Retour à Auschwitz

Nous y sommes. Quel effet cela vous fait-il de revoir ces lieux ? Primo Levi : Tout a changé. Plus de quarante ans ont passé. À l’époque, la Pologne sortait avant tout de cinq années d’une guerre épouvantable, c’était le pays d’Europe qui avait le plus souffert de la guerre, qui comptait probablement le plus grand nombre de victimes et pas seulement des Juifs. Et puis pendant quarante ans, le monde s’est renouvelé partout. Moi, j’avais traversé ces campagnes en hiver, ce qui est tout à fait d..

Terug naar Auschwitz

We zijn er. Wat voelt u als u deze plek terugziet? Primo Levi: Alles is veranderd. Het is meer dan veertig jaar geleden. Polen had toen net vijf jaar verschrikkelijke oorlog achter de rug. Het was het zwaarst getroffen land van heel Europa met het grootste aantal slachtoffers, niet alleen maar Joden trouwens. Ondertussen is de wereld helemaal veranderd. Ik was door het platteland getrokken, en de Poolse winter was en blijft hard, niet zoals de winters die we in Italië kennen. De sneeuw blijft..

Thinking like a man? The cultures of science

Culture includes science and science includes culture, but conflicts between the two traditions persist, often seen as clashes between interpretation and knowledge. One way of highlighting this false polarity has been to explore the gendered symbolism of science. Feminism has contributed to science studies and the critical interrogation of knowledge, aware that practical knowledge and scientific understanding have never been synonymous. Persisting notions of an underlying unity to scientific endeavour have often impeded rather than fostered the useful application of knowledge. This has been particularly evident in the recent rise of molecular biology, with its delusory dream of the total conquest of disease. It is equally prominent in evolutionary psychology, with its renewed attempts to depict the fundamental basis of sex differences. Wars over science have continued to intensify over the last decade, even as our knowledge of the political, economic and ideological significance of science funding and research has become ever more apparent

Trouble with zombies: Bare life, Muselmanner and displaced people

This article considers the increase in media representations of zombies during the first decade of the 2000s. It argues that a connection can be read between the new preoccupation with zombies and anxieties over the apparent threat posed by those without rights attempting to enter Western countries. The article sets up a theoretical argument using the work of Giorgio Agamben. Taking on board Agamben's discussion of ‘bare life’, the article follows Agamben in making a link between this idea and the Muselmann, the Jew reduced to the walking dead in the concentration and death camps. For Agamben, bare life is central to the functioning of the modern state. The article suggests that bare life is a way of connecting the Muselmann with the zombie as that monster has been elaborated in films since George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). Indeed, where Agamben argues that the werewolf was the characterising monster of the premodern era, this article argues that the zombie is the characterising monster of the modern era. The article goes on to make the connection between bare life, Muselmänner, zombies and displaced people, most commonly understood as asylum seekers

"To Tell the Story": Cultural Trauma and Holocaust Metanarrative

This article explores the aporia between the alleged inexplicability of the Holocaust and the wealth of narrative that has proceeded from the event in the years since 1945, proposing the existence of a generic Holocaust metanarrative that has been adopted and inscribed into Western cultural memory as the accepted framework for interpretation. Taking as a starting point the idea that culture itself has been somehow ‘ruptured’ in the wake of the Holocaust, this article explores the ways in which this rupture manifests itself, viewing the shattering impact of the Holocaust on the Western cultural imagination as macrocosmically comparable to the impact of psychic trauma on the individual survivor of the Holocaust. Just as an individual act of narration (the act of testimony) is believed to provide a cure for trauma, so a collective act of narration may hold the key to repairing the post-Holocaust cultural rupture. During the exploration of this process, it becomes apparent that cultural memory of the Holocaust is in fact informed by a metanarrative account that appears to offer the possibility of an engagement with the Holocaust, but which in fact acts as a screen between the event itself and the culture that would seek to memorialize it. Finally, this article explores the notion that the most appropriate narrative response is one that accepts the impossibility of its own position, rejecting the easy redemption offered by the assimilation of Holocaust metanarrative and instead inhabiting the dialectic between knowing and understanding that the Holocaust presents

Il ritorno a casa secondo Primo Levi

Primo Levi recounts two journeys: a real one in La Tregua, and a fictitious one in Se non ora, quando? In both cases he has to deal with the romance’s structure and its stereotypes, which tend to negate realism. For this reason the writer adopts proceedings to defuse romance and happy ending