rec. Enzo Traverso, Understanding the Nazi Genocide ...

This paper analyzes the film-series “Holocaust” (1978, by Gerald Green e Marvin Chomsky) by discussing the necessity and the impossibility of representing the Shoah. It presents a reading of the American mini-series “Holocaust” by the German Philosopher Günther Anders and also explores different perspectives on it by other commentators. Unlike many intellectuals, Anders’ book, “After Holocaust”, offers a positive assessment of the mini-series “Holocaust” by considering not only its aesthetic value but its power in awakening the conscience of the German/Austrian people, who have been half-asleep when confronted with their own guilt.

Review of Democracy, 2022

Contemporary Political Theory, 2021

Political philosophy in the last decades has turned away from universal narratives of progress, on grounds that these narratives produce exclusion and justify domination. However, the universal values that underlie emancipatory political projects seem to presuppose universal history, which explains its persistence in some contemporary political philosophers committed to such projects. In order to find a response to the paradox according to which universal history is inherently exclusionary and yet necessary to uphold universal values, I examine the contrast between Adorno's and Lyotard's perspectives on the problem of writing history 'after Auschwitz'. For both philosophers, Auschwitz interrupts our fundamental normative and cognitive values, because any attempt to identify the meaning of the camps by means of these values misunderstands the suffering that took place in them. Yet this interruption produces a feeling that calls for the institution of new universal normative values. For Adorno, this value is a purely negative command to act in such a way that Auschwitz does not repeat itself. For Lyotard, by contrast, it is the demand to invent new idioms that make it possible to find meaning in Auschwitz.

In The New Italy and the Jews: From Massimo D’Azeglio to Primo Levi , 2018

Although brutal, the definitive 1958 edition of Primo Levi's canonical Holocaust memoir, Se questo è un uomo, is less uniformly bleak than the story told in the first edition, published in 1947. This article argues that the later version's most significant additions introduce notes of optimism which affect how this essential book has been interpreted. Furthermore, the 1958 edition registers a shift in Levi's previous focus, from a nearly exclusive interest in documenting Nazi crimes against humanity, to a bifurcated approach that incorporates more autobiographical elements and commemorations of individual victims. The added passages, amounting to thousands of words, include several humane encounters and instances of altruistic friendship that stand in marked contrast to the Darwinian aspects of Auschwitz strongly emphasized in the 1947 edition. These positive elements, each resulting from empathy and successful acts of communication, constitute important exceptions to the rules governing human behavior in the camps, which Levi himself described.

Nemla Italian Studies, Journal of Italian Studies, Italian Section, Northeast Modern Language Association Special Issue: The Jewish Experience in Contemporary Italy, Balma Philip, Simona Wright, eds. Pp. 196 - 199, 2015