Language:
English
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Diacritics; a Review of Contemporary Criticism
Angaben zur Quelle:
37,2-3 (2007) 11-33
Keywords:
Agamben, Giorgio,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Philosophy
;
Holocaust (Christian theology)
;
National socialism Philosophy
Abstract:
Criticizes Agamben's application of the concept of "homo sacer" ("bare life") in Roman law to the Nazi Holocaust. In Agamben's view, the murder of European Jewry, a kind of collective "homo sacer", was not a sacrificial undertaking. Argues that Agamben presents the specifically Christian background of his antinomianism in a misleadingly secular, rational, and universalist light. It is therefore impossible for him to appreciate the antisemitic dimension of Christian antinomianism (the belief that Christians are released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law), the importance of Christian antinomianism in the formation of Nazi ideology, and the Christian and sacrificial dimensions of the Holocaust. Argues that Agamben does not explain why specifically the Jews should have become the "homo sacer" of Nazism. Librett insists on the sacrificial character of the Holocaust, which can be construed as a scapegoating sacrifice of the anti-natural race (the "dead letter of the law") to the absolute, embodied in the Aryan race. States that by denying the sacrificial character of the Holocaust, Agamben participates in the very kind of theodicy he ostensibly wished to avoid.
URL:
Click here for fulltext (may be restricted to subscribers)
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink