Abstract
This final chapter focuses on one of the lesser known but most poignant of Levi’s short stories, “Cena in piedi” [Buffet Dinner], in which he presents his own experience through the perspective of a kangaroo named Innaminka. By interpreting this story, this conclusive chapter gathers all of the themes as they have been explored in the previous sections and draws conclusive remarks about Levi’s literary animals, their ethical and aesthetical functions within his body of work, and their importance for Animal Studies.
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Notes
- 1.
On Levi’s reading of The Call of the Wild, see Belpoliti and Gordon (2007), 54.
- 2.
For the relations between Levi and Rosny’s novel, see RdR, OII 1393–1395.
- 3.
For Derrida on Lacan, see Derrida (2008), 119–140.
- 4.
On the general reception of Holocaust memoires in Italy after WWII, see Gordon (2012).
- 5.
Primo Levi dies on April 11, 1987, as a consequence of having fallen over the third floor railing of his apartment stairwell. According to his two most recent biographers, at the time of his death Levi was working on another book tentatively called The Double Bond (Angier 2002, 80; Thomson, 485). No excerpts of this new volume have been published or made public, and therefore the six imaginary interviews remain indeed the last large literary project published by Levi.
- 6.
This suggestion is also made by Belpoliti in “Animali e fantasmi” (afterword to UNG 141). It is however worth noting that the only author who collected in a volume the imaginary interviews with dead protagonists of human history he wrote for the radio was Giorgio Manganelli (A e B, 1975). That is to say, a writer with whom Levi had in 1976 a public controversy following the publication of his article entitled Dello scrivere oscuro, quite ferociously criticized by Manganelli in the Corriere della Sera. Nobody can obviously say whether Levi’s imaginary interviews are also a direct response, ten years later, to Manganelli, or this is just a coincidence. On this controversy cf. Poli and Calcagno, 108–109.
- 7.
Mario Porro has pointed out that in Levi—as well as in Calvino and in Gadda—“pensare all’umano nella sua ecologica partecipazione a una casa comune, significa chiamarlo a un’assunzione di “cura” che si allarga al di là del nostro egoismo di specie” (Porro, 31) [thinking about humanity in its ecological participation to a common house, means call humans toward an ethics of care that goes beyond the egoism of our species].
- 8.
The concept of “becoming animal” is developed by Gilles Deleuze in several of his works, written in collaboration with Felix Guattari, such as A Thousand Plateaus, or by himself, such as Essays Critical and Clinical. On this topic see especially Bruns (2007) and Beaulieu (2012). The American philosopher, cultural ecologist, and performance artist David Abram recognizes his debt to but also his distance from Gilles Deleuze’s theories in his 2010 book devoted indeed to “Becoming Animal” (Abram, 3–12).
- 9.
I borrow the concept of “more than human Humanism” from Lollini (2011a).
- 10.
For the adjective “critical” in “Critical Humanisms” see Halliwell and Mousley (2003).
- 11.
Walter Benjamin develops the concept of “dialectical image” in several of his works, but mostly in his Arcades Project. On this topic see at least Jennings (1987).
- 12.
As Mirna Cicioni has pointed out, this sentence does not invoke the neutrality of literary authors, of course, but rather seems to incarnate Levi’s hopes that his work would “encourage younger readers to understand as well as to know, and to avoid ‘moral indifference,’ making informed choices in all areas” (Cicioni 2004, 35). Although our reading of the whole of Levi’s literary production problematize the meaning of that understanding and expand the concept of testimony, the encouragement against “moral indifference” is still valid even in the case of “the question of the animal.”
- 13.
On the concept of “fortune” in Levi, see Gordon (2010).
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Benvegnù, D. (2018). Conclusion. Animal Testimony. 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_8
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