Abstract
This first chapter serves as introduction to Primo Levi’s work as well as to the main shift in perspective that this book provides. Some of the chief terms and concepts of the book in its entirety—such as “Humanism,” “testimony,” and “identification”—are presented and contextualized within both Levi’s scholarship and the contemporary debate on non-human animals and animality. The chapter begins by challenging the common interpretation of Levi as a humanistic “hero” and reframing his work within the question of the animal. It then considers the genre of Holocaust testimony in its relationship with both the ethical issue of literary identification and the epistemological function of literary animals. Finally, it discusses the significance of modern Italian literature for Animal Studies and provides a rationale for the structure of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
Some of the scholars who overlooked Levi’s first book remained suspicious of his later fictional books at least till his death; on this controversial topic see Cavaglion (1999).
- 2.
I am referring to the first anthology of Levi scholarship published in English, Reason and Light: Essays on Primo Levi, edited by Susan Tarrow (Tarrow 1990). The two terms in the title are traditional methonomies for the Enlightment in general.
- 3.
Although in this passage Farrell explicitly mentions the Enlightenment, his interpretation lies mostly on the Se questo è un uomo chapter entitled “Canto di Ulisse” and, more specifically, on how Levi allegedly reads the Dantean lines “fatti non foste a viver come bruti / ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza” [you were not made to live your lives as brutes, /but to be followers of worth and knowledge; Inf. XXVI, 119–120]. Farrell and most of the Levi scholars have seen in Levi’s treatment of Ulysses a sign of his Aristotelian humanism. However, other readings are possible: for instance, we cannot forget that Dante puts Ulysses in Hell mostly for his indeed too human hubris. We will return to Levi’s identification with Dante in due course, but on the similarities between the two writers and in particular on the “Canto di Ulisse” episode, see at least Sodi (1990), 65–70; and Patruno (2005). On Dante and non-human animals, see instead Crimi and Marcozzi (2013).
- 4.
For a general overview on the difficult relationships between Western philosophy and animal life, see at least Fitzgerald and Kalof (2007).
- 5.
For an overview of recent studies on “the moral lives of animals,” see Bekoff and Pierce (2007).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
See also the interview with Daniel Toaff, Sorgenti di Vita (Springs of Life), a program on the Unione Comunita Israelitiche Italiane, Radiotelevisione Italiana [RAI] (25 March 1983); trans. by Mirto Stone: “It is curious how this animal-like condition would repeat itself in language: in German there are two words for eating. One is essen and it refers to people, and the other is fressen, referring to animals. We say a horse frisst, for example, or a cat. In the Lager, without anyone having decided that it should be so, the verb for eating was fressen. As if the perception of the animalesque regression was clear to all.” On the topic of animalization and identification cf. Fanon (2001).
- 9.
On Levi’s puzzling distinction between “disumano” and “inumano” see Ross (2011), 72–73 and Lepschy, 134. On the psychological process of dehumanization and at times correspondent animalization see at least Bain; Haslam; and Volpato in the bibliography.
- 10.
According to Nystedt, we find in Levi’s whole prose oeuvre 192 vertebrates (22 reptiles, 20 fish, 55 birds, 95 mammals), 54 insects/entomata/spiders, and 25 invertebrates/others.
- 11.
The importance of non-human animals in Levi’s work has been increasingly recognized by Italian scholars, as testified by the recent publication of a volume in which all of Levi’s stories in which animals appear are collected (Levi 2014) and by the international symposium “L’uomo e altri animali. Primo Levi etologo e antropologo,” organized by Marco Belpoliti and Mario Barenghi and held in Bergamo and Milan on May 2016. I avail myself of this opportunity to thank again both the organizers of this event for their kind invitation.
- 12.
First published on The New Yorker, January 13, 1968. Now in Singer (2004).
- 13.
The amount of articles on this topic is indeed extensive and often too emotionally charged. For an earlier but sensible survey of the issues at stake, see at least the whole debate in Anthrozoos, begun with Arluke and Sax; then continued by Byrke; and closed by Sax (1993). For an intelligent but arguable endorsement of the possibility of such a comparison see Sztybel. For a rejection of it from the perspective of a Jewish animal activist, see instead Kalechofsky. A critical take on this whole controversy capable of including even slavery analogies is Kim (2011). Finally, an important moment in this debate was the “fictional” lecture J.M. Coetzee delivered at Princeton University in 1997, then published with other essays two years later in a volume entitled The Lives of Animals. In his contribution, Coetzee makes his main character, the writer Elizabeth Costello, deliver two lectures about animal rights, both marked by the explicit comparison between slaughterhouses and Nazi concentration camps.
- 14.
See also the interview by F. Ildefonse, “Un sillage sans bateau, une rencontre avec Elisabeth de Fontenay”: ‘Ma rencontre avec la question animale n’est peut-être pas sans rapport avec la métaphore que je cite au début du livre: « comme des brebis à l’abattoir ». Il y a eu deux événements, deux rencontres au cours de l’écriture du Silence des bêtes. La première, massive, c’est celle des auteurs d’après la période de la destruction des juifs d’Europe. Ces écrivains ont parlé de manière obsessionnelle des bêtes, de leur exploitation, de l’abattage. Beaucoup de gens me disent: mais comment osez-vous faire la comparaison avec ce qui est arrivé aux juifs? Je m’abrite alors derrière des auteurs qui ont une autorité que je n’ai pas: Primo Lévi, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vassili Grossman.’” [My encounter with the animal question is perhaps not unrelated to the metaphor that I quoted at the beginning of the book: “like sheep to the slaughter.” There were two events, two meetings during the writing of Le Silence des bêtes. The first, substantial one is with the authors of the period after the destruction of European Jewry. These writers have obsessively talked about animals, their exploitation, their slaughtering. Many people say: but how dare you make a comparison with what happened to the Jews? I then hide behind authors who have an authority that I do not have: Primo Levi, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vasily Grossman (The English translation is mine)]. Lastly, on the issue of Jewish female writers and animals, see Lorenz (1998).
- 15.
See Horkheimer, 66 and ff: “A cross section of today’s social structure would have to show the following: At the top, the feuding tycoons of the various capitalist power constellations. Below them, the lesser magnates, the large landowners and the entire staff of important co-workers. Below that, and in various layers, the large numbers of professionals, smaller employees, political stooges, the military and the professors, the engineers and heads of office down to the typists; even further down what is left of the independent, small existences, craftsmen, grocers, farmers e tutti quanti, then the proletarian, from the most highly paid, skilled workers down to the unskilled and the permanently unemployed, the poor, the aged and the sick. It is only below these that we encounter the actual foundation of misery on which this structure rises, for up to now we have been talking only of the highly developed capitalist countries whose entire existence is based on the horrible exploitation apparatus at work in the partly or wholly colonial territories, ie, in the far larger part of the world. (…) Below the spaces where the coolies of the earth perish by the millions, the indescribable, unimaginable suffering of the animals, the animal hell in human society, would have to be depicted, the sweat, blood, despair of the animals. (…) The basement of that house is a slaughterhouse, its roof a cathedral, but from the windows of the upper floors, it affords a really beautiful view of the starry heavens.” For an analytical survey of the issue of animal oppression within critical theory see Sanbonmatsu (2011).
- 16.
The expression “animale-uomo” belongs to a fundamental chapter of Levi’s first book, Se questo è un uomo, and intends to indicate the specific beings Levi observed during his imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camp; see Levi, OI 83.
- 17.
See, for example, Bernard-Donalds and Glejzer (2001).
- 18.
Robert Gordon alludes to something similar when he writes against what he calls the “inappropriate ‘redemptive’ rhetoric applied to Levi” and quotes Judith Woolf, according to whom “to be moved by Levi’s books can be to misread them, to experience a false catharsis” (Gordon 2001, 7, n.10).
- 19.
For an admittedly not-exhaustive taxonomy, see Eaglestone 43–71.
- 20.
This distinction between zoe and bios is central in the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. See, for instance, Agamben (1995, 1998). Agamben’s later reflections on this theme led him to question the whole human/animal divide as it has been conceptually organized by what he calls the “antropological machine of humanism” (Agamben 2002). Eaglestone, however, criticizes Agamben’s concept of “bare life,” claiming that his definition is at times too narrow and still too essentialistic; see Eagleston 321 and ff.
- 21.
Although the term “speciesism” was coined by Richard Ryder in the early 1970s, it is undoubtable that Singer’s book is responsible for spreading the idea. We will investigate further Singer’s position in the following chapter.
- 22.
On humans, animals, and metaphors, see also Goatly (2006).
- 23.
- 24.
The previously mentioned article is Copeland and Shapiro (2005). The three “seminal” works evoked by Copeland are respectively Malamud (2003) and Scholtmeijer (1993) (but of the same author see also “Animals and spirituality: A skeptical animal rights advocate examines literary approaches to the subject,” 1999); and Fudge (2004).
- 25.
- 26.
This first Rivista italiana di antispecismo [Italian Journal of Anti-speciesism] deals with issues connected to our relationships with non-human animals, incorporating different perspectives but, according to the introduction offered in its official website, always “from a philosophical point-of-view.” (http://rivistaanimalstudies.wordpress.com/about/ [retrieved on July 10, 2016]).
- 27.
- 28.
More copious is the number of scholarly articles engaging one particular author and usually one aspect of his or her bestiary, as it is exemplified by the monographic issue of Italies, the journal of the University of Provence, published in 2008. Devoted to what the editors called Arches de Noé [Noah’s arks], this issue of Italies is so far the most ambitious attempt to offer an overall analysis of the presence of animals in Italian literature and culture, with a series of articles on a wide range of topics, but especially dedicated to modern literary bestiaries from Giambattista Lalli’s Moscheide (ca. 1623) to the very recent Marco Paolini’s Bestiario Veneto (1998). All these articles indeed help us to have a better understanding of the writers analyzed. Nonetheless, they usually share an almost total disengagement from the broad theoretical debate on animals and literature, avoiding as much as possible any reference either to the epistemological and methodological reasons behind such interest in modern bestiaries, or to the contemporary inquiries on the question of the animal. Needless to say, even within this tendency there are exceptions that attempt to reflect upon the animal issue within a larger theoretical frame. A good example of a work which is informed by the recent thriving of the Animal Studies and includes Italian authors is, for instance, Juliana Schiesari’s Beasts and Beauties: Animals, Gender, and Domestication in the Italian Renaissance. Unfortunately, Schiesari’s book does not go beyond the sixteenth century, and her more recent comparative work on modern writers and domestication deals with four authors who have nothing to do with Italy. An attempt to engage with the methodological importance of the animal theme is instead the introduction to the collection of essays entitled Bestiari del Novecento, edited by Enza Biagini and Anna Nozzoli. In the introduction, the two scholars connect their interest in revitalizing thematic literary criticism to the specificity of animals, with a definite attention to gender roles that seems to mark the best recent scholarship in this field. However, the true aim of Biagini and Nozzoli’s project is actually to rethink the role of themes in contemporary literary criticism, and therefore the essays that compose the volume are once again focused on specific authors almost exclusively in order to clarify their poetics, with nearly no presence of the possible problematic links with real, material animals.
- 29.
This trend has, of course, numerous antecedents, as testified, for example, by Giuseppe Finzi’s L’asino nella leggenda e nella letteratura, a book published in 1883 and devoted, as the title suggests, to the presence of donkeys from Apuleius to Giovanni Verga. Probably influenced by the creation of the first Società Reale per la Protezione degli Animali (then Ente Nazionale Protezione Animali) in 1871, which was initially focused on the well-being of donkeys, Finzi’s volume is nonetheless a positivistic product of its time: the general tone is quite humorous, and the donkey is depicted with strong anthropomorphic traits, as the “gaglioffa e ridicola” [good-for-nothing and ridiculous] creature par excellence. Contemporary scholars of course abandoned this sarcastic anthropocentric tone to focus on more accurate analyses. Cf. M. Comparotto (2013), Giuseppe Garibaldi: l’animalista che ha fatto l’Italia, http://www.oipa.org/italia/diritti/notizie/garibaldi.html (retrieved on September 30, 2016).
- 30.
Each essay collected in this voluminous book is devoted to a specific animal species or genus (from the A of “api” [bees] to the T of “topi” [mice]), and displays a series of occurrences of the specific animals from the origin of Italian literature to the present. Cf Anselmi and Ruozzi (2009).
- 31.
More attention is paid to the specificity of animals in other recent volumes, such as Pietro Sisto’s work which treats the link between books and animals, and Stefano Lanuzza’s Bestiario del nichilismo: Scrittura e animali. Both of these interesting studies are in fact keen on exploring, from different perspectives, the specific connection between animals and writing. However, while Sisto’s work ends up offering an anthropological survey of the uses of animal images throughout human history (with essays on bees, bears, swans, etc.), Lanuzza’s book investigates animal representations in order to draw a survey of how the Nietzschean critique of modernity has been picked up by some Italian writers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet, in both cases, very few references are made to the current debate developed in Animal Studies.
- 32.
For a longer discussion of the potentially fruitful relationships between modern Italian literature and Animal Studies, see Benvegnù (2016).
- 33.
On this specific conference, see Stara (2006), 67–68; 109–120.
- 34.
See, for example, the almost contemporary Vittorini’s Uomini e no (1945).
- 35.
In this sense, and only in this sense, Levi’s humanism has very much in common with what Massimo Lollini, in his work on Vico, calls “more than human humanism.” See Lollini (2011).
- 36.
As we will see, several times Levi gives voice to the same concern expressed by scholars as John Simons, who writes that “every time we represent an animal we are, however hard we try and however much we wish it was different, engaging in an act which, to a greater or less degree, appropriates the non-human experience as an index of humanness” (Simons, 87).
- 37.
According to Horkheimer, a theory is critical when it seeks “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (Horkheimer 1982, 244). Despite the anthropocentrism of this definition, the exploitation and oppression of non-human animals has been a constant concern for the thinkers of the so-called Frankfurt school, as testified by the numerous references to cruelty against animals in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of the Enlightenment.
- 38.
- 39.
While this seems the more reasonable translation for this passage, I would instead note that in the original Italian the adjective “concettuale” can refer to both the terms “linguaggio” and “pensiero,” and not only to the latter, as the English translation suggests.
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Benvegnù, D. (2018). Introduction. Primo Levi and the Question of the Animal . In: Animals and Animality in Primo Levi’s Work. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71258-1_1
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