Primo Levi's Selekcja
example · book: If This Is a Man ·
retold in 8 talks
Žižek describes the 'comedy' of prisoners pinching their lips to look healthy during Nazi selection, arguing that this desperate, absurd performance is a form of survival comedy in the face of horror.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 8
“there is a, you know, a comedy in how prisoners just before running, they were exchanging these desperate advices”
“the doctor sneezed for a moment he didn't see you, but doctor was too lazy... okay let's put here or there this guy. This total ridicule of the situation. That was comedy at its most horrible.”
“In three or four minutes a hut of men is done, as is the whole camp of men in the course of an afternoon”
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, 2 jobsuses
comedy as the only honest form for extreme horror
×3
predestination
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Primo Levi8Jerry Falwell2Isaac Asimov2Peter Wessel Zapffe2Pat Robertson2Ariel Sharon1Tadeusz Borowski1Tom Stoppard1
alongside works
Every retelling 8
Žižek describes the 'comedy' of prisoners pinching their lips to look healthy during Nazi selection, arguing that this desperate, absurd performance is a form of survival comedy in the face of horror., illustrating cinema-art-culture,history
In If This Is a Man, prisoners preparing for the SS doctor's snap selection, pinching themselves for color, holding their stomachs, is described by Žižek as comic in its total despair, like a grotesque exam., illustrating post-tragic comedy,comedy vs. tragedy,Auschwitz representation
Levi describes the Auschwitz selection: an SS doctor glances at each prisoner in a fraction of a second and sends them left or right, life or death, with no appeal. Žižek parallels this with the Last Judgment as an arbitrary, undignified procedure unrelated to inner worth., illustrating Last Judgment as arbitrary terror,predestination,God as pervert
Levi describes the Auschwitz 'selection' ritual: prisoners must run naked past an SS doctor in two-three seconds who decides their fate; they learn tricks to appear healthy. Žižek identifies something 'almost comic' in this, not to laugh, but because the horror is so total it exceeds tragedy., illustrating Holocaust representation,tragedy vs. comedy,the impossibility of tragic dignity
46:09 XLII Sigmund Freud Lecture by Slavoj Žižek: Theology, Negativity, and the Death-Drive2015 · 1:49:50
The 'comedy' of Auschwitz selection: prisoners used absurd strategies (pinching faces to look healthy) to survive a split-second decision by an SS doctor, mirroring the contingency of predestination., illustrating comedy of pure horror
Levi describes inmates in Auschwitz pinching their lips to appear healthier as an SS doctor decides their fate in two seconds. Žižek calls this 'disgustingly terrifying comedy' to illustrate why the Holocaust exceeds the tragic form., illustrating Holocaust representation,more tragic than tragedy,comedy vs. tragedy