Reading Forgiveness in a Marrano Idiom

This chapter offers a reading of Jacques Derrida’s concept of forgiveness, in relation to what he and Jean-Luc Nancy call “the deconstruction of Christianity.” Against a certain powerful tradition of the Enlightenment, which extends from Voltaire to Heidegger (including Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche), Derrida and Nancy argue that it is not possible today to speak from a position that is purely and simply disenchanted from what is called religion, and in particular, from an experience of faith. This audacious claim does not, despite appearances, mean the abandonment of all critical and deconstructive vigilance with regard to the metaphysical heritage of Christianity (and/or monotheism in general) but rather, I argue, a deeper, more responsible way of addressing it. In this chapter, I identify the specificity of Derrida’s concept of forgiveness with the reference to the tradition of Marrano ‘Jews,’ with which he explicitly identifies. In other words, by articulating his concept of forgiveness (pardon) in terms of the gift (don), Derrida thinks in the language of Christianity something quite different from what Christianity has up until now has thought forgiveness to be.

Conclusion

It is no doubt significant that on the sole occasion (to my knowledge) when Derrida provides a positive characterization of what forgiveness is or might be, it is by means of the interpretation of a joke: “Two Jews, long-time enemies, meet at the synagogue, on the Day of Atonement [le jour du Grand Pardon]. One says to the other [as a gesture, therefore, of forgiveness—J. D.]: ‘I wish for you what you wish for me.’ The other immediately retorts: ‘Already you’re starting again?’” In the mutual recognition between the two enemies that forgiveness is impossible, Derrida suggests a certain compassion, even perhaps forgiveness, passes between them. Under the sign of a perhaps, the imagined laughter between the two Jews is “the regime of a possible whose possibilization must prevail over the impossible.” On this basis I interpret Derrida’s forgiveness as a messianic promise, a forgiveness to come, whose temporality must be distinguished from Jean Améry’s “natural time-sense,” i.e., the foreseeable future of reconciliation and normalization founded on amnesia.

A Hyper-Ethics of Irreconcilable Contradictions

This chapter is a reading of Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Forgiveness (Le Pardon (1967)) in relation to what he wrote elsewhere on the topic of forgiveness and the Holocaust. The interest of Jankélévitch’s work is that he recognizes an irreconcilable contradiction between, on the one hand, the sacred absolute of love from which comes the duty to forgive even the unforgivable and, on the other hand, crimes against humanity, which attack “the very essence, the humanness of the human and constitute the most sacrilegious of all faults.” As early as 1948, Jankélévitch spoke of the possibility of forgiveness for Nazi crimes. Twenty-three years later, however, he declared forgiveness to be impossible and immoral, when he affirmed: “Forgiveness died in the death camps.” Jankélévitch is unable to maintain a coherent position with regard to forgiveness and the Holocaust. However, this should not be considered to be simply a fault, a lack of moral and/or intellectual probity. This chapter also raises the question of the ‘privilege’ given to the Holocaust over other comparable crimes against humanity.

Afterword

Dear Professor, Part of me would love to be finished with this book and move onto the next chapter of my life. Not finishing holds me back, etc. But, as you know from wherever you are, there’s no being finished with this … You didn’t like to talk too much about the Holocaust, reminding people that much of what is usually said about it is not specific to it, and that one need not to refer to this event to make many of the same arguments about memory, responsibility, testimony, and so on. Provocatively, you even used the word “holocaust” a few times (without a capital letter) to describe things that apparently had nothing to do with it, like the burning of love letters and the gift....

The Survival of the Question

This chapter is a reading of Simon Wiesenthal’s autobiographical novel The Sunflower (Die Sonnenblume: Eine Erzählung über Schuld und Vergebung (1969)). It focuses on the question of how to read silence in response to a request for forgiveness on the part of a dying Nazi perpetrator to a Jewish prisoner during World War II. Rather than read this silence only as a refusal, I argue that its haunting character provides the basis for a novel thinking of forgiveness: one that would not amount to a closing of accounts with the past. In the course of the reading, I question the (onto-theological) presupposition, operative within the narrative, that a statement in the form “I forgive you” is able ‘performatively’ to effectuate forgiveness and absolution. This unquestioned presupposition has consequences for the way the text has been read until now, where the discussion (be it in German, English, or French) has most often been limited to the question of whether or not the narrator was morally justified by not saying these words to the dying and repentant murderer, and if the respondent to the text (be s/he Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, and/or atheist) in the narrator’s place would have acted otherwise.

Crimes against Humanity or the Phantasm of “We, Men”

In chapter one I also analysed in what sense the invention of the juridical concept of “crimes against humanity” in international law has been interpreted by Derrida as a sign of moral progress, a sign of history (Geschichtszeichen) in the Kantian sense. By virtue of this juridical concept, the international community recognizes—at least in principle—a crime whose seriousness is such that it remains universally and eternally open to prosecution. In this chapter, I analyse in what senses the concept of “crimes against humanity” remains, despite this moral advance, bound to a humanist metaphysics whose limits today need to be acknowledged. This chapter includes a reading of the statutes themselves in international law, as well as Robert Antelme’s The Human Race (L’espèce humaine (1948)): an autobiographical testimony of survival in the Nazi concentration camps where the humanist metaphysics underlying the concept of crimes against humanity is reaffirmed in a very memorable way. On the basis of the deconstruction of humanist metaphysics, I ask whether the Holocaust must be interpreted as something more or other than a ‘crime against humanity.’

Introduction

The book begins by looking at the arguments made by Holocaust survivors (such as Ruth Kluger, Simon Wiesenthal, and Primo Levi) for the impossibility of forgiveness beyond any subjective volition. As the drive towards closure and normalization, forgiveness has been interpreted, particularly since World War II, to be the enemy of justice. Against this background, Eva Mozes Kor’s Forgiving Doctor Mengele argues on the contrary that forgiveness is a means of self-empowerment of the individual. Through forgiveness, the individual can heal themselves from the traumas of the past. The introduction puts forward the thesis that what Eva Mozes Kor calls forgiveness is in fact not forgiveness, but a therapy of mourning in the name of forgiveness. What forgiveness is in relation to the Holocaust must be thought otherwise. It should be determined in relation to what Vladimir Jankélévitch calls the “inexpiable” character of Nazi crimes, i.e., a sphere foreign to any form of reconciliation, mediation, reparation, salvation, normalization, mourning, healing, apology, or excuse. If the value of forgiveness is not to be the philosophical and religious ally of the Nazi Final Solution, then it must be thought as irreducible to any pre-given finality or achieved normalization.