Political Form in Paul Celan

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-205
Author(s):  
Beau Shaw ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Political Form ◽  
The One

Paul Celan’s “Tenebrae” is a scandalous poem: it describes how “unity with the dying Jesus” (in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s words) is achieved by means of the Jewish experience of the concentration camps. In this paper, I provide a new interpretation of “Tenebrae” that breaks from the two traditional ways in which the poem has been viewed—on the one hand, as a Christian poem that suggests that Jesus, insofar as he suffers just like Jewish concentration camp victims do, can provide “hope and redemption for the faithful” (Gadamer), and, on the other hand, as an ironic criticism of this Christian idea. Rather, I suggest that “Tenebrae” is a modification of Christianity: preserving Christian belief about Jesus’s death, it destroys that belief, and does so for the sake of the defense against Christian persecution. Finally, I suggest that this view reveals the peculiar poetic form of “Tenebrae”—what I call “political form.”

The Atlantic State of Violence: State of Exception, Colonial/Civil Wars, and Concentration Camps

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Joseba Gabilondo
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The Other ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Spanish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

This article is a first attempt to elaborate a Hispanic reading and relocation of Europe and modernity in an Atlantic space/time that is neither European nor modern, and can be denominated Atlantic transmodernity (Dussel). The goal is not to refashion a more problematic Europe and modernity, even in a postcolonial fashion, by provincializing it (Chakrabarty), but rather to create a new geopolitical space, the Hispanic Atlantic, and a temporality, an Atlantic transmodernity, that turns the idea of Europe/modernity into an ideological effect produced by the geopolitics of the Atlantic. In order to do so, the article concentrates, on the one hand, on 19th-century Spanish history of the state of exception, and, on the other, on the not-so-well known history of the inception of the concentration camp in Cuba between 1896 and 1898.

Camps in a Time of War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Forth
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
The Other ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Humanitarian Relief ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Asymmetric Conflict ◽  
African Refugees ◽  
The One

Guerrilla warfare during the South African (or Anglo-Boer) War presented a new context for the development of British camps. On the one hand, camps were a measure of military counterinsurgency that concentrated and detained scattered civilian populations suspected of aiding enemy insurgents. On the other hand, camps were measures of social control and sympathetic concern that organized shelter and humanitarian relief for refugees who had been displaced by scorched earth warfare and were congregating in overcrowded towns. Boer and African refugees presented a specter of social destitution and sanitary disarray familiar from Indian plague and famine operations. Like plague and famine camps, wartime concentration camps removed “uncivilized” and unhygienic populations from the center of towns and systematized ad hoc charitable arrangements by confining relief within demarcated boundaries. Although Boers were ostensibly Europeans respected for their vigor and courage, racialized discourses in the later phases of an asymmetric conflict denigrated them as uncivilized and even subhuman: such representations ultimately facilitated encampment.

A Voice Takes Form

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-176
Author(s):  
Ian Maclachlan
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Degree Zero ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
The One ◽  
Level Of Experience ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Authorial Voice ◽  
Do So

This chapter focuses on Louis-René des Forêts’s poetic sequence, Poèmes de Samuel Wood (1988) in order to highlight the relationship between poetic form, authorial voice and the genre of autobiography. Des Forêts’s sequence comprises a 559-line poem divided into thirteen sections, attributed by its title to the heteronymous author-figure Samuel Wood. Notwithstanding its form and authorial disguise, the poem is obliquely autobiographical and forms part of the overall project of the long, final phase of his writing, best exemplified by the fragmentary work of 1997, Ostinato. My analysis seeks to stake out a distinctive way of conceiving the relation of poetic form to autobiographical genre (taking a distance, notably, from Lejeunian typological approaches), and in order to do so endeavours, on the one hand, to work with the idea of form as active, dynamic and mobile, a process of forming, deforming and reforming which is always temporally emergent and variable, rather than a structure that might simply contain something like content or experience, and on the other hand, to connect that mobility of form to des Forêts’s pursuit of a distinctive autobiographical mode. Far from reflecting and securing authorial identity, this mode might be considered as one that concerns an impersonal or anonymous level of experience that is fundamentally insecure and ultimately inappropriable; we might think of this mode as a kind of degree zero of autobiography, an autobiography in the neuter, or an ‘autobiographie intérieure’.

What is the Nature of the Crime of the Delinquent Daughter in Deuteronomy 22:13-21? A Rejoinder to J. Fleishman's Suggestion

2009 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-459
Author(s):  
Meir Malul
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Previous Suggestion ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

AbstractThe exact nature of the girl's crime in the law of the delinquent daughter in Deut 22:13-21 is examined, starting by a detailed critique of J. Fleishman's previous suggestion in this journal (vol. 58, pp. 191-210) to construe it in the light of the law of cursing the parents in Exod 21:17 and understand it as an innovation and restriction of the latter law. In his view, the girl's sin is tantamount to cursing her parents, which, like the sin of the glatton and drunkard son according to Deut 21: 18-21, meant the undermining of the parents' authority and status, for which both boy and girl deserved the death penalty. In the following critique, it is underlined that the girl's sin is, first, not one of omission but of commission, and, second, it is not against her parents but against her husband, who is also the one to initiate the legal proceedings. A new interpretation is suggested, according to which the girl's crime, defined in v. 21 as an act of and a deed of, consisted not only in concealing her previous loss of virginity from her husband, thus deceiving him and her parents, but also in duping her husband into committing a sin comparable to that of lying with a menstruating, and thus desolate, woman. Being deprived of virginity, and thus of the socially recognized status of a virgin, she became, like Tamar (2 Sam 13:20), “desolate, forlorn”, an unenviable state from which only her seducer/ravisher could redeem her (thus are the sense and goal of the laws of the seduced virgin in Exod 22:15-16 and Deut 22:28-29). Trying to dupe her husband into steping in and performing what custom and law dictated the other man—the seducer/ravisher—should have done, and thus to arrogate to herself a social status she did not deserve, was then tantamount to undermining social structure and striking at the fibers that constituted the essence and integrity of the social community (cf. Prov 30:21-23).

Melissus And His Opponents: The Argument of DK 30 B 8

Phronesis ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Makin
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Good Argument ◽  
Orthodox Interpretation ◽  
Realist Position ◽  
The World ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

AbstractIn this paper I offer a new interpretation of Melissus' argument at DK 30 B8.In this passage Melissus uses an Eleatic argument against change to challenge an opponent who appeals to the authority of perception in order to support the view that there are a plurality of items in the world. I identify an orthodox type of approach to this passage, but argue that it cannot give a charitable interpretation of Melissus' strategy. In order to assess Melissus' overall argument we have to identify the opponent at whom it is aimed. The orthodox interpretation of the argument faces a dilemma: Melissus' argument is either a poor argument against a plausible opponent or a good argument against an implausible opponent.My interpretation turns on identifying a new target for Melissus' argument. I explain the position I call Bluff Realism (contrasting it with two other views: the Pig Headed and the Fully Engaged). These are positions concerning the dialectical relation between perception on the one hand, and arguments to counter-perceptual conclusions on the other. I argue that Bluff Realism represents a serious threat from an Eleatic point of view, and is prima facie an attractive position in its own right.I then give a charitable interpretation of Melissus' argument in DK 30 B8, showing how he produces a strong and incisive argument against the Bluff Realist position I have identified. Melissus emerges as an innovative and astute philosopher.

Populus Interruptus: Self-Determination, the Independence of Kosovo, and the Vocabulary of Peoplehood

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZORAN OKLOPCIC
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One ◽  
External Actors

AbstractThis article uses the contested independence of Kosovo as an opportunity to re-examine the theoretical imagery behind the concept of self-determination, and then confront those findings with the more recent approaches to polity formation from other theoretical genres: normative theories of secession, on the one hand, and the global governance approach to self-determination, on the other. What emerges from the encounter between these bodies of thought is not a new interpretation, or a theory of self-determination and its relationship to uti possidetis, but rather a plea for an approach to polity formation which is simultaneously critical and prudential. That is, an approach which would accept the role of external actors as inevitable, but goes further and unmasks them as complicit in labelling certain projects as ‘civic’ and ‘multicultural’ on the one hand and ‘ethno-nationalist’ on the other. Equally, the proposed approach reveals the ever-present aspiration to unanimity as a concealed ideal of polity formation, shared by both the ‘civic’ and the ‘ethnic’ variants of self-determination. Finally, this approach to polity formation sketches the contours of an alternative, thin vision of a political community – one not wearing the badge of peoplehood – one glued together not by normative imperatives of participation and solidarity, but rather by the acknowledgement of geopolitical fiat.

The Surveillant Gaze: Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon

October ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 147 ◽  
pp. 95-116
Author(s):  
Martin Blumenthal-Barby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One ◽  
Sociohistorical Context ◽  
The Village

Michael Haneke's 2009 The White Ribbon is set in the village of “Eichwald.” Eichwald cannot be found on any German map. It is an imaginary place in the Protestant North of Eastern Germany in the early twentieth century. What is more, Haneke tells his black-and-white tale as the flashback narration of a voice-over narrator—a series of defamiliarizing techniques that lift the diegetic action out of its immediate sociohistorical context, stripping it of its temporal and topographical coordinates. Against this backdrop, is it possible to hear the name “Eichwald” without being reminded of, on the one hand, Adolf Eichmann, Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the key architects of the Holocaust, and, on the other, the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald? To be sure, Eichwald is not Buchenwald, and no 56,000 humans are being murdered here. Yet why this peculiar terminological fusion? What characterizes Eichwald, this model of a society in which adults have no names but merely function as representatives of a particular class and profession: the Baron, the Pastor, the Teacher, the Steward, the Midwife, etc.? What distinguishes this village that appears to be largely isolated from the outside world, this village that outsiders rarely enter and from which no one seems to be able to escape? What identifies this prison-like community with its oppressive atmosphere, its tiny rooms and low ceilings, its myriad alcoves, niches, windows, and hallways that evoke a general sense of “entrapment” and incarceration? This world in which even the camera appears to be shackled, to never zoom, hardly to pan or tilt, thus depriving the image of any dynamism, any mobility? Who—in this confining milieu—are the guards, who the detainees? And what characterizes the putatively illicit activities that appear to lie at its enigmatic center and around which the entire film seems to revolve?

HISTORY AND MEMORY OF THE ITALIAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES WALSTON
Keyword(s):  
Historical Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The history of fascism in Italy has been extensively covered while fascist Italy's role in colonies before the war, and occupied areas during it, have only been touched upon. There has been little or no coming to terms with fascist crimes comparable to the French concern with Vichy or even the Japanese recognition of its wartime and pre-war responsibilities. This article uses Italy's internment policy in Africa before the war and in the Balkans and Italy during the war to illustrate the repression of historical memory. On the one hand, foreign Jews were interned to protect them from deportation by German, Croatian or Vichy French forces. The reasons were political and humanitarian. On the other, Balkan civilians were interned in conditions that led to the death of thousands. Similar and worse policies had been carried out in Africa before the war. There is some excellent specialist work on Africa which is not part of general knowledge; the Balkans have not even been covered by specialists. This article puts forward some explanations for the repression of the recent past.

Noi credevamo (We Believed): Story and history of emotions

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Patat
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

In the last ten years, Noi credevamo (We Believed) (Martone 2010) has been the subject of a very careful criticism interested not only in its historical-ideological implications but also in its semiotic specificities. The purpose of this article is to summarize the cardinal points of these two positions and to add to them some critical observations that have not been noted so far. On the one hand, it is a matter of highlighting how, as a historical film, the work is connected with the history of emotions, a recent historiographical trend that aims to detect the narrative devices of ideological propaganda and the diffusion of feelings since the late eighteenth century. On the other hand, the article proposes a new interpretation of Mario Martone’s film, starting with the analysis of phenomena that are not only historical but also technical and structural.

Love for Three Oranges, or, The Askiya's Dilemma: The Askiya, al-Maghīlī and Timbuktu, c. 1500 a.d.

1993 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Blum ◽  
Humphrey Fisher
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
Muslim Scholar ◽  
Imperial Capital ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

The authors argue that, during the crucial decade of Songhay history which followed the death of Sunni Ali, Askiya Muḥammad pursued, sometimes quickly and sometimes hesitantly, three distinct ‘Islamic’ options, in contrast to the ‘received tradition’ which sharply differentiates between the reign of the last sunni's and the first of the askiyas. Askiya Muḥammad began his reign in alliance with the court clerics of the imperial capital in Gao, who were accustomed to ‘mixing’ Islamic and traditional practices. After his pilgrimage he sought out the advice of the radical Muslim scholar from the Sahara, al-Maghīlī. The strong positions of al-Maghīlī against the Jews and also the Musūfah, a Berber group strongly associated with Timbuktu, led the askiya to his third choice, the urbane and tolerant Islamic practice of the famous center of Muslim scholarship. The authors advance this as a new interpretation of predominantly old available evidence, and they suggest, on the one hand, the complexity and multiplicity of Islamic practices in the Niger Buckle region around 1500 A.D. and, on the other, the necessity of choice among the three options.

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