Al abordar el estudio de la obra de Primo Levi, encontramos, ligada al núcleo de referencias que tienen como fuente su experiencia como superviviente del Holocausto, una temática singular, concebida por el autor como ejemplo de respuesta de la razón humana frente a la barbarie. El trabajo creativo, el mundo de los oficios, recorre como profunda reivindicación moral toda la obra de Levi, siendo la línea de fuerza positiva más importante que puede hallarse en la misma. En el presente (...) artículo vamos a abordar críticamente este fecundo ámbito de referencialidad, analizando su concepción, sus vinculaciones y sus límites. (shrink)

Primo Levi has emerged as one of the most incisive and humanly candid intellects among those writers who experienced the Holocaust and survived to tell about it. His classically concise, sober and lean style is reflective of a mind that insists on being guided by reason and civility. To express himself in a rational, clear and composed manner signified for Levi a moral victory over the Shoá and gave and additional dimension of validity to his own survival. Leviʼs insistence (...) on the writer as witness and communicator, like the definition of the artist as builder of alternative worlds, retains some coherent vision of the social order and mandated relationship between history and art. In his finals years, his sense of despair and disillusion is also reflected by his increasing references to the black holes, and image he uses metaphorically to express the dark void of recent history and the charge of no-meaning and death in human life. (shrink)

Judaism, enlightenment, and the end of theodicy -- The shadowed violence of culture -- Survivor testimony and the Hegelian subject -- Ethics and ontology in Auschwitz and after -- Traumatic history -- The art of separation from chemistry to racial science -- The work of genocide -- Conclusion: a new humanism?.

At the age of twenty-five, Primo Levi was sent to Hell. Levi, an Italian chemist from Turin, was one of many swept up in the Holocaust of World War II and sent to die in the German concentration camp in Auschwitz. Of the 650 people transported to the camp in his group, only 15 men and 9 women survived. After Soviet liberation of the camp in 1945, Levi wrote books, essays, short stories, poetry, and a novel, in which he (...) painstakingly described the horrors of his experience at Auschwitz. He also spent the rest of his life struggling with the fact that he was not among those who were killed. In _Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival,_ Frederic D. Homer looks at Primo Levi's life but, more important, shows him to be a significant political philosopher. In the course of his writings, Levi asked and answered his most haunting question: can someone be brutalized by a terrifying experience and, upon return to "ordinary life," recover from the physical and moral destruction he has suffered? Levi used this question to develop a philosophy positing that although man is no match for life, he can become better prepared to contend with the tragedies in life. According to Levi, the horrors of the world occur because of the strength of human tendencies, which make relationships between human beings exceedingly fragile. He believed that we are ill-constituted beings who have tendencies toward violence and domination, dividing ourselves into Us and Them, with very shallow loyalties. He also maintained that our only refuge is in education and responsibility, which may counter these tendencies. Homer calls Levi's philosophy "optimistic pessimism." As Homer demonstrates, Levi took his past experiences into account to determine that goodwill and democratic institutions do not come easily to people. Liberal society is to be earned through discipline and responsibility toward our weaknesses. Levi's answer is "civilized liberalism." To achieve this we must counter some of our most stubborn tendencies. Homer also explores the impact of Levi's death, an apparent suicide, on the way in which his work and theories have been perceived. While several critics discount Levi's work because of the nature of his death, Homer argues that his death is consistent with his philosophy. A book rich in brutally honest philosophy, _Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival_ compels one to look at serious questions about life, tragedy, optimism, solidarity, violence, and human nature. (shrink)

In A Centaur in Auschwitz, Massimo Giuliani sheds new light on Primo Levi's rational, demythologizing approach to suffering and survival. Whether working in narrative or poetic form, Levi grappled with the ambiguities and complexities of innocence and guilt, triumph and loss. This unique book, with its concise overview of Levi's expression and development as a writer, reveals Primo Levi for what he was: scientist, intellectual, Jew, and dedicated seeker of the roots of human dignity.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Let Us Be Human:Primo Levi and Ludwig WittgensteinDavide SpartiThe demolition of a man is difficult, almost as much as creating one.— Primo Levi1The modest but also remarkable ambition of Primo Levi's most important book Se questo è un uomo is "to provide material for a quiet [pacato] study of certain aspects of the human soul [animo umano]."2 More precisely, its ethical core (and its title) concerns (...) itself with the loss of our humanity, with the inexorable destruction of what is human.3 The book describes such patterns of dehumanizing through a number of mechanisms operating in the concentration camps of Auschwitz–Birkenau, where Levi was deported. By showing how the Nazis viewed the camp inmates as completely disconnected from their own lives, Levi bears witness to the Nazis' restricted willingness to grant humanity, to their denial of the internal relation which ties them to the inmates. Since the book offers insights for those who ask themselves "what is it to be human?" (and what remains of the human in extreme situations?), its main philosophical issue is whether or not something admits being seen as human.4Wittgenstein describes the attitudes we adopt in reacting to other creatures by analyzing the grammar of "seeing something as something:" only of a living human being, he famously adds, can we say: he [End Page 444] or she has a soul (see also PI, § 281).5 That the human body stands as one of the criteria for the ascription of psychological predicates—that human beings are endowed with an expressive power that neither statues nor animals possess; that human beings around us exert by their very presence a power which belongs uniquely to them—is suggested by the fact that even when we fantasize about living chairs or tables, for example in cartoons, we tend to lend human features to such animated furniture. So, according to Wittgenstein there is a conceptual connection between psychological predicates and certain kinds of human expression. But, one must add, this connection is achieved only through use, and is given only within the context of a form of life. The context of a shared form of life is needed because without it those forms of expressive behavior would not be intelligible: only if I am prepared to regard the object before me as a human being will I smile back and even talk to it. A living body is hence not enough: what is needed is a role through which such expressions are performed and have a point.In a similar vein, Levi shows the extent to which our experience of something as human depends on our relation to it—on the quality of our stance towards it. If it makes sense to speak of seeing somebody as a human being, it is because we can imagine individuals who lack or lose such a capacity or willingness. And it is precisely within the context of the concentration camp that what admits being seen as human changes drastically.In this essay I will draw lines of connection between Levi and Wittgenstein by relying on Stanley Cavell's crucial notions of avoidance and acknowledgment. After showing how such notions play a role in Wittgenstein's remarks on the so called "other mind" problem, I will turn to Levi and show how his remarks on the denial of the human in the concentration camp supplement Wittgenstein's grammatical remarks and can also be fruitfully read using the categories of avoidance and acknowledgment.6Although Wittgenstein does offer some remarks on Nazism, was personally engaged in protecting his family after the annexation of Austria, and mentions the Russian gulags in conversation with Rhees, he was never concerned with any empirical analysis of specific, let alone extreme, human situations. In light of this, it is clear that life in the concentration camp cannot be grasped and explained by simply relying on a few Wittgensteinian categories. However, the points Levi raises, as I will show in the conclusion, reveal an analogy with some of the [End Page 445] questions that worried Wittgenstein. This will also lead me to discuss a stylistic element that links the Austrian philosopher to the... (shrink)

Levi es un defensor de la capacidad de la razón para propiciar el progreso ético del hombre. Consecuentemente con ello, su literatura, tanto en su aspecto profundo como en el meramente estilístico, estará al servicio de esa causa. La violencia inútil y gratuita infligida sobre millones de inocentes, el escándalo de un Dios presentado como bondad y omnipotencia confrontado a la muerte de los campos, la inutilidad alienante del trabajo exterminador, la exigencia violenta de la regresión a lo bestial y (...) la existencia de amplísimas zonas de indefinición moral donde víctimas y verdugos se difuminan en un todo aberrante, son cuestiones que representan un profundo reto al esfuerzo de su transformación como material de experiencia creativa y reflexiva, con vocación de exigencia ética. Los últimos años de la vida de Levi representan la irrupción de un vector negativo solapado a lo largo de su obra, la enfatización del posible sinsentido de todos los esfuerzos devorados por la nada y el olvido. (shrink)

Movilidad de la población e inmigración en Turín en la primera mitad del siglo XVIII -- Familias campesinas en la Liguria del siglo XVIII -- Estructuras familiares y relaciones sociales en una comunidad piamontesa entre 1700 y 1800 -- Desarrollo urbano y flujos migratorios en el Piamonte del siglo XVII -- Los usos de la biografía -- Inmigración y doble trabajo en el curso de la vida : algunas observaciones sobre el Piamonte del siglo XIX -- Carreras de artesanos y (...) mercado del trabajo en Turín (siglos XVIII y XIX) -- La transformación de la tierra en mercancía : el caso piamontés (1680-1717) -- Comportamientos, recursos y proceso: antes de la "revolución" del consumo -- Reciprocidad mediterránea -- El pasado lejano : en torno al uso político de la historia -- Historiadores, psicoanálisis y verdad -- La particular enfermedad católica -- Antropología católica e historia de Italia -- El consumo en Venecia : una fuente contable -- La microhistoria y la recuperación de la complejidad -- La intimidad marrana -- Breve historia de la sociedad injusta -- La historia total contra la historia global : la historiografía antes y después de la caída del Muro de Berlín -- El tiempo, los historiadores y Freud. (shrink)

The significance of being an intellectual when taken prisoner and sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis is rarely discussed – instead, the importance of being either a Jew or a political prisoner is highlighted. By contrast, Jean Amery’s recollections of being tortured and sent to Auschwitz concentrate on his self-understanding as an intellectual. What difference does the identity and outlook as an intellectual make in the extreme circumstances found in Auschwitz? The paper discusses Amery’s views on this question, (...) invoking that of others who have also addressed it, like Primo Levi and Theodor Adorno. (shrink)

Esta investigación se emprende motivada por la necesidad de desentrañar la progresión delos modelos de aprendizaje, los cuales se han ido adaptando para responder a las demandas de lasociedad en su dinámica constante de fluctuación y transformaciones. El objetivo de este trabajo es examinar de forma sistemática la evolución de los modelos de aprendizaje, destacando los cambios paradigmáticos que han favorecido la transición de enfoques de aprendizaje tradicionales hacia propuestas más innovadoras y transdisciplinarias. Para lograrlo, se lleva a cabo un (...) análisis bibliográfico apoyado en el método hermenéutico para la interpretación contextual de la literatura y los discursos, a fin de desentrañar las complejidades inherentes en la evolución de los modelos de aprendizaje. Los resultados resaltan la influencia limitante del paradigma de la simplicidad en laformación educativa tradicional y la necesidad de un giro hacia la dialogicidad y la colaboración eintegración disciplinaria para avanzar hacia la complejidad. Se concluye argumentando a favor de la adopción del paradigma de la complejidad, abogando por una epistemología transdisciplinariay un enfoque de aprendizaje interestructurante, que permitan el desarrollo humano integral.El reconocimiento de la complejidad humana en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje exige una transformación radical de la educación hacia prácticas más holísticas y transformadoras, esenciales para construir una sociedad equitativa y justa. (shrink)

Contrary to what he expected, Primo Levi didn’t experience his life after being released from Auschwitz as cheerful and light-hearted. He – like many other survivors – was haunted by an obscure and solid anguish. It took some effort for him to discern the object or source of this anguish. He finally identified it as springing from a sense of shame or guilt in front of the drowned, that is, of those who were exterminated in the Lager. He could (...) not determine, however, whether his shame or guilt was at all rational. In this paper l examine Levi’s shame in light of what I regard as the dominant conception of practical deliberation, according to which principles and emotional detachment are central to our ability to deliberate appropriately. This conception underlies the role that John Rawls ascribes to the original position in the determination of the fundamental principles of justice. Deliberation in the original position is supposed to abstract away from any particular moral situations that one may actually have faced, since these are purely circumstantial elements to be discarded as both irrelevant and misleading for a proper deliberation on the principles of justice. In this paper, I intend both to make a case against the conception of practical deliberation on which Rawls’ original position relies and to vindicate the rationality of Levi’s shame, once some well-entrenched assumptions are brought to light and challenged. (shrink)

Por medio de un lenguaje descriptivo y poético, el autor pretende mostrar partes del testimonio de un prisionero de Auschwitz, Primo Levi, que relata algunas vivencias de un niño, también prisionero, llamado Hurbinek, quien había nacido en los campos de concentración y no sabía hablar. Los demás prisioneros, especialmente un joven llamado Henek, intentan enseñarle algunas palabras. El escrito pretende mostrar cómo el relato de Hurbinek y las historias sobre el despojo del nombre y la identidad de los prisioneros (...) de Auschwitz representan la inhumanidad que no solo se vivió en los campos de concentración, sino que será aquello que se manifestará en el periodo posterior a Auschwitz: la técnica y la industria inhumanas. También se hace presente el contraste con la resistencia que representa Henek al enseñarle el lenguaje hablado a Hubinek, lo que significa la humanidad en contra de la inhumanidad del olvido y la falta de identidad. (shrink)

Resumen: Los trabajos abordan, desde diferentes perspectivas a la categoría de sujeto como una categoría crucial del pensamiento contemporáneo. El ámbito de preocupaciones es amplio: la perspectiva del filósofo norteamericano S Cavell quien hace una originalísima recepción de la herencia de Austin y Wittgenstein; la perspectiva fenomenológica de Sartre en diálogo y conflicto con la del psicoanálisis lacaniano y las reconceptualizaciones de la ideología realizadas por Louis Althusser; la constitución del sujeto en tensión entre la sujeción al poder y las (...) posibilidadesde resistencia según la perspectiva de Judith Butler; una relectura de la implicación de estructura y sujeto en la perspectiva estructural abierta por Saussure y continuada por Lévi-Strauss, Benveniste y Lacan, tema que recibe un tratamiento circunscripto al pensamiento del argentino Ernesto Laclau, en el que se distinguen distintas etapas; las implicaciones que los eventos fundamentales de la historia del siglo XX acarrean para una conceptualización de la subjetividad en la perspectiva de Theodor Adorno y las limitaciones que la conceptualización de la obra de arte como juego en la obra de Gadamer impone a la concepción moderna de la subjetividad. -/- Índice: Presentación del compilador La crítica de Heidegger a la noción de sujeto: un análisis a partir de la incidencia de su reflexión sobre la técnica y el lenguaje, Luciana Carrera Aizpitarte El juego como auto-representación y modo de ser de la obra de arte en la estética hermenéutica de Gadamer, Paola Belén El yo sobre la línea de ficción: análisis de las concepciones de Sartre y Lacan, Luisina Bolla El poder y el sujeto. Sujeción, norma y resistencia en Judith Butler, Matías Abeijón Theodor W. Adorno: la crítica al sujeto después de Auschwitz, Gustavo Robles Estructura, discurso y subjetividad, Pedro Karczmarczyk Transformaciones, rupturas y continuidades entre la perspectiva de Ernesto Laclau y la tradición (post)estructuralista, Hernán Fair La recuperación del sujeto: escepticismo, autoconocimiento y escritura en S. Cavell, Guadalupe Reinoso . (shrink)

Trobar la forma d’expressar quelcom per al qual no hi ha paraules fou un dels reptes que assumí Levi quan volgué explicar la cruel deshumanització que va sofrir com a presoner al Lager. Nogensmenys, hi va trobar la solució mitjançant el concepte d’animal. En aquest sentit, el seu testimoni és ple de metàfores faunístiques que representen el patiment de la seua reducció cap al fons i la crueltat de ser tractat com una bèstia a la qual podien assassinar i que (...) patia com un esclau castigat. Levi confirma amb les seues analogies que la deshumanització és una metamorfosi animal. Tanmateix, la tesi d’aquest assaig és que la deshumanització no és convertir-se en una bèstia, sinó transformar-se en allò que nosaltres hem fet dels animals. Una proposició que afirmem gràcies a l’etologia, que ens evidencia que el comportament real de les feres no equival a estar pres ni a ser humiliat. De fet, creiem que la raó principal per la qual Primo Levi pensava que la deshumanització era animalitzar-se sorgeix arran d’una ideologia antropocèntrica. (shrink)

Dehumanisation is a puzzling phenomenon. Nazi propaganda likened the Jews to rats, but also portrayed them as ‘poisoners of culture’. In the Soviet Union, the Stalinist regime called opponents vermin, yet put them on show trials. During the Rwandan genocide, the Hutus identified the Tutsis with cockroaches, but nonetheless raped Tutsi women. These examples reveal tensions in the way in which dehumanisers perceive, portray and treat victims. Dehumanisation seems to require that perpetrators both deny and acknowledge the humanity of their (...) victims in certain ways. Several scholars have proposed solutions to this so-called ‘paradox of dehumanisation’ that question the usefulness of dehumanisation as a concept to explain genocidal violence, claim that dehumanisation is characterised by an unstable belief in the non-human essence of the dehumanised, or contend that dehumanisation revolves around a denial of metaphysical human status. The main aim of this article is to present a novel framework for theorising dehumanisation that offers a more straightforward solution to this paradox based on the idea that perpetrators deny their victims’ human standing in a moral sense without necessarily negating their biological human status or human subjectivity. The article illustrates this framework through examples drawn from Primo Levi’s memoirs of Auschwitz. (shrink)

Dehumanisation is a puzzling phenomenon. Nazi propaganda likened the Jews to rats, but also portrayed them as ‘poisoners of culture’. In the Soviet Union, the Stalinist regime called opponents vermin, yet put them on show trials. During the Rwandan genocide, the Hutus identified the Tutsis with cockroaches, but nonetheless raped Tutsi women. These examples reveal tensions in the way in which dehumanisers perceive, portray and treat victims. Dehumanisation seems to require that perpetrators both deny and acknowledge the humanity of their (...) victims in certain ways. Several scholars have proposed solutions to this so-called ‘paradox of dehumanisation’ that question the usefulness of dehumanisation as a concept to explain genocidal violence, claim that dehumanisation is characterised by an unstable belief in the non-human essence of the dehumanised, or contend that dehumanisation revolves around a denial of metaphysical human status. The main aim of this article is to present a novel framework for theorising dehumanisation that offers a more straightforward solution to this paradox based on the idea that perpetrators deny their victims’ human standing in a moral sense without necessarily negating their biological human status or human subjectivity. The article illustrates this framework through examples drawn from Primo Levi’s memoirs of Auschwitz. (shrink)

Con el objeto de identificar lo que creemos constituye una ontología política posmetafísica en el pensamiento de Bataille –fuertemente vinculada a la práctica de la escritura– el presente trabajo intenta situar la especificidad teórica que ocupa el exceso como problema ontológico en su filosofía a partir del desarrollo de un recorrido que reflexiona sobre el estatuto de dicho exceso en Lévi-Strauss y el posestructuralismo, por un lado, y en el pensamiento político posfundacional, por el otro.

Neste texto, o nosso objetivo é indicar, seguindo o horizonte proposto por Primo Levi em Os afogados e os sobreviventes [1986], que é possível comunicar ou diminuir a distância entre o expressar e o compreender. Como hipótese, argumentaremos que embora não nos seja permitido sentir no lugar do outro, é-nos possível compreender a sua expressão; essa compreensão se daria a partir de uma conversão do olhar, fundamentada em uma vontade de comunicar. Para isso, utilizaremos – no horizonte da problemática (...) de Levi – alguns elementos da filosofia de Simone de Beauvoir, em especial a sua noção de situação, e de Ludwig Wittgenstein, com ênfase em sua noção de apresentação panorâmica. Ambas as noções mencionadas sugerem, a nosso ver, atitudes metódicas, das quais Levi se aproximou. (shrink)

In Remnants of Auschwitz , Giorgio Agamben argues that the hidden structure of subjectivity is shame. In shame, I am consigned to something that cannot be assumed, such that the very thing that makes me a subject also forces me to witness my own desubjectification. Agamben’s ontological account of shame is problematic insofar as it forecloses collective responsibility and collapses the distinction between shame and humiliation. By recontextualizing three of Agamben’s sources – Primo Levi, Robert Antelme and Maurice Blanchot (...) – I develop an alternative account of shame as the structure of intersubjectivity , and of a collective responsibility that is more fundamental than the subject itself. On this basis, I sketch the preliminary outline of a biopolitics of resistance rooted in the ethics of alterity. The intuition driving this approach is that life is never bare ; even in situations of extreme affliction there remains a relation to alterity which provides a starting point for resistance. (shrink)

(Dall'introduzione del volume) Nel terzo capitolo Simone Ghelli si lancia nell’impresa di ipotizzare un percorso di lettura leviano di cui non è dato trovare riscontri filologici precisi, ma che è tuttavia percepibile “nell’aria” e nelle opere del torinese. Si tratta di una risonanza con il pensiero filosofico di Pierre Bayle e della sua riflessione sulla sofferenza nell’orizzonte speculativo di Levi, il quale tornò sovente a meditare sul problema del male e sulla spinosa questione dell’assenza di Dio e dell’impossibilità di fornire (...) una giustificazione della vita e del mondo. Ghelli arriva così a sostenere che «la posizione di Levi esprime una profonda consapevolezza filosofica, una concatenazione non casuale di concetti e argomenti riconducibile a una tradizione ben precisa: quella dell’ateismo moderno». (shrink)

Con el objeto de identificar lo que creemos constituye una ontología política posmetafísica en el pensamiento de Bataille –fuertemente vinculada a la práctica de la escritura– el presente trabajo intenta situar la especificidad teórica que ocupa el exceso como problema ontológico en su filosofía, a partir del desarrollo de un recorrido que reflexiona sobre el estatuto de dicho exceso en Lévi-Strauss y el posestructuralismo, por un lado, y en el pensamiento político posfundacional, por el otro.

Situated at the intersection of animal studies and literary theory, this book explores the remarkable and subtly pervasive web of animal imagery, metaphors, and concepts in the work of the Jewish-Italian writer, chemist, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. Relatively unexamined by scholars, the complex and extensive animal imagery Levi employed in his literary works offers new insights into the aesthetical and ethical function of testimony, as well as an original perspective on contemporary debates surrounding human-animal relationships and posthumanism. The (...) three main sections that compose the book mirror Levi’s approach to non-human animals and animality: from an unquestionable bio-ethical origin ; through an investigation of the relationships between writing, technology, and animality ; to a creative intellectual project in which literary animals both counterbalance the inevitable suffering of all creatures, and suggest a transformative image of interspecific community. (shrink)

Artykuł zawiera prezentację, analizę oraz interpretację pojęcia przemocy zbędnej, które pojawia się w piątej części książki Primo Leviego Pogrążeni i ocaleni. Levi podjął próbę uchwycenia przy pomocy tego pojęcia specyfiki przemocy stosowanej przez niemieckich nazistów. Sposób ujęcia fenomenu bezużytecznej przemocy przez tego autora zostaje rozszerzony o dodatkowe relacje świadków oraz ustalenia badaczy, którzy zajmują się sposobem funkcjonowania obozów koncentracyjnych oraz fenomenem nazistowskiego terroru. W ten sposób charakterystyka pewnej formy przemocy, którą wypracował autor, będący jednocześnie jej ofiarą, uzyskuje poparcie i (...) szeroki komentarz. (shrink)

L'opera di Primo Levi presenta un caso straordinariamente ricco e in qualche modo enigmatico di intertestualità. Con questo volume si è cercato di tracciare i lineamenti di una mappa immaginaria, uno schema degli innesti, intertesti e trapianti che collegano l'opera leviana ai libri altrui.

This article analyses the concept of the human in Primo Levi's works, as well as his use of the animal as way of characterizing the nonhuman element inside the human. To disclose the implicit assum...

This article offers a pragmatist approach to concentration camp humor, in particular, to Viktor Frankl’s and Primo Levi’s conceptualizations of humor. They both show how humor does not vanish even in the worst imaginable circumstances. Despite this similarity, it will be argued that their intellectual positions on humor differ significantly. The main difference between the two authors is that according to Frankl, humor is elevating in the middle of suffering, and according to Levi, humor expresses the absurdity of the (...) idea of concentration camps, but this is not necessarily a noble reaction. Through a critical synthesis based on pragmatist philosophy, it will be claimed that humor in concentration camps expresses the human condition in the entirely twisted situation. This phenomenon cannot be understood without considering forms of life, how drastic the changes from the past were, and what people expected from the future, if anything. (shrink)

La filosofia, anche quella più incline a farsi coinvolgere nell’impresa di estinguere la sete dell’assoluto, contiene in sé, nella propria vocazione alla ricerca di una comune verità mediante il dialogo, un antidoto indispensabile al rischio (auto)distruttivo che può annidarsi in ogni tentativo umano, tanto umano di cogliere la totalità, l’infinito, Dio. Anche le grandi tradizioni religiose, quelle che da secoli sono impegnate a tracciare sentieri, trovare parole, celebrare liturgie per saziare la fame di assoluto che agita il cuore e la (...) mente degli uomini, non possono fare a meno di intessere un intenso dialogo con questa tradizione di ricerca, soprattutto nei momenti cruciali, quando diventa urgente addomesticare i dèmoni (fanatismo, intolleranza, totalitarismo) che una frequentazione inadeguata del sacro può evocare. La consapevolezza che anche la filosofia non possa dichiararsi storicamente innocente non cancella ma spinge a ritrovare sempre di nuovo la vocazione più profonda di quest’originale forma di esercizio spirituale: una ricerca appassionata del bene e della verità, capace di resistere alla suggestione del possesso compiuto e di mantenersi in quella apertura alla possibilità dell’errore che è presidio di autentica libertà per sé e per gli altri. Nel cammino per apprendere quest’arte di maneggiare gli assoluti, diventa allora importante scegliere con cura i propri maestri, frequentare l’orto che hanno seminato, imparare ad usare gli arnesi che hanno adoperato, per diventare capaci di costruirne di nuovi, quelli che si rendessero necessari per coltivare il campo della propria personale esperienza di vita. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to engage the Badiouian image of Deleuze’s thought at its most dogmatic. I develop a close reading of Badiou’s controversial work, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. I argue that this text is counter-productive insofar as it obscures problems that Deleuze and Badiou share, in favour of emphasizing divergences in their solutions to them. As part of an attempt to engage these shared problems, the article focuses on the problem of ‘universal singularity’, arguing in favour of (...) what Deleuze and Badiou can bring to our understanding of it. To achieve this, I consider Deleuzian philosophy in terms of its capacity to contribute to new images of thought, through a development of its relation with the writings of Primo Levi. (shrink)

Many of our hermeneutic, literary critic, and poststructuralist ideas on mediation imply that the medium determines how a textual or narrative account must be taken. In contrast to these, Émmanuel Lévinas suggests that responsibility for the other person is not determined by the medium. Responsibility is already established in proximity to the other person; a relationship that we as moral subjects need to ethically understand. In relation to Primo Levi’s memoir of survival in Auschwitz, If this is a Man, (...) this article show in what ways Slavoj Žižek’s and Hayden White’s aesthetic ideas on mediation make us unprepared to take on the responsibility for the other person that Lévinas shows us. (shrink)

The Holocaust marks a decisive moment in modern suffering in which it becomes almost impossible to find meaning or redemption in the experience. In this study, C. Fred Alford offers a new and thoughtful examination of the experience of suffering. Moving from the Book of Job, an account of meaningful suffering in a God-drenched world, to the work of Primo Levi, who attempted to find meaning in the Holocaust through absolute clarity of insight, he concludes that neither strategy works (...) well in today's world. More effective are the day-to-day coping practices of some survivors. Drawing on testimonies of survivors from the Fortunoff Video Archives, Alford also applies the work of Julia Kristeva and the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicot to his examination of a topic that has been and continues to be central to human experience. (shrink)

This essay argues that translation in Se questo è un uomo (If This is a Man) (1947), as well as in related pieces, functions for Primo Levi as a key means for claiming and potentially repairing manhood. In its capacity to reposition meaning, translation functions as a powerful vehicle for affirming agency, particularly gendered agency. What emerges in Levi's writings, particularly in Se questo's ?Canto of Ulysses? chapter, is the figure of the translator as resistance fighter: the man who (...) uses his intellect, his love of languages and other men, and his desire to communicate in order to combat the assault on humanity perpetrated by Nazism and sustained by its legacy. In this Levi's writing exists on a continuum with the cultural work of the founding members of Giustizia e Libertà and, accordingly, complicates Italy's postwar understanding of partisan activity. Throughout Se questo è un uomo and related works, translation proves a vital if imperfect means for reclaiming manhood and for asserting the possibility of friendship across cultural, regional, ethnic, and gender boundaries. (shrink)

Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains, a literary sensation upon its publication in Australia in August 2018, deserves a place alongside classics of the prison writing genre. At the same time, it contains important lessons for everyone thinking about power in the contemporary world. In particular, it prompts to reconsider the kind of power that is exercised in camps, where it comes from and how it could be resisted.

The spinozian critical fortune records that, starting withproposition 27 of Ethics Part iii, something completely original appearsin the examination of affective life: the imitation of affections. Spinoza’snovelty, in comparison with his contemporaries, is to describe theproduction of affections no longer from an external object, but from theconduct of “something”, or “someone”, on an object - considering thatthis production is rooted in the fact that we imagine that this “someone”or that “something” is similar to us. The proposition links a longdeductive sequence (...) that runs through the rest of Part iii, supports thecrucial Part iv propositions on politics and law and reaches the PoliticalTreaty [i, v]. Our intention is to evaluate the meanings of this propositionin Spinoza’s political thought, based on a review of this problemin critical fortune - taking into account some passages in the works ofPrimo Levi. In particular the “Chemistry Test”, chapter ofthis book If This Is a Man? [Se questo è un uomo?]. (shrink)

Upon arriving in Auschwitz Primo Levi discovered that rational discourse, in which actions are done for reasons, was left lying on the carriage floor together with his human dignity. By responding ‘Here one doesn't ask why’, the camp guard succinctly conveys the insight that evil defies reason. This paper examines two studies of evil that are predicated on that idea: Kant's and Augustine's. It argues that their theories share an underlying formation wherein evil remains incomprehensible, except in negative terms (...) as an absence of the reasonable. This deep similarity in the structure of the concept of evil is exceptionally striking if we bear in mind the radical difference in the scope of its application: whereas for Augustine ‘evil’ is a general metaphysical concept that concerns everything that goes wrong in creation, for Kant it is limited to agents and what they do. My argument is that the privative structure which underlies their understanding of evil stems from a shared belief in the central role of rationality in ethical discourse, and in an absolute dependence of moral responsibility on free will. (shrink)

The other, potentially diabolical, aspect of this construction is the one that presented itself to Primo levi when he realised that in Auschwitz there was no “ why” (“hier gibt es kein 'Warum' ” [“here there is no 'why'”]). levi's experience, of course, ...

We do not always survive trauma. Elie Wiesel said of Primo Levi, a holocaust survivor who committed suicide at age sixty-seven, “[he] died at Auschwitz forty years earlier.” Though Levi physically survived the holocaust, psychically he did not. And yet, there are countless stories of incredible triumph over trauma. What makes survival possible? What seems to separate those who recover from those who do not—at least in part—is the capacity and opportunity for adaptation. Adaptation is the phenomenon whereby the (...) subject is able to make use of one or more coping mechanisms in order to adjust to traumatic disruption. In this paper I argue that narrative is an especially useful tool for adapting to trauma because it addresses that which is so disruptive about trauma: the inability to process the traumatic event. (shrink)

Giorgio Agambens Frage nach dem ethischen und epistemologischen Status des Zeugnisses im Kontext der Shoah, wie er sie in seiner Arbeit Was von Auschwitz bleibt. Das Archiv und der Zeuge aufwirft, konzentriert sich auf die Analyse einer Figur der nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungslager, die Primo Levi ins Spiel gebracht hat, um die Authentizität seines eigenen Zeugnisses als Überlebender in Frage zu stellen: den Muselmann, stummes Opfer auf der untersten Stufe der Lagerhierarchie. Der Artikel unternimmt eine kritische Analyse des Agambenschen Arguments, das (...) Paradox des sprachlosen Zeugnisses, das der Muselmann repräsentiert, sei der unschätzbare Rest, die Lücke, die weder ganz dem Menschlichen noch ganz dem Nicht-Menschlichen zugeschlagen werden kann. Er versucht zu zeigen, dass dieses mit erheblichem rhetorischen Aufwand entwickelte Argument keinen Erkenntnisgewinn im Zusammenhang der Frage nach Authentizität von Zeugnissen erbringt. Ihm gegenüber wäre eine Sichtweise zu favorisieren, die den Plural aller erreichbarer Zeugnisse betont, die die Perspektivität jedes Einzelnen hervorheben kann, ohne seine Einzigartigkeit zu unterschlagen. (shrink)