Language:
English
Year of publication:
2012
Titel der Quelle:
Shofar; an Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
30,2 (2012) 74-90
Keywords:
Agamben, Giorgio,
;
Nazi concentration camps
;
Holocaust (Jewish theology)
Abstract:
Distinguishes three philosophical stances in the postwar discussion on the meaning of the Holocaust victim experience, which can be dubbed "redemptive", "nihilistic", and "narcissistic". Each of these stances includes a distinct view of the "Muselmann", the "walking dead" of the Nazi camps. The redemptive approach is based on the claim that the Holocaust victim experience attests to the strength of the human spirit in an extreme situation designed to destroy it; it portrays the Muselmann as one who ceased to resist the process of dehumanization. The nihilistic position regards the Holocaust as being essentially incomprehensible to outsiders, and tends to overlook the Muselmann as a special category of victim and not to use it as evidence of this incomprehensibility. In the framework of the narcissistic approach, the Holocaust reveals the dark undercurrent of Western tradition stripped of the pretense of some natural moral sense; the Muselmann appears as a negative measure of inhumanity and moral collapse. Dwells on the views of Agamben, who bridges the second and third stances. The model of three distinct philosophical positions in Holocaust scholarship and their respective representations of the Muselmann is helpful in Holocaust education; it provides students with a tool for studying the vast number of texts on the Holocaust and judging the strong and weak sides of each text.
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