If This Is A Man

Agamben Workshop 2020 – "Eschatology and Revolution. Building on Giorgio Agamben" Organized by Luca Pellarin and Marcus Döller, 28.-29.10.2020, Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt IF THIS IS A MAN – AGAMBEN’S ETHICA MORE AUSCHWITZ DEMONSTRATA by David Palme Intro and Greetings I will talk about Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz and try to illucidate the ethical implications of this book. Agamben writes in the preface that he wants to “erect” “some signposts allowing future cartographers of the new ethical territory to orient themselves” (Preface). However, several reviewers lament that the ethical consequences of Agamben’s discussion of the Muselman and testimony remain quite unclear; and I do not disagree with them. I think that the Remnants do include some important sign posts for Agamben’s overall Homo-Sacer-project. And let me remind you that already on the first pages the “Muselman” is put at the conjunction of liberal democracy and totalitarianism, at the heart of Agamben’s critique of biopolitics. However, the Remnants-book is ambiguous, especially in regard to “Auschwitz” as an event and place. For Agamben, it is on the one side an eschatological event which was neglected by the world, and on the other side it is a mere actualization of a fundamental anthropological principle, the structure of language. I think, it is due to Agamben’s commitment to Schmitt, Heidegger and Saussure that prevents him from understanding Auschwitz also as an historical and social event; something that my own commitment to Marx, Adorno and Wittgenstein urges me to do. It is the aim of my talk to elaborate on that claim. Part 1: If This Is A Man The collective memory of Auschwitz is shaped by a great deal through the texts of the Italian chemist turned writer Primo Levi. It was Auschwitz that forced him to become a writer; he regarded it as his duty to write, to tell what happened in Auschwitz, to tell the world of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and the suffering of the prisoners. He felt obliged to do so not only because he survived, but because he survived on the expenses of his fellow prisoners who saved their food David Palme: If This Is A Man – Agamben Workshop 2020 1/8 for him, so he could survive and tell their stories: he owed his life and his duty to those who did not live to see the liberation, to the “drowned” as he called them later. Levi suffered from this. It is this particular aspect that is of utmost importance for Giorgio Agamben’s book about the Remnants of Auschwitz: the paradox that only those who “drowned” experienced Auschwitz in all its cruel distinctiveness, but only those who survived can tell us about it. The testimony of the survivors, according to Levi and Agamben, lacks something: and this lack is the important “remnant” of Auschwitz. According to Agamben this lack tells us something about the Auschwitz, but also about the structure of testimony, and the linguistic human nature and—most importantly for my talk—about ethics. There is one poem by Levi that I think fits very well with Agamben’s interpretation. However, it also hints where Agamben may fall short. In the English translation it is called “If this is a man” and marks the beginning of the book with the same title, Levi’s first memoir, first published in 1947. You can see it here in my presentation. You who live safe In your warm houses, You who find, returning in the evening, Hot food and friendly faces: Consider if this is a man Who works in the mud Who does not know peace Who fights for a scrap of bread Who dies because of a yes or a no. Consider if this is a woman, Without hair and without name With no more strength to remember, Her eyes empty and her womb cold Like a frog in winter. Meditate that this came about: I commend these words to you. Carve them in your hearts At home, in the street, Going to bed, rising; Repeat them to your children, Or may your house fall apart, May illness impede you, May your children turn their faces from you. David Palme: If This Is A Man – Agamben Workshop 2020 2/8 In the poem two key aspects of Agamben are included, namely the impossibility to make a distinction between human and not-human, and the apostrophe, the direct address, the ethical call to do something. I think that in Agamben’s reasoning these two aspects are both present, but not very well mediated with each other, sometimes they even exclude each other. Part 2: Agreements and Disagreements Let me begin with naming four theses Agamben and I agree on. First, there was no appropriate consideration of Auschwitz in philosophy. By this, it is not said that there was no consideration of Auschwitz in philosophy at all. There is a number of profound and great philosophical texts about the Shoah, but philosophy in general failed to take notice, failed to follow Levi’s command of “considering” “if this is a man” or “woman”. Most philosophy tried to go back to “normal” after 1945 and although there is a significant change in moral and political philosophy after the War, there is almost no substantial reflection on Auschwitz. Second, in contrast to this development of the last seventy years, such a reflection must take place and it would affect philosophy greatly, especially the fields of ethics. This means that to consider “if this is a man” or “woman” is not one subject matter among many but impacts the way one does philosophy, it shifts priorities, questions certainties, in particular those that have become “normal” again, whatever that means. For Agamben the investigation of the relation between the “Muselmann” and the surviving witness leads to the rejection of traditional moral theories; especially those modeled after the concept of law. Third, the loss of language experienced both by the “Muselmännern”, the drowned, and the saved alike sits in the center of Agamben’s reflection of Auschwitz. It is the aforementioned paradox of testimony. In fact, the enormous difficulty of expression is a topic for several survivors (Semprun, Wiesel). However, Agamben, and I agree with him, rejects the idea of the Shoah as an “unsayable” and therefore unintelligble mystery (§ 1.11); in fact, it is one of the most researched events in all of human history. There are vast collections of documents, artifacts, and testimonies. But nevertheless, it makes us speechless. What is the nature of this loss of language? What does it tell us about language in general? Forth, Auschwitz is no historical concern but demands ethical consequences and action. To study Auschwitz does not mean to fill a gap in our scientific representation of the world, instead to “consider if this is a man” or “woman” is a call to action. Agamben calls this an “apostrophe”(§2.7): The “Muselmann”, the “remnant of Auschwitz” addresses us all, just as Levi’s poem addresses David Palme: If This Is A Man – Agamben Workshop 2020 3/8 everyone and curses everyone who does not follow his command. Auschwitz causes unrest – and rightfully so. There is connection between this unrest and the loss of language. Of importance for Agamben’s argument about ethics is the concept of the “grey zone”. Levi coins the term for the “Sonderkommando”, jewish prisoners who were tasked with the murder of their fellow inmates. They were regularly killed and replaced with new prisoners, so that they could not tell what they saw. Are they perpetrators or victims? Executioners or death row? Are they responsible for the killings?1 The “gray zone” is an area were our usual way of “judgment” fails. This is what constitutes the philosophical problematic ethical dimension of Auschwitz. For Levi and Agamben the “gray zone” is an area of “irresponsibility” or “non-responsibility” (§1.6). This means, on the one hand, the lines between guilt and innocence are blurry, on the other hand, “it signifies […] a responsibility that is infinitely greater than any we could ever assume” (ibid.). Here is already the point at which Agamben rejects all ethics, because it is build on the concept of law and understands “responsibility” as in answering for a crime one has committed. This understanding of “responsibility” cannot be applied for Auschwitz. The consequence, for Agamben, is a messianic turn. The other crucial part of Agambens argument is the “Muselman” himself and the paradox of testimony which he takes over from Levi, that those who were “really” in the camp cannot tell us, their experience constitutes a gap. However, Agamben anthropologizes this gap between knowing and saying, between the two kinds of witness, between the Muselmann and the survivor as the very paradigm of language itself, as the paradigm of the human self-consciousness. And here, Agamben and I disagree. His position is indebted to the philosophical tradition Agamben associates himself with, a tradition that owes to Heidegger and Saussure, and further down is a twisted offspring of Idealism and is also deeply rooted in christian and explicitly non-jewish religiosity.2 In regard to his theory of language, that is at the heart of its writing, there are radical alternatives to the interpretation of the loss of language and the paradox of testimony, esp. if one substitutes Saussure with Ludwig Wittgenstein, as for example Ernst Tugendhat did.3 In regard to his account of the camps, I do not endorse his self-imposed restriction of Primo Levi as the paragon of testimony, nor the claim that only the “Muselmann” experienced the camp in full. What about the “Sonderkommando”, Agamben himself mentions it in the beginning of the book: 1 2 3 To judge their case may be similar to the “Judenräte” who helped to organize the ghettos, to keep everything in “order” and what meant as the Nazis intended. When Hannah Arendt condemned them in her reports from the trial of Adolf Eichmann, her judgment was met with heavy criticism. Cf. Agamben’s Language and Death (2006). Cf. Ernst Tugendhat (1979): Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. David Palme: If This Is A Man – Agamben Workshop 2020 4/8 those who are actually in the grey zone—what about their testimonies, the letters and photographs they buried under their feet, in the hope it will be found after the Nazis were defeated? What about the testimonies of the other survivors, who also feel it very difficult if not impossible to tell what happened in the camp4—there are reasons for Levi to say that all those who survived had privileges in one way or the other, but why does Agamben neglect, even deny most other survivors? Let me give you a contrasting account given by the communist survivor of Buchenwald, Jorge Semprun: “But can it be told? Will one be able to? […] The unspeakable, with which people will always be pestering us, is only an alibi. Or a sign of laziness. [...] But can one also hear everything, imagine everything? Will one be able to? Will they have the necessary patience, passion, compassion and rigor to do so?”5 It almost sounds like a direct commentary to theorem of the impossibility of witnessing, it also shifts the question from the relation of language and ontology to the relation of language and society. Let me also briefly quote from a conversation between Semprun and Elie Wiesel, another active survivor: “J.S.: Imagine a camera crew coming along and saying, ‘Sir, lady, you are the last survivor.’ What should he do? He kills himself. E.W.: No. I prefer to imagine him being asked questions, all kinds of questions. All kinds of questions. And he would listen to these questions. And then he would shrug his shoulders. And he would be asked: 'And...?'. And he will say... J.S.: If it's not suicide, then it's silence. It comes down to the same thing. E.W.: A terrible silence. The last one. I certainly don't want to be the last survivor. J.S.: Me neither.”6 The questions of the camera team are the expression of a society that still is unwilling to listen. It is not so much a problem of a fundamental incapability to speak of Auschwitz, but of the fundamental unwillingness to listen. A problem, Agamben is not addressing because his linguistic framework doesn’t allow it. In the end, Agamben transforms Auschwitz into a question of logic, of theory of language and knowledge. The ethical dimension, for him, is the key to an epistemological problem: to answer the question what is a man. 4 5 6 Cf. Sybille Schmidt (2007): “Für den Zeugen zeugen” in Böckelmann, Meier et al. (eds.): Die gouvermentale Maschine, Münster: Unrast, pp. 90-106. Jorge Semprun (1997)[1994]: Schreiben oder Leben, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, here: pp. 11-25. translation by myself Jorge Semprun, Ellie Wiesel (1997): Schweigen ist unmöglich. Frankfurt: Suhkamp, here: pp. 42-43. translation by myself David Palme: If This Is A Man – Agamben Workshop 2020 5/8 Part 3: Witnessing the one who survived death For Agamben, the camp is a biopolitcal experiment to seperate “bare life” from bios, to extract the “bare life” out of the formed human. However, the result of this seperation, the “Muselmann”, is not-human. Agamben’s claim is: Now, we know what is on the threshold of humanity, and we know what is, so to speak, the substrate of man, and we know: it’s not-human. (§4.9-4.10) In the grander scheme of Agamben’s Homo-Sacer-Project this is important. Since he considers the camp to be the paradigm of our society and the Muselman (Homo Sacer) at its heart, at the intersection of legality, democracy on one side and biopolitical totalitarianism on the other side. 7 Here, Agamben is rejecting both, Liberalism and Nazism. The “Muselman” has no rights, and no language—that is the same for Agamben, and therefor no life (bios). Since the human is the talking animal, the Muselman is not really human. They are, however, also not fully not-human, they are not an animal. There are still enough human-like features, e.g. their appearance. The “Muselmann” is on the threshold of human and not-human and therefor has experienced so to speak all of humanity till its very end. The “Muselman” is NOT the substrate of humanity or the substrate of bio-political power, the “Muselman” is the remnant of humanity, what remains when you take everything from it what makes it human, namely law, language and the “ability to die”. 8 Auschwitz demonstrates that it is wrong to conceive the human being as a composition of a bare subject and a historical form of life, to conceive the living, actual human being before us as an impure form of the human being: “It is this perspective that must be wholly called into question. We must cease to look toward processes of subjectification and desubjectification, of the living being’s becoming speaking and the speaking being’s becoming living, and more generally, toward historical processes as if they had an apocalyptic or profane telos in which the living being and the speaking being, the inhuman and the human – or any terms of a historical process – are joined in an established, completed humanity and reconciled in a realized reality. […] They have not an end, but a remnant. There is no foundation in or beneath them;” (§4.10) 7 8 Cf. Agamben, Homo Sacer. Cf. also Agamben, Language and Death. David Palme: If This Is A Man – Agamben Workshop 2020 6/8 I consider this to be pretty straight forward: There is no essence of the human being. Neither an original one, nor one that was produced by history as the universal human being, as it is presupposed for example by both the French or the Universal declaration of human rights. This claim sets humanity free to be whatever it wants and denies the necessity of an “inclusive exclusion” as a founding act. Human action is not fundamentally violent and needs no justification by a brutal sacrifice.9 To realize this, to witness the “Muselman”, to “consider if this is a man” or “woman”, means to enter a “messianic time”, to live in the time that remains, (4.10), the “Jetztzeit”10. In my opinion, this resembles another work of philosophy, one that Agamben’s book was often compared to: Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality. Usually, Agamben gets compared to Nietzsche for his rejection of the Law as the paradigm of ethics. And it is true, in the light of Auschwitz and the “grey zone” Agamben claims the legal term “responsibility” can no longer be the key of our understanding of ethics. Nietzsche as well denounces the identity of legality and morality in the Genaology of Morals. But Nietzsche doesn’t stop there and neither does Agamben. In the Genealogy Nietzsche claims that human consciousness is a product of the law, a product of education and formation of human life by the priests. Humans suffer from it, because they have to deny themselves. They live under the “no” of the priest. However, after centuries of cultivation, a new breed of humans emerge, those, who do not longer need the yoke of the priest, those who can say “yes” to themselves, the “Übermensch” or “Superhuman”. I think, that Agamben’s view of Auschwitz is similar. We witness the ultimate biopolitcal “cultivation”, not by priests, but by the SS. But from it, the witness emerges who can be more human than any human being before him. Now, who are the survivors of Auschwitz? We all are. We are all capable of witnessing the Auschwitz. We all are speechless, and we all are free to not repeat it. But we are also accomplices, we are in the grey zone—and we have to get out (§1.8). 9 Cf. the end of Excursus 7 in Agamben’s Death and Language. 10 Cf. Agamben (), The Time That Remains, chapter Threshold, p. 143. He takes the term from Benjmain, Thesen über den Begriff der Geschichte, §14. However, it is confusing that he refers as well to the french revolution and Robbespierre—and thus, universal human rights. David Palme: If This Is A Man – Agamben Workshop 2020 7/8 Part 4: Auschwitz as an event outside of history There are now different ways how to understand Auschwitz as an event, and I’d say it is ambivalent in Agamben’s writing, as I said in the beginning, his interpretation of Auschwitz is at odds with each other. On the one hand, Auschwitz is the paradigm of modernity, the relation of the Muselman and the Witness is the paradigm of language and subjectivity as such. In this regard, the death camp between Katowice and Krakow signifies an event outside of time, it is only a realization of a fundamental structure inside human beings, present since the first man raised his voice. On the other hand, Auschwitz is an eschatological event, heralding the beginning of messianic time, as the Muselman is on the threshold of human and in-human, Auschwitz is threshold of historic time and the end of time as such. It is, and Agamben makes this comparison, like the death and rebirth of Jesus Christ (§3.23). In both cases, Agamben treats Auschwitz not as an historical event. It is therefore unclear whether the actual happening of the Holocaust was necessary, so that we can learn from it, or as an event that actually changed the world in such a way that enables us to know or do something that was not possible before. In other words: Has Agamben given an apology of Auschwitz? Was it necessary for Auschwitz to happen to make us realize the “groundlessness of our actions”? Certainly, he denies so and parts of his writings indicate otherwise. He states his goal is to show a way out of the grey zone, to end it. However, I think his understanding of language prevents him of reading the testimonies of the survivors as lamentation, accusation, curse, call for action, and to include a more genealogical discussion of the perpetrators, the Nazis themselves. Thank you. David Palme: If This Is A Man – Agamben Workshop 2020 8/8