Der Muselmanner: Witness of the Lacuna

Giorgio Agamben has suggested der Muselmanner as an ethical cipher for the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. He refers to the concentration camps as an extreme situation; using the juridical sense of the term where a judge uses an extreme situation or state of exception “for the foundation and definition of the normal legal order (Agamben, Giorgio, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, 1999, 48).” The concentration camps can therefore serve as a determinative paradigm for what his inhuman and what is human, and the Muselmann is the cipher for this determination. The Muselmann (the Muslim), so called because in his stooped and folded posture he resembled a Muslim at prayer, but also because the Arabic word muslim means “the one who submits unconditionally to the will of God (Agamben, 45)” were inmates in the camps who had given up. They had submitted to the will of the Nazis and become “the living dead” who were certain candidates for the gas chambers (Agamben, 51). They were walking symbols of the fate of every inmate and therefore the pariah of the camps. Some were so close to death that they no longer responded to the hunger impulse while others did not even respond to beatings given by the guards (Agamben, 42). Most inmates avoided the Muselmann and held them in disdain because what was at stake in the camps was to survive unchanged as a person and the Muselmann, by giving up, had “marked the moving threshold in which man passed into non-man (Agamben, 47).” And yet the Muselmann is an enigma standing on the border between life and death, a third realm between the human and the inhuman (Agamben, 48). It is precisely for this reason that the Muselmann are for Agamben, the “complete witness” of the camps (Agamben, 47). It is impossible to give an account of the horror of the camps. Only the dead can bear witness to this extreme situation. The survivors claim only to testify in their stead (Agamben, 34).

Drawing upon Agamben’s treatment of the Muselmann as the “complete witness” Slavoj Zizek argues that the Muselmann is “a kind of absolute/impossible witness… the only one who fully witnessed the horror of the concentration camp, and for that reason, is not able to bear witness (Zizek, Slavoj, “Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence.” in The Neighbor:Three Inquiries into Political Theology, 2005, 160).” Contrary to Emmanuel Levinas’ claim that the capacity to say “Here I am!” is intrinsic to the ethical subject, Zizek argues that the Muselmann can no longer say “Here I am!” because of his enigmatic status. This inability, Zizek suggests, constitutes a failure by Lévinas to account for the “inhuman Other” that is in inherent in the paradoxical figure of the Muselmann (Zizek, 160). Zizek writes:

Consequently, is the paradox of the Muselmann not that this figure is simultaneously a zero-level, a total reduction to life, and a name for the pure excess as such, excess deprived of its “normal base”? This is why the figure of the Muselmann signals the limitation of Lévinas: when describing it Primo Levi repeatedly uses the predicate faceless, and this term should be given its full Lévinasian weight. When confronted with a Muselmann, one cannot discern in his face the trace of the abyss of the Other in his/her vulnerability, addressing us with the infinite call of our responsibility. What one gets instead is a kind of blind wall, lack of depth (Zizek, 161).

But, the Muselmann is not simply inhuman, but also human. It is his paradoxical nature that is so terrifying. Zizek fails to see that the Muselmann has a face precisely in his facelessness. The face of the Muselmann, even in its facelessness still confronts us with the question “human or inhuman?” It is precisely here that the Muselmann calls us into question so that we become vulnerable to the enigma of the facelessness, and consequently are called to a work of justice that does not finally resolve the question “human or inhuman?” Instead, we stare into the facelessness of the Muselmann without retreating from the terrifying paradox he confronts us with. We cannot, and we must not, ever answer the question. It is a liturgy of justice that moves into the abyss of the Muselmann never to return. It is a vulnerability to the silence of the impossible testimony in the midst of the ethical lacuna of the concentration camps.

On Writing Well…well, at least better.

To write well, one must think well. Conversely, good thoughts should be embodied in well reasoned arguments that are expressed in simple and impactful prose. Good writing should have both a body and a soul.

I have often jumped into a writing project armed only with a pithy phrase and a handful of metaphors; only to find out at the end that I have said nothing, albeit beautifully. Well thought out ideas are deserving of well formed prose. Thought should never be sacrificed on the altar of aesthetics.

I once had a professor at the University of Dallas end his instructions for an upcoming writing assignment with “Oh, and by the way, if you think you are going to write a brilliant paper with grammatical errors… it doesn’t exist.” His remark stuck with me although it did not save me from a returned paper bathed in red ink – revealing my apparent lack of brilliance. Brilliant papers require brilliant thinking and brilliant thinking requires attention to detail. Sloppy writing reveals sloppy thinking which always places the aesthetics of prose before the rules of grammar.

Another professor while giving a lecture on Merleau-Ponty began to draw a simple diagram to illustrate a point he was making. He misspelled one of the words in his diagram and came to a stop in front of it. His shoulders turned slightly as if he was going to turn back towards the class to continue but then he said, “I can’t let that go. Above all – truth!” I will never forget that image of that seasoned philosopher attending to the form so that the substance would not be betrayed. He equated truth with precision and attention to detail. For him, even the medium of truth must be truthful.

I recognize that I am not careful when it comes to writing. I misspell words, place commas where there should be semi-colons, and get mixed up when I use who and whom, effective and affective. Writing requires practice and habit. It also requires reading good writing and good advice on writing. The two books on writing that I continually return to again and again are On Writing Well by William Zinsser and The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. For academic writing, especially philosophical writing, I have found the following books indispensible: A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (7th Edition) by Kate Turabian, Thinking and Writing About Philosophy by Hugo Bedau, and Philosophical Writing: An Introduction by A.P. Martinich.

I will continue to practice the craft of writing. I want to write well… well, at least better. But, one cannot do well what one does not practice. So, I hope to become a better writer by practicing writing better. And, perhaps, as a consequence, I will also become a better thinker.

Summer Reading List

I am nothing if not ambitious and impulsive when it comes to books. I live by the Rule of Erasmus who once wrote “When I get a little money I buy books and if I have anything left over I buy food and clothes.” The following is my Summer Reading List for 2009:

The Republic by Plato

Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive by Giorgio Agamben

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben

Violence by Slavoj Zizek

Eichmann and the Holocaust by Hannah Arendt

Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness by Jacques Derrida

Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas Between Revelation and Ethics by Samuel Moyn

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal

The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

Night by Elie Wiesel

On Note-Taking and the Body

When I began graduate school I took notes with a pencil in spiral notebook. At the end of my first semester I had written pages of notes without any visible organizational pattern. This made studying for exams difficult, so I resolved to take notes into a computer the next semester so that my notes would be clearer and better organized.

For the next several semesters I took notes this way and even installed Microsoft’s One Note on my laptop which allowed me to add web links, images and charts. But something happened in my transition from hand written notes to typed notes. I found myself at a considerable distance from the material.

Taking notes by hand involves the body in a way that typing notes into a computer does not. When I listen to a lecture in class I am bodily attentive to what the professor is saying. My senses are fully engaged in the experience. I write what I hear or see and take up what is being discussed in a bodily way. Hand writing notes allows me to express what I am experiencing sensorily in a gestural way. Hand writing notes is a bodily response to the material; something a computer does not allow me to do.

Typing notes into a computer limits the body’s involvement in the material being presented. When I type characters my body is generally still with the exception of my fingers which are confined to my “home-row-keys”. Characters are not drawn by me. The computer creates the characters and presents them in a uniform and consistent pattern. With hand written notes my body’s gestural style of forming letters and organizing them into words and sentences is applied, but with a computer my body is limited to a set number of key strokes. The computer imposes a distance between what I am experiencing sensorily and my ability form a bodily response to it.

I returned to handwritten notes this semester with fantastic results. I found myself better prepared for exams and more involved with the material. I have started experimenting with different organizational techniques that will help me capture the essence of lectures in an organized way. I realize however, that note-taking is not about methods and techniques; but about practice and habit. Taking good notes requires a disciplined in-habiting of the material being presented in the lectures; taking it up in a bodily way and expressing it gesturally. I realized this semester that I do not have a body in which a mind resides; instead, I am an embodied mind. As a psycho-physical whole, I learn best by involving my body as fully as possible in the educational process.

I invite your comments, criticisms and questions. If you have suggestions for note-taking methods please feel free to share them.