Primo Levi on Auschwitz
anecdote · book: If This is a Man (Primo Levi) ·
retold in 5 talks
Citing Primo Levi, Žižek argues that we must analyze the Hamas attack (like Auschwitz) to prevent its repetition, rather than treating it as a metaphysical evil that justifies all subsequent actions.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 5
“He said if we don't analyze it, it will repeat itself.”
“How they exchange advices if you pinch you had to look as healthy yeah it's a comic show”
“He preferred to awaken into the reality of Auschwitz rather than to do that.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
the big Other
×2
Hamas has no context
×1
comedy as the only honest form for extreme horror
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Primo Levi5Tadeusz Borowski1Tom Stoppard1Lino Ventura1Simone Signoret1Rade Šerbedžija1Jean Cavaillès1"Jean-Pierre Melville"1
alongside works
Every retelling 5
Citing Primo Levi, Žižek argues that we must analyze the Hamas attack (like Auschwitz) to prevent its repetition, rather than treating it as a metaphysical evil that justifies all subsequent actions., illustrating metaphysical status as an absolutely abyssal act of evil,ideology
Žižek reads Levi's account of the 'selection' process, prisoners pinching cheeks to look healthy before the SS doctor, as having an irreducible comic dimension, arguing that extreme horror demands comedy not tragedy., illustrating comedy at the limit of horror,Holocaust representation
Primo Levi dreamed he survived and told his family about the war, but they fell asleep. He woke up in horror, preferring the reality of Auschwitz to the boredom of his survivors, illustrating the trauma of being unable to transmit the Real., illustrating the Real,trauma
Primo Levi reports a recurring dream: liberated from Auschwitz, he tells his family about his horrors at dinner, and they begin to yawn and leave. He awakens, preferring Auschwitz to this dismissal. Žižek uses this to illustrate that the trauma of rape/atrocity survivors' suicides often occur not at the violation but when they discover no symbolic space exists to receive their testimony., illustrating trauma and testimony,symbolic space,the big Other
Levi and other inmates dreamed of returning home and telling their families what happened in the camp; the family grows bored and leaves them alone. The horror of having no one receive the message is so unbearable they wake up, back in Auschwitz. The true trauma is the absence of the big Other., illustrating the big Other,testimony / bearing witness,the Real in the dream