South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee vs. Nazi Germany

As told 3

“And then, perfectly, Eichmann comes and says 'I admit it, horrible, I did all those plans,' 'Nice, I shake your hand, I regret it.' It doesn't work.”
51:57 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 2pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:56:22

“you got an Apartheid murderer, who torturer, who came there, confronted his black victims, and with a cynical smile said, 'Yes, don't you remember, I tortured you in this way... okay, haha, now I'm over.'”
34:51 Year of Distraction1:16:41

“He came there, confronted his black victims, and with a cynical smile said: 'Yes, don't you remember? I tortured you...Okay, haha, now I'm over.'”
~6:24 Fear Thy Neighbor as Thyself2007-11-26 · 1:55:58

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

lex talionis ×1 heroic Nietzschean resentment ×1 the neighbor ×1

Its cast and sources

populated by

Julius Rosenberg2 Paul Robeson2 Ágota Kristóf2 Jeffrey Mehlman1 Irena Grudzińska-Gross1 Ralf Dahrendorf1 Sophia Karpay1 Arthur C. Clarke1

alongside works

The Conflict of Faculties2 The Shining (novel)2 The Notebook / The Proof / The Third Lie1 Why Do Women Write Letters They Don't Post?1 Seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis1 On the Natural History of Destruction1 On the Genealogy of Morals1 No Future1

Told together with

50% Japanese workers and unused holiday rights 2 shared talks 50% Tito dies happy / Yugoslav debt accumulation 2 shared talks 50% Stephen King's The Shining as neighbor 2 shared talks 33% Proust's grandmother on the telephone 2 shared talks 29% Catholic Church pedophilia as institutional unconscious 2 shared talks 29% Judith Butler: 'be one species among many', Žižek's respectful refusal 2 shared talks 22% Hitchcock's Vertigo, the missing underwear 2 shared talks 20% Yugoslav army and homosexual innuendo 2 shared talks 18% Father Joseph / Père Joseph, Gray Eminence 2 shared talks 14% Martin Luther King and Tolerance 2 shared talks 13% Rumsfeld's known/unknown matrix and the fourth term 2 shared talks 13% Stalinist prohibition of the prohibition 2 shared talks

Every retelling 3

51:57 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 2pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:56:22

Žižek contrasts South Africa's TRC with a hypothetical German one, arguing that forgiving Nazis is impossible because it would normalize the un-normalizable horror of the Holocaust., illustrating lex talionis,heroic Nietzschean resentment

34:51 Year of Distraction1:16:41

At least some Apartheid torturers came to the TRC, confessed everything with a cynical smile, claimed their pardon and walked away, showing the procedure only works when the perpetrator retains minimal ethical dignity., illustrating the neighbor as abyss,limits of reconciliation,forgiveness vs forgetting

~6:24 Fear Thy Neighbor as Thyself2007-11-26 · 1:55:58

An Apartheid torturer comes, confesses everything with a cynical smile, and walks free, having followed the rules perfectly. The procedure fails because it presupposes a minimum ethical dignity in the torturer that may be absent., illustrating the neighbor as Thing,ethics without morality,limits of forgiveness