Language:
English
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Genocide Research
Angaben zur Quelle:
13,1-2 (2011) 67-84
Keywords:
Agamben, Giorgio,
;
Holocaust (Jewish theology)
;
National socialism Philosophy
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Examines the Nazi project of demographical and geographical restructuring of the conquered territories, using two concepts proposed by Giorgio Agamben, "città" and "selva". Argues that the Nazi planners, in similarity to Agamben's conception, divided the conquered space into "città", a paradise on Earth aimed for the ideal Aryan "new man", and "selva", intended for Jews and other "lower races", where these animal-like "human remnants" could be dumped and where they could return to primitive Nature. During the war, the border between the "città" and the "selva", as it was imagined by the Nazis, moved insofar as the Nazis planned to open the conquered areas for German colonization. Later, due to the stalemate in the war of conquest, the localization of vast "selva" external to the Reich was progressively replaced by the punctual localization of the "selva" within the Reich in the form of ghettos and camps. Shows how this "selva"-thinking affected the Nazi planning and even the language. E.g. the gas chamber was invented in order to keep the Germans from perpetrating inhuman operations inept for the ideal "Aryan man" (i.e. mass shootings), and thus to preserve them in the "città". The Nazi idea to divide "città" and "selva", to isolate animal from human life, was utopian and doomed to failure.
DOI:
10.1080/14623528.2011.559114
URL:
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