Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive

Homo Sacer #III

by Giorgio Agamben

“In its form, this book is a kind of perpetual commentary on testimony. It did not seem possible to proceed otherwise. At a certain point, it became clear that testimony contained at its core an essential lacuna; in other words, the survivors bore witness to something it is impossible to bear witness to. As a consequence, commenting on survivors’ testimony necessarily meant interrogating this lacuna or, more precisely, attempting to listen to it.

Listening to something absent did not prove fruitless work for this author. Above all, it made it necessary to clear away almost all the doctrines that, since Auschwitz, have been advanced in the name of ethics. For my own part, I will consider myself content with my work if, in attempting to locate the place and theme of testimony, I have erected some signposts allowing future cartographers of the new ethical territory to orient themselves. Indeed, I will be satisfied if Remnants of Auschwitz succeeds only in correcting some of the terms with which we register the decisive lesson of the century and if this book makes it possible for certain words to be left behind and others to be understood in a different sense. This is also a way ― perhaps the only way ― to listen to what is unsaid.”― Giorgio Agamben

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Theory, Holocaust, Politics, World War II

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian and contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive; Profanations; The Signature of All Things: On Method, and other books. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s he treated a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, literature, language, ontology, nihilism, and radical political thought.

In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.

He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.

Reviews

[Parinaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

" آنان که این تجربه را از سر نگذرانده‌اند هرگز نخواهند دانست؛ آنان که از سر گذرانده‌اند هرگز نخواهند گفت؛ نه واقعا، نه کاملا... گذشته از آنِ مردگان است.‌‌.. ."


در فصل سوم |شرم یا درباره‌ی سوژه| اشاره می‌کند که بازماندگان از بودن خود به عنوان انسان زنده شرم دارند؛
آن‌ها با این جملات خود را ملامت می‌کردند:
"من زندگی می‌کنم چون دیگران به جای من مرده‌اند؟"
"آیا شرمگینی که به جای کسی دیگر زنده‌ای؟ و به ویژه، به جای انسانی بخشنده‌تر، حساس‌تر، مفیدتر، داناتر، و لایق‌تر از تو برای زیستن؟"
من هم هنگام خواندن این جملات شرم داشتم، از چه چیز؟_ از این دیر دانستن یا به درستی درک نکردن_ نمی‌دانم؛ اما مطمئنا حسی که گریبانم را گرفته بود، شرم بود.
یک پرسش:
در مقایسه زندگی‌ مدرن امروزی با جهانی که در آن اردوگاه‌ها شکل گرفته بود، انسان امروزی به‌سان یک انسان_بازمانده_ است یا ناانسان_تسلیم شده_؟

99/9/26

[Narjes Dorzade · Rating 5 out of 5]

واکاوی زخم آشویتس از زبان آگامبن

[Laleh · Rating 3 out of 5]

تقریبا ۲۰ روز خوندن "باقی مانده‌‌های آشویتس " طول کشید.کتابی که حدودا ۲۰۰ صفحه اس.
سراسر کتاب پر از ریشه شناسی کلماتی مثل شرم،شاهد و.. است.متن فلسفی و ترجمه بد هم میتونه به طولانی شدن پروسه خوندن این کتاب دامن بزنه.
انتظاری که من داشتم با توجه به عنوان کتاب"شاهد و بایگانی" چیزی تقریبا شبیه به گفتگو با بازمانده ها،خاطرات و این حرف ها بود اما شاید کمتر از۲۰ درصد کتاب به این موارد اختصاص داده شده بود.
واکاوی جنایت آشویتس و خوندن درباره تسلیم شدگان،ماموران،شرم و احساس گناه بازماندگان،تحلیل های به جا و درست از افرادی مثل فوکو و ارنت و... نقطه قوت این کتاب و امید من برای به پایان رسوندن این کتاب بودن.
آشویتس برای من پدیده و جنایتی‌ست که هرچی کتاب های بیشتری بخونم،مستند های بیشتری ببینم و... عجیب و عجیب تر میشه و این کتاب هم همین کار رو کرد.

[Parsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

فجیع ترین جنایت تاریخ را پیش چشم بیاورید. از آن چه میدانیم؟ از چه کسانی در موردش شنیده ایم؟ آیا آنان که روایت کرده اند افراد مناسبی برای روایت اند؟

فجایع چگونه رخ می دهند؟ آیا قربانیان فاجعه می توانند شهادت بدهند؟ به نمایندگی از کشته شدگان از تجربه مرگ و کشته شدن بگویند؟
کتاب جستارگونه و فلسفیدن فیلسوف مشهور آگامبن است در مورد آشویتس. او آثار ادبی و پژوهشی متعددی را پیش رو قرار داده و با واکاوی امر اخلاقی و امر قضایی، امر عینی و امر ذهنی و ساحت های دیگر، سعی میکند پرسش های مهمی را در مورد رخداد آشویتس بررسی کند.

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part VII of the Homo Sacer project.

Four essays. Preface opens with the reasonable proposition that the discrepancy regarding Auschwitz “concerns the very structure of testimony” (12): “On the one hand, what happened in the camps appears to the survivors as the only true thing and, as such, absolutely unforgettable; on the other hand, this truth is to the same degree unimaginable, that is, irreducible to the real elements that constitute it” (id.). The discrepancy concerns “facts so real, by comparison, nothing is truer; a reality that necessarily exceeds its factual elements—such is the aporia of Auschwitz” ((id.). One survivor, Lewental, a sonderkommando, wrote that “the complete truth is far more tragic, far more frightening” (id.)—to which author responds: “more tragic, more frightening than what?” We see that the “aporia of Auschwitz is, indeed, the very aporia of historical knowledge: a non-coincidence between facts and truth, between verification and comprehension” (id.). We also see that

One of the lessons of Auschwitz is that it is infinitely harder to grasp the mind of an ordinary person than to understand the mind of a Spinoza or Dante. (Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the ‘banality of evil,’ so often misunderstood, must also be understood in this sense.) (13)

Though Agamben states that this text has little that can’t be found in the actual testimonials, “it became clear that testimony contained at its core an essential lacuna: in other words, the survivors bore witness to something it is impossible to bear witness to” (id). His task became an interrogation of the lacuna, even though “listening to something absent” may seem counterintuitive: “it made it necessary to clear away almost all of the doctrines that, since Auschwitz, have been advanced in the name of ethics” (id.).

I – “The Witness”

In Auschwitz, one reason to survive was “the idea of becoming a witness” (15). Primo Levi “does not consider himself a writer; he becomes a writer so that he can bear witness” (id.).

Latin has two terms for our ‘witness’: testis (“from which our word ‘testimony’ derives, etymologically signifies the person, who, in a trial or lawsuit between two rival parties, is in the position of a third party (*terstis)” (17)) and superstes (“a person who has lived through something, who has experienced an event from beginning to end and can therefore bear witness to it”) (id.). These latinate concepts problematize the notion of bearing witness to Auschwitz, as we shall see. Levi is interested only in “what makes judgment possible: the gray zone in which victims become executioners and executioners become victims” (17). Judgment can be made, of course, but important that “the law not presume to exhaust the question. A non-juridical element of truth exists such that the quaestio facti can never be reduced to the quaestio iuris” (id.).

Author notes the standard “tacit confusion of ethical and juridical categories” in this connection (18)—all of this is “contaminated by law,” which has the “ultimate aim” of “the production of a res judicata” (id.), quite distinct from the finding of truth or the disposition in justice. Rather, “the sentence becomes the substitute [supplement?] for the true and the just, being held as true despite its falsity and injustice” (id.). Via reference to Kafka, law is reduced to judgment, and judgment to trial: “execution and transgression, innocence and guilt, obedience and disobedience all become indistinct” (19) (the plotinian hoion, of course) and dude concludes that judgment constitutes “the mystery of trial.” Some suggestion that the post-war trials (which involved “only a few hundred people,” an “evident insufficiency” (19)) “are responsible for the conceptual confusion that, for decades, has made it impossible to think through Auschwitz,” as “they helped spread the idea that the problem of Auschwitz had been overcome.” We get now that “law did not exhaust the problem, but rather that the very problem was so enormous as to call into question law itself” (20).

Some discussion here on ‘responsibility’—it has been “irredeemably contaminated by law” (20) (likely we need an archaeology of contamination, considering dude’s reliance thereupon) (cf. also Bakhtin on ‘answerability’). Levi would place certain occurrences in a “zone of irresponsibility,” based on his “unprecedented discovery” at Auschwitz of “an area that is independent of every establishment of responsibility,” wherein “the long chain of conjunction between victim and executioner comes loose” (21). We are not “beyond good and evil” (i.e., with Nietzsche), but “before them”; “before is more important than any beyond—that the ‘underman’ must matter to us more than the ‘overman’” (id.). Again, this “First Circle” of irresponsibility is Arendt’s banality of evil. The sonderkommando is the representative of this zone of irresponsibility (25).

Etymology again tells the story: spondeo “means ‘to become the guarantor of something for someone (or for oneself) with respect to someone’” (id.). For the Romans, the “custom was that a free man could consign himself as a hostage—that is, in a state of imprisonment, from which the term obligatio derives—to guarantee the compensation of a wrong or the fulfillment of an obligation” (22), and the “term sponsor indicated the person who substituted himself for the reus, promising, in the case of a breach of contract, to furnish the requested service” (id.). Responsibility is accordingly “genuinely juridical and not ethical” wherein “the legal bond was considered to inhere in the body of the person responsible” (id.). (We shall recall this when we get around to volume IX.)

Responsibility and guilt thus express simply two aspects of legal imputability; only later were they interiorized and moved outside law. Hence the insufficiency and opacity of every ethical doctrine that claims to be founded on these two concepts. (22)

Eichmann at his trial walked this distinction by claiming meaninglessly that he felt “guilty before God, not the law” (23). The silliness arises after “having raised juridical categories to the status of supreme ethical categories and thereby irredeemably confusing the fields of law and ethics,” secular ethics still wants to be separate (24): “But ethics is the sphere that recognizes neither guilt nor responsibility; it is, as Spinoza knew, the doctrine of the happy life” (id.), which reduces, furthermore, the ethical to the mere aesthetic. One would think that if there were an irreducible core of the ethical, regarding which aesthetics is of no moment, then it should be discoverable at Auschwitz.

The analysis turns to Greek martis, ‘martyr,’ as translation for ‘witness’: though the ante-Nicene fathers regarded martyrdom as witness to the faith, the Auschwitz survivors are unanimous that “what happened in the camps has little to do with martyrdom” (26). Conceptually, however, there is some connection, insofar as the Greek term is derived from the verb ‘to remember,’—“the survivor’s vocation is to remember; he cannot not remember” (id.). More significantly, however, the ante-Nicene fathers “were confronted by heretical groups that rejected martyrdom because, in their eyes, it constituted a wholly senseless death (perire sine causa)” (27). The doctrine of martyrdom was confected to justify “the scandal of a meaningless death, of an execution that could only appear as absurd” (id.): “Confronted with the spectacle of a death that was apparently sine causa, the reference to Luke 12: 8-9 and to Matthew 10: 32-33 [quotations omitted] made it possible to interpret martyrdom as a divine command and, thus, to find reason for the irrational” (id.). Levi does not like the term Holocaust because of the implication of an offering or a punishment for sins (28), noting how Wiesel coined the term “then regretted it and wanted to take it back” (id.).

As we might have predicted, an etymology follows: holocaustos ultimately as a ‘complete burning,’ “used to translate […] the complex sacrificial doctrine of the Bible” (there’s several different Hebrew terms, and the term that the Vulgate rendered as holocaustum, olah, concerns “the dispatch of the offering to the divinity” (29)). The Ante-Nicene fathers used the term literally against Judaism, to “condemn the uselessness of bloody sacrifices” (id.), but then used it metaphorically to refer to the torture of the Christian martyrs, with the ultimate extension, by Augustine, to se holocaustum obtulerit in cruce Iesus.

The metaphorical usage is not limited to holocaust; the preferred term has been so’ah, which also reveals a metaphorical usage, meaning “‘devastation, catastrophe’ and, in the Bible, often implies the idea of divine punishment (as in Isaiah 10:3)” (31). Unlike holocaust, however, so’ah “contains no mockery”; the former term is an “attempt to establish a connection, however, distant, between Auschwitz and the Biblical olah and between death in the gas chamber and the ‘complete devotion to sacred and superior motives’” (id.). In swearing off the use of the term forever, author notes that “Not only does the term imply an unacceptable equation between crematoria and altars; it also continues a semantic heredity that is from its inception anti-Semitic” (id.).

Agamben had been challenged for trying to “ruin the unique and unsayable character of Auschwitz” (31). ‘Unique’ is conceded, but ‘unsayable’? Works through Chrysostom’s notion that God is unsayable, unspeakable, unwritable (32), such that the angels must merely adore Him in silence. Author translates ‘adore in silence’ as euphemein, and regards it as the proper way to cognize the complaint that he has ruined the unsayable character of Auschwitz.

“Testimony, however, contains,” once more, “a lacuna” (33): as Levi notes, “witnesses are by definition survivors and so all, to some degree, enjoyed a privilege.” This lacuna “calls into question the very meaning of testimony and, along with it, the identity and reliability of witnesses” (id.); Levi: “I must repeat: we the survivors, are not the true witnesses.” Levi makes his testimony essentially a representative capacity: “Weeks and months before being snuffed out, they had already lost the ability to observe, to remember, to compare and express themselves. We speak in their stead, by proxy” (34). Agamben notes that “the value of the testimony lies essentially in what it lacks; at its center it contains something that cannot be borne witness to and that discharges the survivors of authority” (id.). Rather, the survivors speak as “pseudo-witnesses” insofar as “they bear witness to the missing testimony” (id.). Of course, by means of the standard adverse inference under the requisite rules of evidence, disappeared witnesses and concealed evidence compels the presumption that the party procuring the absence fears its disclosure and therefore we should assume the worst—so we should not be troubled by pseudo-witnesses.

This difficulty is explained otherwise as an inside/outside distinction: “The Shoah is an event without witnesses” because “it is impossible to bear witness from the inside” (no one survives to tell) or from the outside “since the ‘outsider’ is by definition excluded from the event” (35). Agamben thinks that the threshold of indistinction (hoion, recall) between inside and outside “could have led to a comprehension of the structure of testimony” (36). Testimony as the “disjunction between two impossibilities of bearing witness” (39)?

II – “The Muselmann”

Muselmann as the “untestifiable” to which “no one has borne witness” (41). The Muselmann as a “staggering corpse,” “mummy men,” “living dead” (id.), who “became indifferent to everything happening around them” (43). (The designation arises in Auschwitz from “the impression of seeing Arabs praying” (id.), according to one survivor.) No one had sympathy for the muselmanner (id.), and “all the muselmanner who finished in the gas chambers have the same story, or more exactly, have no story” (44). Little agreement on the “origin of the term Muselmann,” but many synonyms (45).

Muselmanner as marking “the moving threshold in which a man passed into non-man and in which clinical diagnosis passed into anthropological analysis” (47); “in Auschwitz ethics begins precisely at the point where the Muselmann, the ‘complete witness,’ makes it forever impossible to distinguish between man and non-man” (id.) (NB: hoion). This particular zone of indistinction is what ties this volume very plainly to volume I (to the extent that “the Muselmann’s ‘third realm’ is the perfect cipher for the camp, the non-place in which all disciplinary barriers are destroyed” (id.)) and volume II (insofar as the philosopher’s “extreme situation” is the jurist’s “state of exception”). In this latter connection, Karl Barth’s notion that “human beings have the striking capacity to adapt so well to an extreme situation that it can no longer function as a distinguishing criterion” (49), i.e., noting the “incredible tendency of the limit situation to become habit (hexis recall): “Auschwitz is precisely the place in which the state of exception coincides perfectly with the rule and the extreme situation becomes the very paradigm of life” (id.) (we shall recall the notion of ‘perfect coincidence with the rule’ in volume VIII).

Muselmanner described with increasing intensity: “witnesses confirm the impossibility of gazing upon the Muselmann” (50); filmmaker who “patiently lingered over naked bodies, over the terrible ‘dolls’ dismembered and stacked one on top of another, could not bear the sight of these half-living beings” (51); Muselmanner as “an absolutely new phenomenon, unbearable to human eyes” (id.); although the Muselmann is noted by most survivors as “a central experience,” the figure is “barely named in the historical studies on the destruction of European Jewry” (52); Levi designates the Muselmann as “he who has seen the Gorgon” (53). Lots on the Gorgon stuff, impossibility of seeing and being seen, &c.

Much on other interpretations of the Muselmann (57 ff): a biological machine, a limit of certain principles, an experiment, a refutation of Apel’s obligatory communication thesis, as Aristotle’s ‘plant man,’ a radical refutation of all refutations (66).

Critique of the doctrine of dignity thereafter (67 ff.): “Auschwitz marks the end and the ruin of every ethics of dignity and conformity to a norm” (69) insofar as “the bare life to which human beings were reduced neither demands not conforms to anything” (id.). Rather, “the atrocious news that the survivors carry from the camp to the land of human beings is precisely that it is possible to lose dignity and decency beyond imagination, that there is still life [zoe] in the most extreme degradation” (id.). The Muselmann is accordingly on the threshold of the new ethics of “a form of life that begins where dignity ends” (id.).

Camps as having the role of “the fabrication of corpses” (as stated by Arendt) (71): “In Auschwitz, people did not die; rather, corpses were produced” (72). (Am skipping over all the Heidegger stuff.) Some reflections on Adorno’s well known positions on Auschwitz (80 ff.), as well as on Foucault’s notation of the passage of sovereignty (“to make die and let live”) to biopower (“to make live and let die”) (82 ff). The Third Reich is of course where the “unprecedented absolutization of the biopower to make live intersects with an equally absolute generalization of the sovereign power to make die, such that biopolitics coincides immediately with thanatopolitics” (83). The NSDAP dream of volkloser Raum, “not simply a matter of a desert,” but rather “a fundamental biopolitical intensity” (85), “an absolute biopolitical space, both lebensraum and todesraum” (86).

III – “Shame, or on the Subject”

Upon his liberation by the Red Army, Levi reported a sense of shame, which “becomes the dominant sentiment of survivors” (88), which conflated very soon with guilt. Bettleheim reports it as a survivor’s guilt: “one cannot survive the concentration camp without feeling guilty that one was so incredibly lucky when millions perished” (89).

This leads to a critique of the doctrine of collective responsibility (94 ff), which Levi acknowledges to be bogus insofar as “it makes no sense to speak of a collective guilt (or innocence) and that only ‘metaphorically can one claim to feel guilty for what’s one’s own people or parents did” (95).

Some thoughtful comments on Hegelian theory of tragedy in this connection (96 ff). Also, Nietzsche: “The ethics of the twentieth century opens with Nietzsche’s overcoming of resentment” (99) via the eternal return thesis—but: “Auschwitz also marks a decisive rupture” (id.). (I.e., who wants Auschwitz to return? “One cannot want Auschwitz to return for eternity, since in truth it has never ceased to take place; it is always already repeating itself” (101).)

Levinas on shame: it does not derive from “the consciousness of an imperfection or a lack in our being from which we take distance” (104), but rather “shame is grounded in our being’s incapacity to move away and break from itself” (id.). Shame as “the subject thus has no other content than its own desubjectification; it becomes witness [sic] to its own disorder” (106). Shame as “the fundamental sentiment of being a subject, in the two apparently opposed senses of this phrase: to be subjected and to be sovereign. Shame is what is produced in the absolute concomitance of subjectification and desubjectification, self-loss and self-possession, servitude and sovereignty” (107).

In Levi, we find “the impossible dialectic between the survivor and the Muselmann” (120): “Who is the subject of testimony?” A zone of indistinction “in which it is impossible to establish the position of the subject, to identify the ‘imagined substance’ of the ‘I’ and, along with it, the true witness” (id.).

We see that “life bears with it a caesura that can transform all life into survival and all survival into life. […] survival designates the pure and simple continuation of bare life [cf. volume I]” (133).

IIII – “The Archive and Testimony”

Lotsa linguistics stuff: Benveniste, Foucault, &c. “Auschwitz represents the historical point in which these processes collapse, the devastating experience in which the impossible is forced into the real” (148). We see that the Muselmann is the "absolutely unwitnessable, invisible ark of biopower. Invisible because empty, because the Muselmann is nothing other than volkloser Raum, the empty space of people at the center of the camp” (156).

Ultimately, “the subject of testimony” is “a remnant” (158). This is a “theologico-messianic concept” (162). Regarding the remnant, “the aporia of testimony coincides with the aporia of messianism” (163).

“Let us indeed posit Auschwitz, that to which it is not possible to bear witness; and let us also posit the Muselmann as the absolute impossibility of bearing witness” (164).

Recommended for those who examine the incomparable; phenomenology of heteronymic depersonalization, degree zero pseudonyms, and readers in secret solidarity with the arcanum imperii.

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an important text. Agamben’s line of thought occupies a central place in Holocaust/WWII discourse: the attempt to think precisely what resists being said, where language fails. That remains so crucial in relation to this topic. Yes, the atrocities are unfathomable, incomprehensible, even unthinkable - which is of course true - but that alone is not enough. To stop there would simply re-inscribe silence (and paradoxically protect the very structures that produced the catastrophe from being understood)

[Ali Bozorg]

همه تلاش می‌کنند تا معنی آشویتس را درک کنند. یک تمایل شدید به دانستن؛ درک رفتار جلادان، فهم رفتار قربانیان. هانا آرنت در گفت‌وگویی می‌گوید: «چیزی در آن‌جا روی داد که ما نمی‌توانیم با آن کنار بیاییم. هیچ‌یک از ما هرگز نمی‌تواند.» یک پارادوکس در آشویتس وجود دارد: میل به فهمیدن، عدم توانایی درک انسان. همین پارادوکس است که گویی جورجو آگامبن را به موضوع آشویتس جذب می‌کند: «ما نه‌تنها چیزی نزدیک به فهمی کامل نداریم، معنا و دلایل رفتار جلادان و قربانیان، و در حقیقت حتا اغلب خود سخنان آنان، هنوز عمیقاً معمایی می‌نمایند.» صفی از متفکران تلاش کردند تا آشویتس را قابل فهم سازند. هانا آرنت، مارتین هایدگر و تئودور آدورنو، همو که می‌گفت «پس از آشویتس شعر گفتن، بربریت است». اما گویی این تلاش‌ها به بن‌بست می‌رسد. آن‌طور که آگامبن می‌نویسد: «گویی در آشویتس چیزی مانند یک سر گورگون بوده است، که آدمی نمی‌تواند ــ و نمی‌خواهد ــ به هیچ بهایی آن را ببیند.» باقی‌مانده‌های آشویتس را هم باید در همین چارچوب تحلیل کرد. آرنت، که آگامبن او را تحسین می‌کند، گفته که پس از آشویتس، ما باید یاد بگیریم که بدون مانع فکر کنیم. "باقی‌مانده‌های آشویتس" ما را به فکر کردن دوباره وادار می‌کند؛ فکر کردن به نظام‌های اخلاقی و سیاسی. "باقی‌مانده‌های آشویتس" یک لحظه‌ی ضروری در بازخوانی آشویتس است. همان‌طور که جورجو آگامبن خود در مقدمه‌ی کتابش نوشته: «برخی می‌خواهند خیلی زیاد و خیلی سریع بفهمند؛ آن‌ها برای همه‌چیز توضیح‌هایی در آستین دارند. برخی دیگر از فهمیدن سر باز می‌زنند؛ آن‌ها فقط رمزورازهایی بی‌ارزش ارائه می‌کنند. تنها راه پیشروی در وارسی فضای میان این دو گزینه نهفته است.»

[Mahya danesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

خب من راستش فکر میکنم این کتاب جز کتاب هایی بود که متنش به نسبت دشوار و فلسفی بود اما ترجمه هم اونقدری خوب و روان نبود که بتونه ارتباطت رو با متن برقرار کنه هرچند من در کل از موضع کتاب خوشم اومد و حتی بعضی جاهاش چندساعت باعث شد توی فکر برم اما ترجمه واقعا خوندن رو برام به یه عذاب تبدیل کرده بود .
من کم و بیش به واسطه هانا ارنت با اردوگاه اشویتس اشنایی داشتم برای همین سراغ واکاوی این زخم رفتم ، نویسنده این کتاب رو در ادامه یه پروژه دیگه نوشته و سوال اساسیش اینه که چطور کسایی که نجات پیدا کردن میتونن شاهدین خوبی برای تجربیات افراد نجات نیافته باشن؟
خیلی تحت تاثیر لوی قرار داره و من خودم وقتی سراغ لوی میرفت بیشتر دقت میکردم و برام مهیج بود .
درسته که یه سری جنایات هولناک غیرقابل چشم پوشی توی اشویتس اتفاق افتاده اما نویسنده فقط به واکاوی جنایتکاران نمی پردازه اتفاقا به نقش قربانیان هم میپردازه به سکوتشون یا حتی همراهی کردنشون تا اتاق های گاز و کوره های ادم سوزی ، به اینکه چطور گاهی جای قربانی کننده و قربانی شونده میتونه عوض بشه و چی میشه که ادم به این درجه میرسه؟ اونایی که نجات پیدا میکنن چه حالی دارن؟
خلاصه که من فکر میکنم در عین سختی کتاب خیلی خوبی بود ولی ترجمه اش اصلا من رو راضی نکرد شاید اگه ترجمه دیگه ای باشه اون رو هم امتحان کنم .
به نظرم جسارت یه همچین نویسنده ای توی عصری که حرف زدن از این موارد اونم توی غرب موضوع پرحاشیه ای هست ،واقعا ستودنیه .چه خوب که قفل سکوت رو شکست اتفاقا پیشنهاد میکنم اون بخش از کتاب که سعی داره بگه باید گاهی حرف زد و تابو شکنی و تقدس زدایی کرد رو حتما بخونید

[Nalanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

อ่านจบตั้งแต่ปีก่อน พึ่งมา��่านจบรอบสองได้ไม่นานมานี้ ขอรีวิวไว้คร่าวๆเสียหน่อย
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หนังสือเล่มนี้พาเราทำความเข้าใจปัญหาทางปรัชญากับเหตุการณ์ค่ายกักกันของนาซีเยอรมันช่วงสงครามโลกครั้งที่ 2 โดยผ่านประสบการณ์และงานของ Primo Levi นักเขียนชาวอิตาลีซึ่งเป็นผู้รอดจากค่ายฆ่าล้างเผ่าพันธุ์เอาชวิตซ์ ในค่ายกักกัน หนึ่งเหตุผลในการอยู่รอดของนักโทษคือแนวคิดเรื่องการกลายเป็นพยานเห็นผู้เหตุการณ์ รวมทั้งเหตุผลว่าเขาต้องการอยู่รอดไม่ว่าอย่างไรก็ตาม หรือกระทั่งเหตุผลของการแก้แค้น กระนั้น การตัดสินว่ามีเหตุผลอะไรบ้าง ผู้คนในค่ายกักกันคิดอย่างไร เพียงตัดสินจากเหตุผลชุดเดียวย่อมหาใช่เรื่องง่ายจะครอบคลุมทั้งหมด มีบางผู้รอดเลือกจะเงียบ ดังนั้น เหตุผลว่าทำไม อย่างไร เพื่ออธิบายการมีชีวิตอยู่ต่อจึงไม่สามารถตอบได้ด้วยชุดเหตุผลเดียว อย่างเช่นเลวีเองก็เล่าว่าเพื่อนเขาที่รอดออกมาก็ไม่เคยพูดถึงเอาช์วิทซ์เลย อย่างไรก็ตาม มีเหตุผลหนึ่งที่ตัวเลวีเองอยู่ในกลุ่มชุดความคิดดังนี้ นั่นคือมีชีวิตเพื่อยืนยันให้แน่ชัดว่าพยานหลักฐานเหล่านั้นจะไม่ถูกลบหาย สำหรับเขา—พรีโม เลวี เมื่อกองทัพแดง (USSR) เข้าปลดปล่อยและได้กลับบ้าน เขาไม่เหน็ดเหนื่อยที่จะทบทวนประสบการณ์ให้ผู้อื่นรับฟัง เลวีเปรียบตนเองเหมือนตัวละครจากบทกวี the Ancient Mariner ของ S.T.Coleridge ตัวละครนี้ได้รับเชิญไปงานแต่ง แต่เห็นว่าไม่มีใครสนใจเขาเลย จึงเข้าไปเล่าเรื่องให้คนในงาน เช่นเดียวกับตัวเลวี หลังจากกลับมา เขารู้สึกจำเป็นต้องเล่าเรื่องราวของตนแก่ผู้อื่นอย่างไม่หยุดหย่อน ทุกสถานการณ์ ทุกโอกาสที่จะเล่า เล่าให้ผู้จัดการโรงงานยันคนงาน แม้คนฟังมีอย่างอื่นให้ทำก็ตาม และตกค่ำ เขาจะนั่งหน้าพิมพ์ดีดและเขียน

หนังสือพาเราสืบสาวที่มาในความหมายของคำว่าพยานตั้งแต่ภาษาละตินในกฎหมายโรมัน การที่กฎหมายฟังก์ชั่นเพียงเพื่อการมีอยู่ของตัวมันเอง จนถึงปัญหาเรื่องความเป็นไปไม่ได้ของพยานตัวจริงที่ไม่สามารถมาเล่าเรื่องราว เพราะตายไปแล้ว การเป็นพยานแก่พยานตัวจริงจึงคร่อมอยู่ระหว่าง subjectification และ desubjectification นั่นคือการเขียนคือการรื้อสร้างตัวเองและประกอบสร้างตัวเองในเวลาเดียวกัน การเป็นพยานต่อผู้ที่ถูกฆ่าตาย (พูดถึงสิ่งที่เป็นไปไม่ได้เพราะไม่ประสบเอง) จึงเป็นที่มาของชื่อหนังสือ นั่นคือการเป็นพยาน การเขียน คือการเป็นเศษซาก ร่องรอย ของสิ่งมันเลื่อนหลากออกไปนั่นเอง โดยผู้เขียนใช้การอธิบายด้วยทฤษฎีภาษาศาสตร์ของโซซูร์ (นักคิดที่มีอิทธิต่อสำนักโครงสร้างนิยม) และความรู้สึกผิดของผู้ที่รอดออกมาได้อย่างน่าสนใจมาก เปิดมุมมองต่อแนวคิดที่แต่ก่อนมักได้คิดและได้อ่านเพียงทฤษฎีเพียวๆ ได้อย่างน่าสนใจมาก รวมทั้งยังพูดถึงฟูโกต์ในเรื่อง biopolitic ที่พาเราไปพิจารณาเรื่องค่ายกักกันและเผยให้เห็นถึงสภาพของระบอบการเมืองในโลกปัจจุบันได้อย่างน่าสนใจ
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กลับกลายเป็นว่าหนังสือเล่มนี้เปิดมุมมองการเขียนและการทำงานเขียนแก่ตัวเองมากๆ
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จะจดจำเล่มนี้ไปอีกนาน

[Tintarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

شگفت‌انگیز نیست که ژست شاهد ژست شاعر نیز هست... این گزاره‌ی هولدرلین را که: «آنچه باقی می‌ماند چیزی است که شاعران بنا می‌نهند»، نباید به این معنای مبتذل فهمید که آثار شاعران چیزهایی هستند که در سرتاسر زمان بر جای باقی می‌مانند. در عوض این جمله به معنای آن است که کلمه‌ی شعری همانی است که همواره در جایگاه یک باقی‌مانده قرار می‌گیرد و بنابراین می‌تواند شهادت دهد. شاعران -شاهدان- زبان رابه منزله‌ی آن‌چه باقی می‌ماند، به منزله‌ی آنچه عملاً از پس امکان یا ناممکنی سخن گفتن باز می‌ماند، بنا می‌نهند... گفتار شاهد به زمانی شهادت می‌دهد که انسان‌ها هنوز سخن نمی‌گفتند و بنابراین شهادت انسان‌ها نیز بر زمانی گواهی می‌دهد که آنان هنوز انسان نبودند.

[Nasstar · Rating 4 out of 5]

اولین چیزی که می‌تونم راجع به کتاب بگم اینه که کتاب واقعن دشواریابه هرچند خیلی هم کند پیش نمیره. ولی خب شاید بعد از خوندن نیمه‌ی اول کتاب، متن یه جاهایی بی‌معنا به نظر برسه که نمی‌دونم آیا ترجمه هم توی این قضیه نقشی داره یا نه.
ولی بی‌شک کتاب ارزش خونده شدن رو داره و تجربه‌ی خوبیه که اینطور ذهنت رو و کلماتت رو به چالش بکشی.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

La tesis y los argumentos son muy, muy interesantes, pero en ocasiones se hace un tanto farragoso e incluso reiterativo. Pero en general me ha gustado muchísimo: da una perspectiva sobre la brutalidad que sufrió el pueblo judío y todas y cada una de sus consecuencias psicológicas y humanitarias que no suele ser la convencional, y sin embargo es también plenamente acertada.

[Mohammad · Rating 4 out of 5]

هم کتاب وهم ترجمه‌ی مجتبا گل‌محمدی عالی بود.

[Araceli.libros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creo que subrayé todo el libro.

[José]

Zie ook Silvesters review.

Wat ik vooral uit het boek haalde was meer kennis over wat er gebeurd is in Auschwitz en andere kampen. Daarbij vond ik Agambens standpunt dat we de gebeurtenissen in Auschwitz niet onbeschrijfelijk moeten noemen erg goed. Auschwitz onbeschrijfelijk noemen maakt het abstract, alsof het er niet geweest is, maar het bestond wel degelijk en was gruwelijk. Dat kunnen we alleen onthouden als we er woorden aan geven en erover blijven spreken!

[Silvester Borsboom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessant, maar toch ook wel een hoop gelul.

[Siavosh Rezakhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

در پیشگاه خالی از مردم در برابر قانون هم پاسخگو نبودند کسانیکه تاریخ آشویتس رو رقم زدند! آنها در آشویتس هر لحظه به سوی مرگ زندگی کردند اما در آشویتس سخن گفتن از مرگ ممکن نیست چون چیزی که در اردوگاه ها روی داد مرگ نبود بلکه چیزی بینهایت هراس آورتر بود . در آشویتس ،مردم نمردند بلکه اجساد تولید شدند! جسدهایی بدون مرگ... اما یک چیز مشخص بود و آن تنهایی آدمها در لحظه ی مرگ بود .....

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 4 out of 5]

شاهکار.

[Betul · Rating 4 out of 5]

bu kadar felsefi konulara gireceğini beklemiyodum
bazı bölümlerde beynim yandı diyebilirim

[Czytam Sercem]

Nie oceniam gwiazdkami książek przeczytanych na potrzeby pracy naukowej.

[Mjhancock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giorgio Agamben pursues a number of ethical and philosophical questions that arise when confronted by the testimony and records of Auschwitz survivors. Chief among them is what it means to be a witness to something so impossible to describe, and both what it means to be a subject that can bear shame and to be beyond subjecthood. The book is divided into four sections. First is The Witness, which is a discussion on what what a witness is, and how a Holocaust survivor can and cannot be a complete witness to the death camps. The second section is the Muselmann, which is a term that arose for those in the camps who were still alive, but had essentially stopped being subjects, incapable of doing anything other than surviving, calling into question the limits and thresholds of ethics and humanity. Section three enlarges on the notion of subject, considering shame, the subject, and the "I." And the final section brings these points together, as Agamben defines in the archive and the testimony in light of the potentiality and possibility of language. I'll quickly admit that a lot of the book went right over my head, especially towards the latter half; Agamben's finer points on language and poetry in relation to the threshold of subject kind of escaped me. He's also using a lot of rather heavy theorists, including but not limited to Kant, Foucault, Heidegger, and Bettelheim, and if you're not reasonably familiar with these figures, you're going to find the book hard going. In addition to the theorists, Agamben also relies heavily on the testimonies of survivors,such as Primo Levi, while at the same time questioning what a testimony can even mean. While it wasn't an easy read, Agamben does convey the significance of the problem, and the emotional void that lies at the heart of the issue. Part of what's at stake here is what it means to be human and ethical in a world where like Auschwitz exist, turning them to their limits and going beyond.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Agamben's more contentious recent offerings, and one that many commentators (such as, for instance, Leland de la Durantaye) have deemed his most uneven, Remnants of Auschwitz is still a remarkable book: erudite, punchy, generous, and clear. Agamben handles his difficult topic here---nothing less than the ability to "bear witness" in and through language---with tenacity and an eye for the twin pitfalls of sentimentality and brutality. And ultimately if Agamben is recognizably himself in his tastes for the grand gesture ("As we shall see, almost none of the ethical principles our age believed it could recognize as valid have stood the decisive test, that of an Ethica more Auschwitz demonstrata", 13), then he is also refreshingly clear in his judgements ("Not only does the term ["Holocaust"] imply an unacceptable equation between crematoria and altars; it also continues a semantic heredity that is from its inception anti-Semitic. This is why we will never make use of this term" (31). All told this is a valuable book, whether from a position of theories of history, testimony, survival or the archive.

[F · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Agamben presents a rigorous analysis of testimony (so rigorous that some might say his presention of the Holocaust is insensitive), I can't remember crying so much while reading nonfiction.

[Vinay Arun · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a lot to write about it on here until I talked so much of it out with Ketan but let’s just say…

Extremely uncanny resonances here with some of the insights I found concealed in de Man’s work re: witnessing, testimony, the ethical problematic at the heart of enunciation, etc.
It could be said Agamben accomplishes a link between deconstruction and an ethico-juridical investigation. But what’s the vanishing mediator here? I think, rather than Foucault, it would be Aristotelian bios, especially those concepts like life, potentiality. Really strong. The emphasis on modal categories as the “operators of Being” is (Heideggarian terminology notwithstanding) very convincing.

I’m gonna go ahead and say though that I find Agamben less convincing when he deals in that sort of subtle pathos attributable to deconstruction (the one of chiastic logics, of a melancholy at the end of rigor). It is complicated—i certainly resonate with this pathos—but I don’t think it fits the bluntness of his insight well. I also don’t really care for the messianic undertones of the last chapter.

Devastating read altogether. Incisive stuff, jaggedly posed between the archival “voice” and its relentless questioning. Would recommend, with reservations

Post script: I will also add that there is a 1 star review of this book with some great points like (a) the incomplete articulation of “shame” by Agamben via Levi and (b) Agamben’s tendency to fix “formulaic” aporias. These lead to more questions than indictments imo.

[Filiz I. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Taniklik edilemez olanin, yani hic kimsenin taniklik etmedigi seyin bir adı var. Kamp dilinde bunun adi 'der Muselmann', yani 'Musluman'dir."
 Holokost uzerine yaptigim okumalar sirasinda sıklıkla karsima cikan bir terim vardi: Muselmann. Turkcesi kelime anlamiyla "Musluman" olan bu kelimenin, kamptaki esir Yahudiler arasinda sıkça kullanildigini Primo Levi, Jean Amery gibi holokosttan sag kurtulan yazarlarin metinlerinde okumustum. Kamplardaki esirlerin, olume cok yaklasmis, bir deri bir kemik kalmis haldeki diger esirlerden "Muselmann" olarak bahsettiklerine dair yalnizca bir iki cumle aciklama vardi bu kitaplarda. Bunun sebebinin ise, zayiflik ve bitkinlikten surekli egik bir halde durmalari nedeniyle secde eden muslumanlari andirmalariymis. Bundan daha fazla bilgi yoktu. Oysaki Muselmann kampin ciplak yuzuydu, iktidarin insan uzerindeki kesin zaferiydi, yuzsuz bir suretti (Gorgo). Yuzu olmayan bir insan yigini. Muselmann aklima dusmustu. Bu yasamdan cok olume yakin suretin dusundurdukleri kafami kurcalarken Agamben'in "Tanik ve Arsiv" kitabina rastladim. Agamben bu kitapta Muselmann'a 50 sayfa ayirarak bana bir kapi acmisti, ancak kitabi bitirdigimde anladim ki bu kitabin belkemigi Muselmann'di. Insan ile insan-olmayani birbirinden ayirmayi artik olanaksiz kilan Muselmann'i dusunme girisiminde bulunmustu. Insan olarak kalmak ne demektir? Insan turune ait olmak bicimindeki nihai duygu nedir? Boyle bir his var midir? Her seyden once Muselmann'in kim ya da ne oldugunu anlamadan bu sorularin cevabini veremeyecegiz. Bu sorularin yanitina bizi yakinlastiran muhtesem bir kitap ve muhtesem bir ceviri.

[Carla Prado · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's such a pity Agamben made a 180° turn during the pandemic. This was a short but nonetheless valuable read to my PhD.

[Ploni Almoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Homo Sacer III indeholder Agambens analyse af forholdet mellem sprogets og værens grundlæggende bestanddele, mulighed / umulighed, subjektivisering / afsubjektivisering / og hvordan Auschwitz som den yderste opløser (og skaber) af mennesket fører til en rift i selve væren.

Teksten består primært af en kommentar til Primo Levis tekster og til andre Auschwitz-overlever-vidnesbyrd og Agamben bruger disse og ikke mindst dikotomien mellem vidne og muselmand som afsæt til at overføre nogle af sine teoretiske grundbegreber (om den uskelnelige zone i hjertet af biopolitikken) til Auschwitz.

Det er virkelig hård og konsistent læsning. Holocaust er på mange måder den yderste test for en (etisk) teoris gyldighed, men det bliver desværre også lige rimelig tænkt og kringlet for mig nogle steder.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its focus may be on the philosophical implications of the phenomena of the death camps; however, the parameters of Agamben's gaze includes the whole of the Western ontological, literary, and linguistic traditions. As a result, the scope of the work includes the "Muselman" in Auschwitz, the nature of the sadomasochistic relationship, as well as Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" and the communication theory of the Frankfurt school in light of the experience of the death camps. All through this exploration of Western cultural touchstones remains the nexus between the human and the inhuman and its bearing on the ability to bring testimony or witness to the unspeakable horror that was Auschwitz. This relationship, as outlined in the book, is similar to the relationship between the state of exception and sovereignty explicated in other Agamben books, yet the focus and facts are radically different and, in fact, even more radically enlightening than those other efforts. For one finishes the book with one's eyes exposed to the nightmare that is the world, but with the hope of speaking the unspeakable in witness, in memory. In our torn and battered world this is all we can hope for. Hopefully, it will be enough.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, but far from Agamben's best. My least favorite in the Homo Sacer project with the exception of the yet to be translated Kingdom and the Glory (which my lack of knowledge of Italian has prevented me from reading). Despite the disappointing chapter on the Witness and the Archive, Agamben's exploration of the Muselmann as a twentieth century historical example of bare life is quite compelling and makes the book worth the time.

The chapter certainly made me feel guilty for saying that daily inconveniences had reduced me to bare life. I.E. "Oh man, Taco Bell is already closed, I have totally been reduced to bare life."

However, this work more explicitly emerges from the (boring) traditions of linguistic analysis in Foucault and Derrida.

It's no Homo Sacer, Means Without End, or Coming Community, but it's good nonetheless. If you order it fresco and skip the linguistic analysis it might be as good as a 7 layer burrito.