorov, Heidegger, Levinas, Agamben