Forgotten Ethics: The Work of Primo Levi Reconsidered as a Critical Contribution to Posthuman Theory

Rikke Gade Gammelgaard Dr. Jules V. Sturm

Arts and Culture: Cultural Analysis 15 June 2014

FORGOTTEN ETHICS

The Work of Primo Levi Reconsidered as a Critical

Contribution to Posthuman Theory

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION... 3

1. FROM THE CLASH BETWEEN PARADIGMS ... 8

1.1. HUMANISM AND THE CRISIS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT... 10

1.2. ANTIHUMANISM OR POSTHUMANISM? ... 13

1.3 THE DANGEROUS OUTCOME: A TRANSHUMAN DEVELOPMENT... 16

2. PRIMO LEVI AND HIS HUMANISM... 19

2.1. TESTIMONY: IF THIS IS A MAN... 21

2.2. THE FAILURE OF LEVI’S HUMANISM... 25

2.3. DIALECTIC OF RATIONALITY... 28

3. POSTHUMANISM IN LEVI’S WRITINGS...33

3.1. FICTION: FULL EMPLOYMENT... 34

3.2. TECHNOLOGY WITHOUT ETHICS... 37

3.3. CHALLENGING LIFE FOR POSTHUMANISM... 41

4. THE NECESSITY FOR ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY...44

4.1 KANT’S CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IN LEVI’S PHILOSOPHY... 47

4.2. A CRITICAL POTENTIAL: ETHICAL RATIONALITY... 49

CONCLUSION ...56

Introduction

Italian chemist and writer Primo Levi (1919-1987) survived Auschwitz and as such bore first-hand witness to what Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer proclaimed to be the failure of humanism (Horkheimer, Adorno 1).1 _{Despite Levi’s traumatic experiences and the emotions that}

must have ensued, in his work he reflects critically on and rationally questions the

dehumanisation methods used in the concentration camp. Levi’s ability to remain unemotional and scientific regarding the Holocaust is primarily the reason why his testimonies have received canonical status as humanist writing. Although he is famous for his humanist, non-fictional testimonies, the biggest part of Levi’s oeuvre consists of science-fiction. Through fictional stories Levi questions the position of man by placing animals and machines as equivalent to humans – thus viewing the world post-anthropocentric and questioning the reign of man. By doing so, he writes himself into the critical paradigm of posthumanism.2

For Levi, “there is a clear resonance between his testimonial and his science-fiction writings” (Ross, “Science-Fiction” 106). Therefore I have chosen to study one testimony and one fictional short story in order to consider the shift that occurs in the way he approaches the human in the two different genres. If This Is a Man from 1947 is Levi’s first and most famous testimony from his time in Auschwitz. It captures Levi’s first encounter with the problematic side to humanism, which is why I will begin by assessing how this novel challenges the paradigm of humanism. But first it is essential to take a closer look at the philosophy and discourse of humanism around the time of the Holocaust, a task in which the critique of the Enlightenment by Adorno and Horkheimer will play a central role. Their critique of humanism in Dialectic of Enlightenment, published in 1944, focusses on revealing the dark side of the Enlightenment, where                                                                                                                

1 _{Humanism in this context will be understood as the paradigm of the Enlightenment grounded}

in scientific thinking and based on anthropocentric desire to understand through reasoning.

2 _{I am using the word posthumanism as the conceptual framework surrounding the paradigm that}

instrumental reason paradoxically promised freedom, while creating a prison for those who adopted its rationale (Horkheimer, Adorno 9). As such Horkheimer and Adorno’s writings effectively capture the post-Holocaust crisis of humanism. By utilising their critical theory of the Enlightenment I hope to illuminate how Levi’s dialogue with humanism reveals some essential flaws within humanism.

Posthuman theorist Neil Badmington explains that the posthumanist revolution began when Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx argued against the romantic “humanist belief in a natural human essence which exists outside history, politics and social relations” (5). This is also what Horkheimer and Adorno argue in Dialectic of Enlightenment, which is why their work can be called a step towards posthumanism. Because their theory captures a side of both humanism and

posthumanism it connects Levi’s If This Is a Man with his short story Full Employment that will be the object for my second analysis in this paper. Levi’s short story plays with the idea of an essence of humanism by having characters negotiating with rational animals. As “the reign of Man is […] being called into question” by posthumanism (Badmington 9), Levi’s critical engagement with the reign of man places this story in dialogue with posthumanism. Therefore, this paper will consider Full Employment through the lens of contemporary theories on

posthumanism. As I will argue, I believe that Levi challenges posthumanism by emphasising its reliance on a humanist inheritance. This in turn will lead me to question how Levi’s study of the human can contribute to current debates on posthumanism, as I will attempt to reveal that both paradigms are presented as insufficient in Levi’s writings.

Although Levi considered himself an Enlightenment humanist (Pugliese 13), and never explicitly commented on the term posthumanism throughout his career, this thesis will argue that his writings on the Holocaust are products of the clash between humanism and posthumanism. I will show that, satisfied with neither of these movements, Levi reveals through his work what is missing in current debates concerning what constitutes a being. As a result, his work exists as a critical contribution to posthuman theory.

To make my line of thought more clear for the reader, I have chosen to centre my thesis on four different parts. The first part will introduce the theory behind the main concepts used to study Levi’s writings through. Here I will give an introduction to humanism and its crisis, where the focus will be on the problematic consequences of the Enlightenment according to Adorno and Horkheimer. The dominating theories will be from Levi’s own time, in order to get an understanding of the actual development and debate of Levi’s contemporaries. This will lead to a short introduction of antihumanism, posthumanism and transhumanism. To create a definition of posthumanism I will take a closer look at posthuman theories by Badmington, Katherine Hayles, Jonathan Druker and Rosi Braidotti. For transhumanism, I base my understanding on the Transhumanist Declaration created by a panel of scholars of transhumanism in 2012. It is

important to know how the different concepts are linked together and are dependent on each other, before taking a closer look at Levi’s writings. I will return to a discussion of humanism and posthumanism in each analysis in order to place the concepts in relation to Levi’s writings.

Druker is one of the few who has combined the writings of Levi with posthuman theory. In his book Primo Levi and Humansim after Auschwitz – Posthumanist Reflections from 2009 Druker writes about his project:

Drawing on continental philosophy, trauma theory, and the

techniques of literary studies, this book reassesses Levi’s Holocaust memoirs and essays in light of the posthumanist theories of

Theodor Adorno, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-François Lyotard, and Michel Foucault, each of whom critiques humanist notions of subjectivity, ethics, culture, history, and science. (2)

Although the consensus is that Levi is a strong Enlightenment humanist, his reflections can, as mentioned, also be productive for posthumanism. Druker uses the term posthumanist, “to

designate a subset of the postmodern that critiques Enlightenment humanism” (9), which I will also do. By approaching posthumanism in this way, it means that Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno can also be counted as posthuman.

In the central part of my thesis I will focus on the writings of Levi, continuously relating them to the theories already introduced. When analysing If This Is a Man I will try to reveal the degree to which “Levi positions himself as an exemplary subject of Western modernity who experiences and interprets Auschwitz through the lens of the Enlightenment and secular

humanism” (Druker 2). Rationality plays a central role in Levi’s understanding of the human and therefore I will take a closer look at rationality as a concept and how it is used in Levi’s writings in relation to humanism. Along with the novel If This Is a Man, Levi’s sci-fi short story Full Employment is a focus for my analysis and I will use it to examine the changes in his writing and his way of studying the human. Here I will approach the short story through a closer look at life in posthumanism. As Braidotti argues, life in posthumanism is post-anthropocentric (Braidotti 51), but the short story reveals that it does not always lead to a fairer world. Therefore I will critically engage with life, as it is understood in Levi’s Full Employment and by posthumanism.

The focus of this paper will be to study how Levi challenges both paradigms in his writings and reveal what is missing in humanism and posthumanism. While working with a memoir and a fictional short story, I acknowledge that the difference in genre necessarily opens up different possibilities of experimenting with thought and writing. Because I believe that science-fiction can express an understanding of our world to the same degree that more non-fictional genres can do, I have chosen not to let the difference in genre be the most consuming element in my analysis and discussion. In Levi’s collection of short stories and essays from 1986 The Mirror Maker, he has placed a non-fictional story “A Mystery in the Lager” between fictional short stories, which is exactly why I argue that, for Levi, his fiction is intertwined with his actual memories like his testimonies are. Therefore I will direct the same fundamental questions to both pieces of work.

Despite the fact that Levi was not a scholar I describe his work as research and

philosophy, because I think that literature can play a central role in challenging and creating the abilities of a paradigm. Hayles also acknowledges the ability of literature when trying to illuminate ideas in society: “Here the literary texts play a central role, for they display the passageways that enabled stories coming out of narrowly focused scientific theories to circulate more widely through the body politic” (Hayles 21). In a similar way, Levi’s texts reveal the underlying structures of a paradigm and how they work, including “the ethical and cultural implications of cybernetic technologies” (Hayles 21).

Finally I hope this will help me to reveal Levi’s indirect critique of, and struggles with, humanism and posthumanism in his writings. A new paradigm that is based on ethics might be what Levi is searching for. As part of my final discussion I will take a closer look at Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative,coined in 1785, because it is the element that links Levi’s challenge of humanism and posthumanism.3 _{Likewise I will relate Levi’s moral position to that of}

Emmanuel Levinas’ moral philosophy in search of universal ethics, which will hopefully lead to a productive contribution to current posthuman theory.

It is important to emphasise that this will not be a thesis concerning the Holocaust, but rather Levi’s style of narration and the essence of his writing. I am not planning to take a stand in the impossible discussion of what actually caused the Holocaust, neither supporting Horkheimer and Adorno’s theory, nor dismissing it. I am trying to exemplify a set of movements within post-Holocaust philosophy that can hopefully explain the struggles that I believe we can encounter within Levi’s writings.

                                                                                                               

3 _{“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity whether in your own person or in the person}

1. From the Clash between Paradigms

To place Levi’s writings in dialogue with humanism and posthumanism it is first necessary to clarify in which way the terms are used and hold meaning for this specific topic, which is what this chapter will focus on. The word humanism can be traced to the Latin word humanitas, which means the development of human virtue. Because human virtue often included knowledge of the non-scientific scholarly disciplines, such as language, art and philosophy, it is today often used when referring to these types of academic fields. However, it is in another way that humanism is used in relation to the writings of Levi. Here humanism is understood in more philosophical terms as a paradigm and a secular, rational movement that began in Ancient Greece and spread through Western Europe during the Renaissance and Enlightenment (Abrams 82-84). Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution placed humans in the centre of the world as the most highly developed species. In the early 20th _{century, industrialisation and science made a}

paradigm based in rationality possible. With its anthropocentric nature, human needs became the focus and with that, rational thought slowly eliminated religious thought, leaving the human as the highest species in a world without a God.4 _{The first actual Humanist Manifesto was created in}

1933 in the USA. In 1973 and 2003, The International Humanist and Ethical Union redefined it and today their minimum statement is:

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more

humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human                                                                                                                

4 _{Anthropocentrism regards humankind as the central or most important element of existence.}

capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.5

Simplified one might say that it is within this tradition that Levi has been called a humanist (Druker 5). He was a rational chemist, without a religion, who studied what it means to be human. However, since there is no minimum definition of what it means to be an ethical human in the declaration, one can question the actual contents of the statement. As I will return to in my final discussion it seems to be a somewhat empty statement, based on non-specified assumptions and buzzwords. It might actually exemplify the essential problem within humanism that Levi is struggling with. For now it will suffice to say that humanism in this context will be understood as a movement connected with the goals of the Enlightenment, on which M.H. Abrams writes that it brought “a trust in human reason as adequate to solve the crucial problems and to establish the essential norms in life, together with the belief that the application of reason was rapidly

dissipating the darkness of superstition, prejudice and barbarity” (52). In many ways humanism has therefore been seen as the paradigm that saved humans from enslavement through

enlightenment. Humanists have a deep belief in the idea that “human beings could be trusted with freedom because they and the social structures they devised operated as self-regulating mechanisms” (Hayles 7).

The exclusive nature of the humanist manifest must be noticed and the very fact that the Holocaust happened in an otherwise enlightened world, where we supposedly should be able to trust human beings, leaves questions for the actual abilities of humanism. Its praise of rationality has been heavily criticised post-Holocaust, as one can see in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment that I will now take a closer look at. It should be noted that humanism in itself is not equivalent to the Age of Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, which is the time                                                                                                                

5 _{Definition of humanism found on the website of The International Humanist and Ethical}

around the late 17th _{century where scientific discoveries based in rational thinking and science}

turned Europe away from superstition. Humanism is a way of thinking that has reappeared on several occasions over time, each time different, but always as an anthropocentric system of thoughts (Foucault, “What is” 313). However, the paradigm of humanism that will be studied in this paper was the central way of thinking during the Enlightenment and has dominated our paradigm ever since, which is why I will understand the two as inseparable when approaching Dialectic of Enlightenment.

1.1. H

UMANISM AND THE

C

RISIS OF THE

E

NLIGHTENMENT

Horkheimer and Adorno were leading members of the Frankfurt School, practising critical theory, a self-conscious social critique, based on the groundbreaking theories of Marx and Freud. Because I argue that their theory captures the post-Holocaust critique of humanism I will use it to explain why Levi’s humanism fails.

Both German scholars went into exile in England and the USA during the Second World War. According to their work Dialectic of Enlightenment the paradigm of humanism is to blame for the fascistic development in Europe (Horkheimer, Adorno 1). They acknowledge that the purpose of the Enlightenment was to liberate human beings from religious fear, but they argue that although the western society is now demystified, it is still not liberated. For them, the contemporary result of the Enlightenment is that the “enlightened earth is radiant with

triumphant calamity” (1). As one can see in the following quote, they argue that the enlightened world is no better than the mythical world, because the belief in rationality functions like a religion:

In the enlightened world, mythology has permeated the sphere of the profane. Existence, thoroughly cleansed of demons and their

conceptual descendants, takes on, in its gleaming naturalness, the numinous character which former ages attributed to demons. Justified in the guise of brutal facts as something eternally immune to intervention, the social injustice from which those facts arise is as sacrosanct today as the medicine man once was under the

protection of his gods. Not only is domination paid for with the estrangement of human beings from the dominated objects, but the relationships of human beings, including the relationship of

individuals to themselves, have themselves been bewitched by the objectification of mind. Individuals shrink to the nodal points of conventional reactions and the modes of operation objectively expected of them. Animism had endowed things with souls; industrialism makes souls into things. (21)

As seen in this quote Horkheimer and Adorno claim that what the Enlightenment brought along is actually worse than what was there before, because industrialism destroys humans. Rationality, the foundation of the Enlightenment and an idea worshipped by humanists, laid the groundwork for a technology of exploiting labour and capital (Horkheimer, Adorno 2). As such,

enlightenment consumes all intellectual resistance and allows the most instrumental reason to become universal. Although reason should always reject any status as an absolute, instrumental reason claims that it grasps the absolute truth. The result is, as with any religion, the automatising of society and human behaviour (Horkheimer VII-X).

Because rationality is worshipped like a religion, the possible dangers of pure reason are ignored. Therefore Horkheimer and Adorno argue that it is this instrumentalisation of reason that made the Holocaust possible. And because humanism is based in this rationality, they argue that: “Enlightenment is totalitarian” (3). We might think we are free, but according to

Horkheimer and Adorno the apparent freedom ceases to exist, as they write: “The unity of the manipulated collective consists in the negation of each individual, […] the liberated finally themselves become the ‘herd’” (9).

The presumed freedom through secular humanism becomes an imprisonment in

instrumental reason (Bernstein 315), and this is why I argue that Dialectic of Enlightenment in many ways captures the post-Holocaust crisis of humanism. According to Horkheimer and Adorno, one can argue that the rationality of the modern, enlightened world is a key figure in explaining the cause of the Holocaust. In this way the Holocaust can be described both as a product and a failure of modern rational society (Bauman 89). For Horkheimer and Adorno there is no end to all the bad that the Enlightenment has caused: “The self, entirely encompassed by civilization, is dissolved in an element composed of the very inhumanity which civilization has sought from the first to escape. The oldest fear, that of losing one’s own name, is being fulfilled” (Horkheimer, Adorno 24). However, it may be that it is not humanism and the Enlightenment itself that Horkheimer and Adorno criticise, but rather the result that the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution brought along – in the shape of capitalistic, instrumental reason. This I will question further in my analysis of Levi’s writings and the dialectic of rationality.6

Dialectic of Enlightenment serves as an example of the heavy critique of humanism that we have seen post-Holocaust. As Jay Bernstein suggests in his analysis of Adorno and Horkheimer’s writing: “If it is the self-sufficiency of instrumental reason that renders it sceptical, and the claim to self-sufficiency intrinsic to its movement, form of claiming, and formation, then this would explain how and why our highest value, critical reason, devaluates itself” (313). Thus one can claim that it is the nature of critical reason that has devaluated itself and thus devaluated the Enlightenment and humanism. Although “Levi’s analysis of the Holocaust did not stem from a

                                                                                                               

6 _{Dialectic is used here as a term that can be employed to describe theories, periods of time,}

concepts or objects that are based in crucial contradictions, only visible when one critically questions the essence behind.

counter-Enlightenment critique but from a deeply felt humanism” (Pugliese 2-3), I will argue that his humanism becomes inadequate in his writings, because of the dialectic of rationality that Horkheimer and Adorno reveal in their critique of humanism.

1.2. A

NTIHUMANISM OR

P

OSTHUMANISM

?

Because Horkheimer and Adorno’s theory criticise humanism, it is tempting to describe their critique as antihumanist. Antihumanism is a social theory that responds critically to traditional humanism, claiming that there is no human nature and that everything is situated in historical relativity. Two other movements have come to exist alongside antihumanism, each with their own unique characteristics that propose changes to humanism: posthumanism and

transhumanism.

Posthumanism is an antihumanist theory, because posthumanism is a result of the postmodern way of thinking against humanism. When Druker places Levi’s writing within a posthuman context, he describes posthumanism as “a subset of the postmodern that critiques Enlightenment humanism, especially in relation to the Holocaust” (9). Posthumanism belongs to the family of postmodern theory, because they both demand that ‘natural’ givens, like race, gender or free will should be “re-evaluated as constructions” (Birrer 223). While humanism believes the human to be free and rational, postmodern theory “pulls back the curtain on the illusion of freedom and purpose through its deconstruction of the human subject” (Birrer 221). However, if posthumanism is an antihumanist paradigm, it is also necessary to define the difference between the two in order to understand Levi’s writings within a clash of paradigms.

Focusing on antihumanism and posthumanism, Kirsten Simonsen captures the essential difference between the two concepts, when she writes: “Now, both anti-humanism and

posthumanism come in a plurality of forms. Antihumanism, the broader term, encompasses a range of different perspectives sharing the critique of humanism and the effort to displace the

human subject as the centre of philosophical and social inquiry” (10-11). This means that the critique of humanism is shared by both antihumanism and posthumanism, while posthumanism is unique because “it radicalizes the displacement of the ‘human’ through critique of an

anthropocentrism allegedly shared by humanism and anti-humanism” (Simonsen 11). Therefore we must conclude that antihumanism is still anthropocentric. As such, posthumanism is the only theory, within this context, that criticises the anthropocentrism of western society and places animals on the level with humans. This indicates that the paradigm of posthumanism is visible in Levi’s work, because his science-fiction questions anthropocentrism. Therefore posthuman theory is crucial for the analysis of Full Employment.

As mentioned, the first steps behind posthuman theory can be traced back to the 19th

century where scholars started questioning the power of the free human by suggesting that an unconscious or social structure determines our actions (Dow, Wright 303). Studying the freedom and limitations of the human self is important for posthuman theory that wishes to dissolve identities. Overall, posthumanism can best be described as a combination of many different decentering movements. First of all it deconstructs the idea of a firm human identity, secondly it takes the shape of a cyborg movement embracing non-human hybrid technology and most importantly it is a post-anthropocentric movement (Simonsen 11). Because posthumanism is “a general critical space in which the techno-cultural forces which both produce and undermine the stability of the categories of ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’ can be investigated” (Dow, Wright 302), Levi’s writings have a posthuman core, as already suggested. Both his novel and short story produce a space where the category of what is human and nonhuman is questioned. In his memoir he critically questions what makes us human by studying dehumanisation and in his science-fiction he challenges anthropocentrism with rational animals and robots. In general it is clear that Levi is interested in understanding the core of what it means to be human or

nonhuman, thus he, as a writer, has an ambition similar to that behind posthuman theory. All the while he is arguing for a rational analysis of the world and of Auschwitz as a “gigantic biological

and social experiment” (Levi, If This 93), which counts for a strong humanist foundation.

Therefore I argue that his writing is a product of a specific post-Holocaust period marked by the forceful clash between humanism and posthumanism.

Posthumanism received more attention after the Holocaust. This could be because the only way to distance oneself from the trauma of the Holocaust was to indulge the society in critical theory and a “seemingly endless series of ‘no longer possibles’” (Rothberg 32). In this context it is interesting that “the discourse in posthumanism is not always as posthumanist as it claims” (Dow, Wright 299). Contrarily, one can argue that some posthuman ideas “look even more humanist than Enlightenment humanism ever did” (Dow, Wright 300), which is why it may become difficult to make a clear divide between humanism and posthumanism in Levi’s writings. As an example, Doryjane Birrer argues that posthumanism fights dualism, due to the fact that it was the humanist thinking of binaries that was used to rationalise colonialism and imperialism. While doing so, posthumanism, however, fails its own critique, as she writes: “And yet we fall so easily into such binaries when talking about humanism itself. This has especially been the case over the past few decades when humanism has been pitted against its most prominent Other: postmodern theory, or more broadly, anti-humanism” (219). Arguable posthumanism could gain from being more self-critical. Although it argues against dualism, its foundation in and critique of humanism is dualistic.

Within the posthuman theory itself one can find anxieties about losing part of what makes us human in the process of becoming a posthuman hybrid. These anxieties are closely connected to the technological movement of transhumanism, an offspring of early

posthumanism. In some ways transhumanism is a combination of humanism and posthumanism, because it is anthropocentric while denying the necessity for humans to embody a human body. Hayles argues that certain parts of posthuman theory deny embodiment: “Embodiment has been systematically downplayed or erased in the cybernetic construction of the posthuman in ways that have not occurred in other critiques of the liberal humanist subject” (4). I strongly doubt that a

human can be ‘human’ (seen as different from an animal) without embodying a conscious human body. As I will later argue, Levi’s study of the non-human prisoners also implies that a certain conscious embodiment is needed in order to be defined as human. If one believes that humans do not need to embody a human body, technology with uncalculated side effects might be invented. Therefore one must remember that parts of posthumanism are risky, although they challenge our idea of what constitutes a human in an urgent way. To understand the possible dangers when balancing on the clash of posthumanism and humanism, I will finally take a closer look at transhumanism before turning to my analysis.

1.3 T

HE

D

ANGEROUS

O

UTCOME

: A T

RANSHUMAN

D

EVELOPMENT Simplified, transhumanism is a movement that fights for human augmentation. This enhancement can only happen through advanced technology, which is why technology is embraced as divine. In an ideal transhuman world, the human as we have known it must step aside for technology in order to gain, amongst other things, super longevity and super intelligence and become a stronger, improved human (More 4). All transhuman scholars “begin from the premise that a posthuman future is already upon us” (Lenoir 217), because humans are dependent on technology to exist. Historically the roots of transhumanism are set in the Enlightenment like humanism, as the futurist philosopher Max More describes:

Transhumanism continues to champion the core of the

Enlightenment ideas and ideals – rationality and scientific method, individual rights, the possibility and desirability of progress, the overcoming of superstition and authoritarianism, and the search for new forms of governance – while revising and refining them in the light of new knowledge. (10)

Adopting the foundations of another movement means not just inheriting its goals but also its flaws: “Transhumanism has inherited many ideological contradictions from Enlightenment philosophy […]. These include the conflict between atheism and the belief that intelligence could become godlike, or between teleological techno-optimism and the rationalist acknowledgment that the future is uncertain” (Hughes 229). Therefore transhumanism can also give us an insight into humanism and its mistake of worshipping rationality.

The Transhumanist Declaration was created by 23 different scholars in 2012 and mentions that there are serious risks connected with transhumanism because its passion for technology might lead to the loss of everything we hold valuable – eventually to the extinction of humanity (Lenoir 204). The Declaration consists of eight amendments and the first amendment reads: “Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive

shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth” (Vita-More, et al. 54). Naturally the urgency of technology is mentioned first, but it is an indication of the seriousness of the risks of transhumanism that they mention the possible dangers in the third amendment:

We recognize that humanity faces serious risks, especially from the misuse of new technologies. There are possible realistic scenarios that lead to the loss of most, or even all, of what we hold valuable. Some of these scenarios are drastic, others are subtle. Although all progress is change, not all change is progress. (54)

From this quote, one must question whether or not posthumanism will be able to control its risky side, in the shape of transhumanism. If Levi is right in his short story, all technology can be used for good or for corruption and it is not unrealistic to assume that posthuman technological

inventions, such as cloning, could be used to create a new society of slavery and oppression. Therefore posthumanism might not be able to fight the mistakes of humanism, if it does not become more self-critical.

After taking a closer look at the clash of existing paradigms, I want to emphasise the inter-dependent relationship that exists between them. While posthumanism might not wish for technology to take over the world, transhumanism is an offspring of early posthuman theory. This means that there are still tendencies from the transhuman ideal world left in the paradigm of posthumanism, that current posthuman theory should be aware off. Likewise posthumanism is developed from an anti-humanist movement, which means that its basic foundation is a rejection of humanism. While posthumanism is busy blaming humanism for the evils in this world, it risks repeating some essential mistakes of humanism, because its blind rejection prevents itself from being self-critical. When engaging with humanism from the Enlightenment on its own terms, one must conclude that it is rooted in a belief in human ethics and rationality. While this belief might be naïve, it also means that rejecting humanism could lead to a world without recognition of ethics. This motivates a list of questions: If we become posthuman, is the ethical idea of humanity lost? Will technology create a future that might be worse than what we have already created? What is there to loose by becoming posthuman? Can we consider a posthumanist paradigm where transhumanism is prevented? Can the paradigms be separated?

I hope that some of these questions will be answered through my study of Levi’s writings. Before examining Levi’s work to determine what this shift of paradigms actually means for our world, I want to stress what I find to be the most important difference between humanism and posthumanism. Humanism relies on science to study what it means to be human through an assessment of the unique qualities of humans, the human brain, etc. Posthumanism is motivated by critical posthuman theory that questions what it means to be human in relation to animals, technology and embodiment. Although one can argue for or against each of them, it is interesting to consider that a combination might be strongest, as I will return to later.

2. Primo Levi and His Humanism

To understand the motivation behind Levi’s writings I have chosen to analyse two pieces from his career, different in style and genre to a degree where one could wonder if they were written by the same author. The first piece is his most famous memoir If This Is a Man. This is his earliest work and the one most recognised as being written within a humanist tradition. It is one of the three non-fictional works he has written, the two others on his experiences on the journey home and life after Auschwitz: The Truce from 1963 and The Drowned and the Saved from 1986.

In If This Is a Man Levi writes about his experiences in Auschwitz, and it is his approach and calculative analysis of the methods used in the camp that is humanist. Stanislao Pugliese has collected writings on humanism and science in Levi’s work. For Pugliese, “Levi was willing to problematize the categories of traditional humanism” (11) and he concludes:

For if science had been corrupted – first by social Darwinism, racism, and imperialism, then harnessed to the cause of genocide by National Socialism – and if humanism seemed to be an inadequate bulwark against moral and political bankruptcy, Levi still insisted that science and humanism were our only hope against a recurrence of madness. Here I conceive of “science” not so much as the “hard” or natural sciences (much has been written about Levi and his chosen profession of chemistry) but rather the Latin scientia (knowledge and understanding). And we embrace a new variant of humanism, no longer naïve, tinged with tragedy and wary of the future. (2)

Pugliese is one of the few that have focused on Levi’s humanism and it is peculiar that he suggests Levi’s humanism to be new and stronger, while still based in the humanist science of knowledge and understanding. Therefore I will focus on Levi’s humanism in this chapter and discuss whether or not Pugliese could be right in arguing that humanism gains strength through Levi. Druker has also written on the development of humanism in Levi’s writings and he is in many ways opposed to Pugliese’s argument, because he sees Levi’s writing as posthumanist due to the fact that Levi’s humanism fails. Thus it will be interesting to use both scholars when analysing the novel, while relating the discussion back to the crisis of humanism as proclaimed by Adorno and Horkheimer, here used as a framework capturing the clash between humanism and posthumanism.

Before diving into the analysis it is relevant to give a short biographical description of Levi’s life in order to create a baseline for his writings. He was born in Turin, Italy, in 1919 and studied to become a chemist. Though he never practised Judaism, his mother was a Jew, and thus he was also considered a Jew. Because he joined the Italian resistance movement against fascism he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz in January 1944. In mid-November 1944 he got a job in the laboratory in Auschwitz, which meant that he survived the cold winter by working indoors. By January 1945 the camp was vacated and due to scarlet fever, Levi was left behind to die in the cold with the other patients of the infirmary. When he was found by the Red Army they sent him on a 10 month long journey through Soviet, finally ending in Turin October 1945. Here he got a job as a chemist, married and had children. In 1947 he published his first novel and later he chose to retire from chemistry to become a full-time writer. In 1987 he died from falling down the stairs in his apartment, at 69 years old.7

                                                                                                               

7 _{Some scholars argue that Levi committed suicide, but because there is no proof, I will not}

2.1. T

ESTIMONY

:

I

F

T

HIS

I

S A

M

AN

If This Is a Man is, as mentioned, a memoir about Levi’s time spent in the concentration camp Monowitz, part of Auschwitz. Being a newly educated chemist from Italy with no interest in sport, Levi had no physical strength that made him an exceptionally valuable worker for the camp when he arrived in 1944. Only coincidence made him survive what most humans did not – for example the fact that he was forgotten in the infirmary when the German soldiers fled and executed the healthy prisoners. Writing this novel, Levi reflects on his inhuman experiences and the human nature revealed by the conditions of the camp.

The novel begins with Levi’s capture by the Fascist Militia in December 1943. He remembers himself back then as being “with little wisdom, no experience” (If This 19). Thus we get an impression that he now, after Auschwitz, finds his twenty-four year old self to be naïve. Looking back with the knowledge of the present, he predicts doomsday: “At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means” (If This 19). Hereby the narration begins and, as it will appear in the end, this beginning actually sets the tone for what I believe to be one of the

essential points of Levi’s research.

When entering the camp Levi was deprived of all his possessions and led into an empty room, naked, where he was shaved from top to toe and sent into a shower room. After receiving anonymous clothes and shoes the men were tattooed and thus became official prisoners of the camp. The daily routine began and they were delegated a bunk bed to share with another person in one of the many identical blocks. All hours of light were working hours; they left in squads early in the morning and returned every evening for supper. The constant hunger was so severe that the prisoners stole uniforms and shoes from each other in order to be sold back to the owner or new owners for a ration of bread (If This 28-42). There existed no moral code in the camp and Levi was forced to realise that ethics are not as universal as the Enlightenment

proclaimed. As Levi writes, every man had to look out for himself through any means possible. When failing to do so, exhaustion and hunger created what Levi calls the muselmänner.8

The muselmann is interesting to study further because it is a living example of what Adorno and Horkheimer called man’s oldest fear, as quoted previously: “The oldest fear, that of losing one’s own name, is being fulfilled” (24). The muselmann impersonates everything that the prisoners feared the most: becoming beyond human or non-men, as Levi describes them:

Their life is short, but their number is endless; they, the Muselmänner, the drowned, form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer. One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand. (If This 96)

The muselmänner are living skeletons with skin attached and nothing else. The idea of walking skeletons is impossible to relate to because it implies that they no longer embody any human experiences and understanding, and that their ‘humanness’ somehow dies before their bodies. Here the word ‘understand’ stands out in the quote as important for Levi as the final quality that determines whether or not you are human. Once you give up on trying to understand your surroundings, you are no longer a man. This idea of understanding is closely linked to Levi’s belief in rationality, which I will return to later. In the novel Levi remembers one particular muselmann, because he was forced to work next to him:

                                                                                                               

8 _{Levi refers to the muselmann multiple times throughout his work in different spelling}

variations, although he talks about the same type of person and the same group of people. Levi both writes: muselmann, musselman, muselmänner and musselmänner. For the sake of

He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man. I think that even he has forgotten his name, certainly he acts as if this was so. When he speaks, when he looks around, he gives the impression of being empty inside, nothing more than an involucre, like the slough of certain insects which one finds on the banks of swamps, held by a thread to the stones and shaken by the wind. (Levi, If This 48)

As Adorno and Horkheimer proclaimed, the Holocaust made man’s worst fear come true by creating the muselmann without a name. In this quote above, it is the emptiness of the muselmann that Levi studies further and throughout the whole novel it is the dehumanisation method used by the Nazis to generate such creatures that Levi focuses on. If linking this emptiness to the necessity of trying to understand, it could imply that once you give up on understanding, you are left empty. Only by trying to understand and reveal the dehumanisation method, can one protect oneself from forgetting one’s name.

This way of thinking is the thought of a scientist and we encounter multiple episodes in the novel where Levi is faced with theories of how to avoid dehumanisation. One situation is when Levi reflects on the written warnings and orders that surrounded him in the camp:

For many weeks I considered these warnings about hygiene as pure examples of the Teutonic sense of humour […]. In this place it is practically pointless to wash every day in the turbid water of the filthy washbasins for purposes of cleanliness and health; but it is

most important as a symptom of remaining vitality, and necessary as an instrument of moral survival. (If This 46)

Levi learns to take the warnings seriously when he is lectured by Steinlauf, a fellow prisoner, who describes to Levi that only by washing and behaving like a human, does he prevent the camp from dehumanising him. Joseph Farrell writes of Steinlauf’s advice and the idea of a moral system and lack of such in Levi’s novel: “Resistance to descent to the status of the mussulmano could take various forms, such as the insistence on keeping clean shown by the inmate named Steinlauf. Auschwitz was an inhuman mechanism aimed at reducing the inmates to the subhuman status, he reasoned, and precisely for that reason ‘we must not become beasts’.” (92). As Farrell points out, reasoning is crucial for survival in the camp. It is this rational thought of humans that Levi keeps intact by analysing his surroundings and trying to make sense of their actions. Thus every word in If This Is a Man is part of a deeply felt reflection on what makes us human.

In the camp Levi was forced to steal bread from his neighbour, who might have been in a worse state than Levi. This was one of the dehumanisation methods of the camp: to create the conditions where every human was forced to act inhumanly. According to Levi, the camp was successful in its project. One can argue that it might be because it deprived the prisoners of that which the Humanist Manifesto claimed as their minimum right, “the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives”, as quoted previously. In the camp, the right to understand and give meaning to one’s surroundings was taken away from the first day, and this might be why the dehumanisation was successful and why Levi clings to his science.

Throughout the novel Levi analyses in a calculative and scientific way (Belpoliti VIII), such as when he describes the approach behind his research: “We are in fact convinced that no human experience is without meaning or unworthy of analysis, and that fundamental values, even if they are not positive, can be deduced from this particular world which we are describing. We would also like to consider that the Lager was pre-eminently a gigantic biological and social

experiment” (If This 93). Levi’s ability to distance himself from emotions and be purely logical in his analysis of the camp is part of what makes his writing unique. His persistent line of

questioning prevents him from becoming a muselmann, which is why rationality comes to signify humanity for Levi in the camp. As such, Levi’s testimonial writings are motivated by a desire to understand the world and by the belief that it can be possible (Farrell 90). To study any

occurrence distanced, as a scientific experiment, is exactly what the Enlightenment was based on. Therefore one must conclude that If This Is a Man reveals a trust in the abilities of humanism. As I will now examine, Levi’s testimony also challenges humanism, consciously or not. Although humanism is his foundation, he expects too much and ends up reaching its limits.

2.2. T

HE

F

AILURE OF

L

EVI

’

S

H

UMANISM

While Druker studies Levi’s writings within a posthuman context, he summarises Levi’s belief in humanism very well in the following quote:

Levi’s type of humanism positions man, not God, at its center; it rediscovers human genius in centuries of European art and literature while marginalizing the religious content of these works; it subscribes to Enlightenment universality and the rights and dignity of the individual; it has faith in reason and in the capacity of the human mind to understand the material world; it has faith in the ability of language to convey meaning transparently. (5)

It is exactly in this way that I want to define Levi’s trust in the paradigm of humanism. As highlighted in the previous chapter, If This Is a Man has strong roots in humanism. However, when taking a closer look at the testimony, we are forced to recognise that most of Levi’s

questions and demands remain unanswered. He never succeeds in understanding the meaning of the Holocaust and he never succeeds in understanding and accepting his inhuman role in it. Therefore I will now study how Levi’s humanism fails him and how If This Is a Man can also be read as a challenge or critique of the paradigm of humanism.

During his time in Auschwitz Levi experiences a frustration that he later relates to the tower of Babel. As concluded previously, understanding is survival for Levi. However, the new prisoners from Italy cannot understand what they are being told in German, let alone understand what has happened to them in their own language: “Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man” (Levi, If This 32). The prisoners have been deprived of their human right to understand and throughout the rest of the novel Levi is confronted with the borders of language over and over again. He cannot make the offences committed against him explicit in human language, as he writes: “Just as our hunger is not that feeling of missing a meal, so our way of being cold has need of a new word. We say ‘hunger’, we say ‘tiredness’, ‘fear’, ‘pain’, we say ‘winter’ and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men who lived in comfort and suffering in their homes” (If This 129). Therefore Levi is forced to realise the limits of his human abilities.

Because of what Levi assumes to be our human need for understanding, language plays a crucial role in his experiences. As seen in the above quotes, Levi’s difficulties in understanding Auschwitz arise from a lack of sufficient language. In relation to this it is relevant to take a brief glance at psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. As Badmington argues in his definition of posthumanism, it is essential for posthumanism to point out that the subject is never completely free. Therefore he mentions Fred and Marx as two frontiers of the posthumanist paradigm (5). Seeing as Lacan argues that the subject is partly created by language, one must conclude that he criticises the way Enlightenment humanism places the autonomic human in the centre of our world. Lacan studied some of the same aspects of language, as those touched upon by Levi in his lack of

conclusion: “The subject’s reality is, for Lacan, the reality of the Symbolic Order” (Benvenuto, Kennedy 90).

Simplified, the symbolic order is language, because we cannot understand anything outside of language. This means that an environment, like Auschwitz, where there are no words that can describe it, becomes impossible to understand. Levi’s realisation of the limits of language is one of his first encounters with the failure of humanism. He trusted the ability of language to convey meaning, but was forced by the Holocaust to acknowledge its limits. As posthumanism is trying to break down and dissolve limits and borders, language is an important factor in

posthumanist critique of humanism. Due to the conditions in the camp it becomes impossible for Levi to understand his surroundings and pointless to try. With this the experience of his own consciousness may seize to exist, and thus be a first step towards becoming a muselmann.

Druker argues that “The critical consensus that he is a post-Holocaust humanist is not wrong, but it neglects a significant point: in trying to represent and interpret Auschwitz, Levi’s texts not only recuperate Enlightenment values but also undermine them” (6). Here I have tried to show how If This Is a Man actually undermines its own humanist foundation, and I will argue that his humanism fails in crucial moments, like Druker assessed. However, in some ways I also agree with Pugliese that humanism gains strength through If This Is a Man, because it counts to its abilities that Levi wishes to belief in humanism after his experiences. If Levi’s humanism can somehow learn from its own mistakes and be less naïve with the help of posthumanism, there is a possibility for humanism to come out stronger on the other side.

Although Levi considers acting out Steinlauf’s advice, he later decides on another tactic, which consists of judging his surroundings and himself on a code of human and inhuman values. By not accepting the camp as a place outside our moral system, he manages to stay away from despair and from becoming one of the muselmänner. Likewise his writing serves as testimony to the fact that Levi stubbornly tried to make sense of his experiences within language, despite his Lacanian realisation. In his science-fiction, Levi questions the extent and abilities of human

rational thought and the universality of ethics. Therefore I argue that rationality and ethics are intertwined in his writings in a way that may capture the core of Levi’s struggle with humanism and posthumanism, which leads me to examine the role of rationality in Levi’s writings.

2.3. D

IALECTIC OF

R

ATIONALITY

When looking at the concept of rationality used by Adorno, Horkheimer and Levi, there remains a discrepancy. As concluded earlier, Levi’s insistence in rationality might be what kept him sane in Auschwitz. Likewise he sees Nazism as the denial of humanism and rationality (Farrell 88). All the while, Horkheimer and Adorno find rationality to be the source behind instrumental reason, which has the power to delete individual thinking and moral responsibility. Thus there is dialectic of rationality that could be productive to take a closer look at in order to understand Levi’s insistence in or challenge of humanism.

In the camp rationality was used deliberately to eliminate feelings of recognition between the persecutor and the victim. Through the use of reasoning “the objects at which the

bureaucratic operation is aimed can, and are, reduced to a set of quantitative measures” (Bauman 102), which means that it was easier for the guards to treat the prisoners inhumanly, because all life is already utilised in capitalism. Although reason dominated every calculated method of dehumanisation in and organisation of the camp, it was an “upside down” reason with regard to the normal life of the prisoners (Belpoliti IX). According to Zygmunt Bauman, “It was because the ultimate objective of the Holocaust operation defied all rational calculation that its success could be built out of the rational actions of its prospective victims” (137). The prisoners were from a paradigm of rational thought, which meant, “In the rational world of modern

bureaucracy, the irrational adventurer is the dictator” (Bauman 137-138). Although Auschwitz was an exception to the general life, an exception can tell us something about the general. Marco Belpoliti argues that Auschwitz revealed “that Western science contained a principle of

irrationality, the ever-looming possibility that its potential could be utilized for destructive rather than constructive purposes” (XII). The devotion to rational thought created a blind spot for the enlightened humanity and the extreme conditions in Auschwitz reflect back on human nature.

While the Holocaust proved that rationality could be destructive, Levi never “abdicates his own rationality which offers itself, despite everything, as a solid bastion against the irruption of the irrational” (Belpoliti X-XI). It was the ability to rationally challenge his environment that kept Levi sane. One must conclude that there are some qualities to rationality that Levi assesses as necessary for humanity and for his own survival in Auschwitz. If the dialectic of rationality captures the exact problems of humanism that Levi struggles with, it means that it is not the Enlightenment that is dialectic, as Adorno and Horkheimer argued, but rationality. The way reason is used, as a tool to either achieve empathy and humanity or ignorance and genocide, therefore holds a core position in Levi’s evaluation of humanism.

Nicholas Rescher has studied the concept of rationality and defines it as following: “Rationality consists in the appropriate use of reason to resolve choices in the best possible way. To behave rationally is to make use of one’s intelligence to figure out the best thing to do in the circumstances” (1). He captures that which I argue is the problem of rationality, when he writes:

One can virtually always ‘rationalize’ something one wants to do, putting it in a favourable light with respect to rationality by finding some reasons for doing it. But that by itself does not of course suffice to render the act in question a rational one. For, despite its being supported by some reasons, further, still better, available reasons may well point another way. Rationality is not just a matter of having some reasons for what one does, but of aligning one’s beliefs, actions, and evaluations effectively with the best or strongest available reasons. (6)

As such he ends up concluding that perfect rationality in itself is an idealisation, because humans will always be motivated by irrational desires or wishes, that they will claim to be rational, which can even lead to rationalisation of unethical actions (Rescher 10).

This dialectic leads one to question why Levi based such a trust in rationality, and the answer is that his rationality is imperatively founded in ethics as the measurement behind reason. The conditions in the camp made it impossible for the prisoners to take responsibility for anyone but him- or herself, but the moment when ethics reappeared tells us how important ethics were for the prisoners to feel human. As mentioned, Levi fell ill in December 1944. After the

evacuation on the 18th _{of January, the prisoners of the infirmary were the only ones left in the}

camp. Many died of cold and hunger, but Levi was in a room with some prisoners who stole food from the abandoned kitchens and kept a fire going. Hope returned to Levi, as he writes:

When the broken window was repaired and the stove began to spread its heat, something seemed to relax in everyone, and at that moment Towarowski (a Franco-Pole of twenty-three, typhus) proposed to the others that each of them offer a slice of bread to us three who had been working. And so it was agreed. Only a day before a similar event would have been inconceivable. The law of the Lager said: ‘eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbour’, and left no room for gratitude. It really meant that the Lager was dead. It was the first human gesture that occurred among us. I believe that that moment can be dated as the beginning of the change by which we who had not died slowly changed from Häftlinge to men again.

(If This 165-166) 9

                                                                                                               

This quote, where the first sign of humanity appears, indicates that ethical responsibility for the other plays a big role in what Levi defines as being human. When the Nazi’s left Auschwitz, the possibility for an ethical relationship opened up and although their bodies were not physically strong enough to embrace complete responsibility, they regained a desire to be ethical.

If instrumental reason is a result of the Enlightenment humanism, and is negative, one must also argue that choosing to give food to support the strongest left in a camp is a rational choice, but a choice that shows empathy and intelligence, rather than selfishness and anarchy. Thus the dialectic of rationality for Levi is clear. Humans can always rationalise a decision, but it is the question of whether or not that decision is based on ethics, that defines the degree of rationality for Levi. For Adorno and Horkheimer, rationality has already become instrumental reason in our capitalistic society and therefore they do not mention rationality based on ethics as an actual possibility. As suggested, it might all come down to a dialectic usage of reason that confuses the understanding of humanism as something productive or destructive. Thus, we must conclude that instrumental reason is the downfall of the Enlightenment, and that the problem therefore lies in the dialectic of reason, as Bauman writes: “It appeared that when God wanted to destroy someone, He did not make him mad. He made him rational” (142).

Levi’s belief in humanism and his insistence in rational thought as what prevented him from being dehumanised, suggests that humanism does have certain qualities that should not be ignored. Here it is relevant to take a look at Levi’s rationality as Charlotte Ross describes it: “Evidently, the reason to which Levi appeals is not the tainted, universalizing logic of

Enlightenment thought, but an ethically engaged reason, which must be able to protect minority groups and the vulnerable, as well as those prime specimens that exemplify dominant norms of status, health and success” (Narratives 129). If Levi’s rationality is rooted in ethics, it means that his reason is not instrumentalised, which would therefore explain why he insists in the abilities of humanism after its failure. Humanism was also rooted in a belief in the human ability to act ethically and I argue that most humanists forgot ethics, due to their blind worship of rationality.

However, Levi does not blindly worship rationality and therefore his more self-critical humanism rooted in ethics is important to remember. This also means that despite the dialectic of

rationality, rationality does not exclude ethics. Rather, the two could be inter-dependent. Because the critique of humanism by Horkheimer and Adorno is the framework of my analysis, it allows for me to see the links between Levi’s humanist and posthumanist thoughts. In If This Is a Man Levi questions what constitutes a human as a unique creature, thus from a humanist perspective. Humanism is his foundation, but consciously or not, he ends up challenging it. In the extreme circumstances that Levi was forced to endure, his science failed him. The exceptional conditions of Auschwitz revealed some sides to life that humanism was not prepared for. A dialectic nature of rationality is exposed and with that Levi’s reliance purely on humanism becomes insufficient, because its abilities are questioned. Therefore Levi’s search for what it means to be human slowly becomes more posthumanist, when he is forced to study what it means to be human in relation to language and embodiment. This motivates me to question whether or not posthuman theory might be able to give us answers that humanism cannot. Therefore I will now take a look at Full Employment to assess if posthumanism is able to offer Levi the world based in ethical rationality, that Ross describes above.

3. Posthumanism in Levi’s Writings

From the analysis of If This Is a Man, one can conclude that Levi saw the Holocaust as that which came into being when reason slept, because his idea of rationality is founded in an ethical

responsibility and the conditions in the camp left space for neither. While studying the essence of humans, Levi wrote testimonies and science-fiction stories. Ross argues in The Cambridge

Companion to Primo Levi from 2007: “In his view, there is a clear resonance between his testimonial and his science-fiction writings. In both we see human existence reduced to slavery, the

individual reified, whether through Nazism or through forms of technology” (“Science-Fiction” 106). If Ross is right, we must conclude that Levi is continuing the same project in his science-fiction stories as he was working on in If This Is a Man: a project to understand what constitutes being human in a post-Holocaust world. However, his choice of genre is different and with that he also changes his approach. Rather than stubbornly insisting in the abilities of the human through science and rationality, he questions the borders between humans, technology and animals. On Levi’s use of fiction Ross writes:

Levi uses fiction as a vehicle to comment on and think through contemporary and future scientific developments. In this sense the stories are themselves forms of experimental writing. In particular, it looks at his problematization of scientific ‘progress’ as inevitably beneficial for human life, and explores the moral and ethical concerns that he feels are raised by such developments. It also analyses his engagement with the technologization of social life and the body, as it impacts on individual identity and autonomy, asking finally what suggestions these experiments hold for our own futures.

Here Ross argues that Levi is using his fiction to reveal the significance of science and technology for the future of humans and human ethics. This adds an extra level to Levi’s autobiographical research, which is why it is essential to also study a short story by Levi to create a deeper understanding of the potential in his writing.

Levi wrote short stories most of his life, but his earliest published short stories are from 1966, collected in The Sixth Day and Other Stories, thus almost twenty years after his first memoir. The story that I have chosen to focus on, Full Employment, is from this collection. Overall Levi’s short stories combine familiar stories, like the creation myth, with science-fiction inventions that can captivate memories of God in glass bottles, clone or tell us the thoughts of a parasite. Most of these stories circle around conscious animals, aliens or technology with their own will, living amongst humans in different or non-existent hierarchies. As mentioned, Simonsen defines posthumanism to be the only paradigm that strives for post-anthropocentrism (Simonsen 11) and I will argue that Levi challenges anthropocentrism by placing all life as equal, something Braidotti argues to be a unique quality of posthuman theory (51), which is why I categorise his science-fiction work as posthumanist. By approaching the same questions on life in Full Employment as in his testimony, Levi gives us the possibility to study how posthumanism can contribute to the “possibility of living in a post-Holocaust world” (Pugliese 14) and what it means for our future.

3.1. F

ICTION

:

F

ULL

E

MPLOYMENT

Full Employment is a short story that deals with only a few characters: the narrator, his anonymous wife and the actual main character Mr. Simpson with his anonymous wife – besides this Mr. Simpson is surrounded by insects. Full Employment is part of a sequence of short stories about Mr. Simpson, a man who promotes futuristic technological inventions from the “NATCA planning office”. In this short story Mr. Simpson and the narrator meet at a banquet. Mr. Simpson is

excited about something and he invites the narrator to his place the following Sunday. When the narrator arrives with his wife, Mr. Simpson confesses that he has discovered how to

communicate with insects, as he says:

just think that, for several months, I danced in figure eights myself, all of me, I mean, not only with my finger – yes, right in front here, on the meadow. They understood all the same, but with difficulty, and besides it was fatiguing and ridiculous. Eventually I realized that much less is enough: any signal whatsoever, as you saw, even with a twig, with a finger, provided it conforms with their code.

(Levi, Sixth Day 95)

It turns out that Mr. Simpson has discovered how to communicate with dragonflies, bees, ants, mosquitoes and flies, and that he has reached different business agreements with them by talking to them in their own code system. Approaching animals in their own language is a posthumanist idea, suggesting that humans are not the only species with the capacity for intelligence, thus criticising humanism for arguing so. Here it is important to emphasise that the insects are not simply anthropomorphised. Although they are given rational thought, which is a human

character, the insects communicate in their own unique code system and it is Mr. Simpson who has to adapt to understand the insects, rather than the other way around.

Although each agreement leads to uncalculated consequences, Mr. Simpson is convinced he has discovered something valuable. Because ants displeased his wife, Mr. Simpson made a deal with them; the ants stay away from the Simpson’s garden and in return he supports all the

surrounding ant colonies with food. This act, however, interfered with the area where the dragonflies made larvae and therefore the bees, ants and dragonflies had a meeting with Mr. Simpson. He then agreed to feed the larvae with chicken food, so that they would leave the ants