‘Consider If’: Levi, Langer, Agamben, and the Unthinkable

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, I explore Primo Levi’s command to his readers to ‘consider if’ the Muselmann is still a human, suggesting that such consideration requires an ongoing bracketing of resolution of the question it raises. Next I draw a connection between the bracketing of judgment of camp inmates that both Levi and Lawrence Langer call for, in Levi’s idea of ‘the gray zone’ and Langer’s idea of ‘choiceless choice.’ While the terms point to different phenomena, they share the idea that while we must dwell on and consider the testimonies of the camps, we are in no position to pass judgment on those who were there. Finally I turn to Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz to argue that while Agamben’s book offers perhaps the most sustained reflection on the Muselmann in print, and might be seen as fulfilling Levi’s command to ‘consider if,’ he refuses to bracket resolution of the question of the Muselmann’s humanity and merges the conflicting options Levi commands us to continue considering.