프리모 레비의 자살과 현대적 의미

• 영문명: Primo Levi’s Suicide and Its Modern Meaning
• 발행기관: 한국비평이론학회
• 저자명: 서길완(Gilwan Seoh)
• 간행물 정보: 『비평과 이론』제16권 2호, 55~76쪽, 전체 22쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2011.12.31

영문 초록

This essay aims to explore into Primo Levi's suicide and its modern meanings. Levi, the best-known writer among all the Nazi camps survivors, devoted his life to bearing witness to Nazis' brutality and their victims' pains. His self-imposed task of writing in order to testify against Nazi made his life worthwhile and bearable. As such, his suicide should be understood in terms of the success or failure of the task of bearing witness. To testimony is to memorize and then report the past. The problem with Levi is the fact that his memories of Auschwitz are extremely humiliating. During imprisonment, most of all the prisoners cannot help putting aside their humanity in an effort to stay alive. Survivors like Levi are reduced to hollow men, who are deprived of their humanity and become animals, unable to assume responsibilities for their action. The Nazis numbed their victims' moral responses by depriving them of the elementary quality of respect for their own and other's dignity. It is in such a context that Holocaust testimony should be understood as a moral response to the past in which the survivors attempt to belatedly assume responsibilities. However, the act of testimony can be paradox: in giving testimony, a witness reencounters his or her radical abjection, which they must then work through to provide a more successful testimony. Levi has a particular term designating such a paradox produced by the act of testimony: shame. In his narration of the shame episodes, Levi has to reexperience shame in order to be fully human: his humanity cannot be separated from his sense of shame. Shame is both a necessary precondition for the creation of a successful testimony and a curse he has to exorcise out. Here lies Levi's predicament: he writes in order to erase shame out of himself, but the absence of shame will forfeit him not only of his ability to testify, but of his identity itself. Levi's testimony combined with his terrible experiences of shame forced him into committing suicide.

목차

1. 레비의 죽음과 그 반향들

2. 레비의 글쓰기, 증언집 그리고 수치

3. 수치의 경험들

비동시성, 수치, 그리고 증언불가능성의 증언

5. 맺음말: 증언불가능성의 증언불가능성과 레비의 자살, 그리고 우리의 과제

인용문헌

Abstract

키워드

프리모 레비 한계사건 자살 증언자 증언불가능성 비동시성 수치 Primo Levi Holocaust suicide survivor testimony sham