The Omnibus Homo Sacer

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by Giorgio Agamben


  Pépin, Jean, Théologie cosmique et théologie chrétienne (Paris: PUF, 1964).

  Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae Petri Pictaviensis, 2 vols., ed. Philip S. Moore and Marthe Dulong (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1943–50). Also in PL 211.

  Peterson, Erik, Das Buch von den Engeln: Stellung und Bedeutung der heiligen Engel im Kultus, in Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 1: Theologische Traktate (Würzburg: Echter, 1994). English translation: “The Book on Angels: Their Place and Meaning in the Liturgy,” in Theological Tractates, trans. Michael J. Hollerich (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).

  Petronius, The Satyricon of Petronius (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1902).

  Philo of Alexandria, “Who Is the Heir of Divine Things?” in Philo (Loeb Classical Library), vol. 5, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932).

  Picavet, François, “Hypostases plotiniennes et Trinité chrétienne,” in Annuaire de l’École pratique des hautes études. Section des sciences religieuses 1917–18.

  Platter, Charles L., “‘ Officium’ in Catallus and Propertius: A Foucauldian Reading,” in Classical Philology 90, no. 3 (1995).

  Plautus, Casina, in The Comedies of Plautus, trans. Henry Thomas Riley (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1912).

  Plotinus, Enneads (Loeb Classical Library), 7 vols., trans. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).

  Pohlenz, Max, Antikes Führertum. Cicero “De officiis” und das Lebensideal des Panaitios (Leipzig: Teubner, 1934).

  Pufendorf 1: Samuel Pufendorf, Gesammelte Werke, I: Briefwechsel, ed. Detlef Döring (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1996).

  Pufendorf 2: ———, Gesammelte Werke, IV: De jure naturae et gentium, 2 vols., ed. Frank Böhling (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1999). English translation: The Political Writings of Samuel Pufendorf, trans. Michael Seidler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

  Pufendorf 3: ———, Gesammelte Werke, II: De officio, ed. Gerhard Hartung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1997). English translation: On the Duty of Man and Citizen, ed. James Tully, trans.

  Michael Silvermore (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

  Quintilian, Instituto Oratoria (Loeb Classical Library), 4 vols., trans. H. E. Butler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953).

  Rahner, Hugo, “Das christliche Mysterium und die heidnischen Mysterien,” in Eranos-Jahrbuch 11

  (1944); repr. in Pagan and Christian Mysteries. Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, trans. Ralph Manheim and R. F. C. Hull (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).

  Rhetorica ad Herennium, ed. and trans. Harry Caplan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954.

  Schelling, F. W. J., Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt (Buffalo: State University of New York Press, 2006).

  Schopenhauer, Arthur, Über die Grundlage der Moral in Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. Angelika Hübscher, vol. 6: Die beide Grundprobleme der Ethik (Zürich: Diogenes-Verlag, 1977). English translation: The Basis of Morality, trans. Arthur Brodrick Bullock (New York: Macmillan, 1915).

  Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, trans. Richard Mott Gummere (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917).

  ———, On Benefits, trans. Miriam Griffin and Brad Inwood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

  758

  HOMO SACER II, 5

  Sohm, Rudolf, Kirchenrecht, I: Die geschichtlichen Grundlagen (München: Duncker und Humblot, 1923). Partial English translation: Ancient Christianity, trans. Ernest B. Koenker (Typescript translation of §§1–12 of Kirchenrecht, available in the Joseph Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago).

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  (1984).

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  Strauss, Leo, Einige Bemerkungen über die politische Wissenschaft des Hobbes, in Gesammelte Schriften, III: Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zugehörigen Schriften-Briefe, ed. Heinrich Meier and Wiebke Meier (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001).

  Stroumsa, Guy Gedaliahu, La fin du sacrifice: Les mutations religieuses de l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005). English translation: The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity, trans. Susan Emanuel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

  Suárez, Francisco, Opera omnia, vol. 13, ed. Charles Berton (Paris: Vivès, 1859).

  Summa Sententiarum (anonymous), in PL 176.

  Tertullian, Adversus Judaeos, in PL 2.

  ———, De baptismo, in PL 2.

  Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis, in S. Thomae de Aquino Opera Omnia, www.corpust

  homisticum.org/iopera.html.

  ———, The “Summa theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920), www.newadvent.org/summa.

  Varro, On the Latin Language (Loeb Classical Library), trans. Roland G. Kent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938).

  Vatican Council II, Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy, Dec. 4, 1963, www.vatican.va/archive/

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  en.html.

  Victorinus, Contra Arium, in Traités théologiques sur la Trinité, 2 vols., ed. Paul Henry and Pierre Hadot (Paris: Cerf, 1964). English translation: Theological Treatises on the Trinity, trans.

  Mary T. Clark (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2002).

  Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. Theodore C. Williams (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910).

  Vitale, Antonio, L’ufficio ecclesiastico (Naples: Jovene, 1965).

  Vogüé, A. de, ed., La règle du maître, 3 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 1964). English translation: The Rule of the Master, trans. Luke Eberle (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977).

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  HOMO SACER III

  REMNANTS OF

  AUSCHWITZ

  The Witness

  and the Archive

  TRANSLATED BY DANIEL HELLER-ROAZEN

  Contents

  Preface

  767

  1. The Witness

  771

  2. The Muselmann

  788

  3. Shame, or On the Subject

  819

  4. The Archive and Testimony

  852

  Bibliography

  877

  This page intentionally left blank

  In memoriam

  Bianca Casalini Agamben

  “To be exposed to everything is to be capable of everything.”

  To Andrea, Daniel, and Guido who, in discussing these pages with me,

  allowed them to come to light.

  And then it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but

  shall stay upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.

  The remnant shall be saved, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God.

  Isaiah 10: 20–22

  Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of

  grace . . . . and so all Israel shall be saved.

  Romans 11: 5–26

  Preface

  Thanks to a series of increasingly wide-ranging and rigorous studies—among

  which Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews occupies a special place—the problem of the historical, material, technical, bureaucratic, and legal

  circumstances in which the extermination of the Jews took place has been suffi-

  ciently clari fied. Future stud
ies may shed new light on particular aspects of the

  events that took place in the concentration camps, but a general framework has

  already been established.

  The same cannot be said for the ethical and political significance of the exter-

  mination, or even for a human understanding of what happened there—that is,

  for its contemporary relevance. Not only do we lack anything close to a complete

  understanding; even the sense and reasons for the behavior of the executioners

  and the victims, indeed very often their very words, still seem profoundly enig-

  matic. This can only encourage the opinion of those who would like Auschwitz

  to remain forever incomprehensible.

  From a historical perspective, we know, for example, the most minute details

  of how the final phase of the extermination was executed, how the deportees were

  led to the gas chambers by a squad of their fellow inmates (the so-called Sonder-

  kommando), who then saw to it that the corpses were dragged out and washed,

  that their hair and gold teeth were salvaged, and that their bodies, finally, were

  placed in the crematoria. We can enumerate and describe each of these events,

  but they remain singularly opaque when we truly seek to understand them. This

  discrepancy and unease has perhaps never been described more directly than by

  Zelman Lewental, a member of the Sonderkommado who en trusted his testimony

  to a few sheets of paper buried under crematorium III, which came to light sev-

  enteen years after the liberation of Auschwitz. “Just as the events that took place

  there cannot be imagined by any human being,” Lewental writes in Yiddish, “so

  is it unimaginable that anyone could exactly recount how our experiences took

  place. . . . we, the small group of ob scure people who will not give historians

  much work to do.”

  767

  768

  HOMO SACER III

  What is at issue here is not, of course, the difficulty we face whenever we try

  to communicate our most intimate experiences to others. The discrepancy in

  question concerns the very struc ture of testimony. On the one hand, what hap-

  pened in the camps appears to the survivors as the only true thing and, as such,

  abso lutely unforgettable; on the other hand, this truth is to the same degree

  unimaginable, that is, irreducible to the real elements that constitute it. Facts

  so real that, by comparison, nothing is truer; a reality that necessarily exceeds

  its factual elements—such is the aporia of Auschwitz. As Lewental writes, “the

  complete truth is far more tragic, far more frightening. . . .” More tragic, more

  frightening than what?

  Lewental had it wrong on at least one point. There is no doubt that “the

  small group of obscure people” (“obscure” here is to be understood in the literal

  sense as invisible, that which cannot be perceived) will continue to give histori-

  ans work to do. The aporia of Auschwitz is, indeed, the very aporia of historical

  knowledge: a non-coincidence between facts and truth, between verification and

  comprehension.

  Some want to understand too much and too quickly; they have explanations

  for everything. Others refuse to understand; they offer only cheap mystifica-

  tions. The only way forward lies in investigating the space between these two

  options. Moreover, a further difficulty must be considered, one which is partic-

  ularly important for anyone who studies literary or philosophical texts. Many

  testimonies—both of executioners and victims—come from ordinary people,

  the “obscure” people who clearly comprised the great majority of camp inhabi-

  tants. 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.)

  Some readers may be disappointed to find that there is little in this book that

  cannot already be found in the testimonies of survivors. 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’ testi-

  mony 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. As we shall see,

  almost none of the ethical princi ples our age believed it could recognize as valid

  REMNANTS OF AUSCHWITZ

  769

  have stood the decisive test, that of an Ethica more Auschwitz demonstrata. 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 this book 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 dif-

  ferent sense. This is also a way perhaps the only way—to listen to what is unsaid.

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  1

  The Witness

  1.1. In the camp, one of the reasons that can drive a prisoner to survive

  is the idea of becoming a witness. “I firmly decided that, despite ev-

  erything that might happen to me, I would not take my own life . . . since I did

  not want to suppress the witness that I could become” (Langbein 1988: 186). Of

  course, not all deportees, indeed only a small fraction of them, give this reason.

  A reason for survival can be a matter of convenience: “He would like to survive

  for this or that reason, for this or that end, and he finds hundreds of pretexts.

  The truth is that he wants to live at whatever cost” (Lewental 1972: 148). Or

  it can simply be a matter of revenge: “Naturally I could have run and thrown

  myself onto the fence, because you can always do that. But I want to live. And

  what if the miracle happens we’re all waiting for? Maybe we’ll be liberated, today

  or tomorrow. Then I’ll have my revenge, then I’ll tell the whole world what

  happened here—inside there” (Sofsky 1997: 340). To justify one’s survival is not

  easy—least of all in the camp. Then there are some survivors who prefer to be

  silent. “Some of my friends, very dear friends of mine, never speak of Auschwitz”

  (Levi 1997: 224). Yet, for others, the only reason to live is to ensure that the wit-

  ness does not perish. “Others, on the other hand, speak of it incessantly, and I

  am one of them” (ibid.).

  1.2. Primo Levi is a perfect example of the witness. When he returns home,

  he tirelessly recounts his experience to everyone. He behaves like Coleridge’s

  Ancient Mariner:

  You remember the scene: the Ancient Mariner accosts the w
edding guests, who

  are thinking of the wedding and not paying attention to him, and he forces them

  to listen to his tale. Well, when I first returned from the concentration camp I did

  just that. I felt an unrestrainable need to tell my story to anyone and everyone!

  . . . Every situation was an occasion to tell my story to anyone and everyone:

  to tell it to the factory director as well as to the worker, even if they had other

  things to do. I was reduced to the state of the Ancient Mariner. Then I began

  771

  772

  HOMO SACER III

  to write on my typewriter at night. . . . Every night I would write, and this was

  considered even crazier! (Levi 1997: 224–25)

  But Levi does not consider himself a writer; he becomes a writer so that he

  can bear witness. In a sense, he never became a writer. In 1963, after publishing

  two novels and many short stories, he responds unhesitatingly to the question of

  whether he considers himself a writer or a chemist: “A chemist, of course, let there

  be no mistake” (Levi 1997: 102). Levi was profoundly uneasy with the fact that

  as time passed, and almost in spite of himself, he ended up a writer, composing

  books that had nothing to do with his testimony: “Then I wrote. . . . I acquired the

  vice of writing” (Levi 1997: 258). “In my latest book, La Chiave a stella, I stripped myself completely of my status as a witness. . . . This is not to deny anything; I

  have not ceased to be an ex-deportee, a witness. . . .” (ibid.: 167)

  Levi had this unease about him when I saw him at meetings at the Italian

  publisher, Einaudi. He could feel guilty for having survived, but not for having

  borne witness. “I am at peace with myself because I bore witness” (ibid.: 219).

  1.3. In Latin there are two words for “witness.” The first word, 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). The second word, superstes, designates a person who has lived through something, who has experienced an event from beginning to end and can therefore bear witness to it. It is obvious that Levi is not a third party; he is a survivor

 

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