Les veus del testimoniatge. Dany, relacionalitat i gènere
- Autores: Ana Lucía Batalla Gavaldà
- Directores de la Tesis: Josep E. Corbí (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de València ( España ) en 2021
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Fernando Broncano (presid.), Maria Asuncion Tejedor Palau (secret.), Verónica Tozzi (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Pensamiento Filosófico Contemporáneo por la Universitat de València (Estudi General)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: RODERIC
- Resumen
In this doctoral thesis we approach the genre of testimony from a plural perspective, paying attention to different voices in order to analyse what the act of giving testimony responds to, what content it transmits and what form of expression it acquires. I will defend this plural methodology as a way of doing justice to the victims, but also as having a metaphysical and epistemic value. From the metaphysical point of view, the voice of testimony is always at the same time singular and collective, as it narrates the experience of particular harm while the silence of those who could not come back is always present, a silence that becomes a whisper at the heart of the testimony. Regarding the epistemic value, allowing room for the voice of different victims to be present in public opinion strengthens their total weight, as, given there are common elements to the different testimonies, they acquire an epistemic value that is much harder to deny than if all these voices were reduced to only one. I will combine this methodological perspective with a reading of the new ontology of the body proposed by Judith Butler as a way of understanding the gender and relationality of human beings. Of special relevance will be concepts such as the recognition of the vulnerability of all human beings (precariousness), their injurability, the opening and the empathy of the body, which are what allows the transmission of the memory of suffering through attentive listening. Thanks to the Butlerian understanding of the normative framework, we see how indifference to the pain and loss of others is possible and how the affects of individuals within the social and cultural norms that enable and condition interaction with others are regulated. Specifically, I will highlight the normative frameworks for gender, because these help to understand how such a dehumanisation and depersonalisation as produced in the Lager came about, damaging the deportee's self-image using specific methods of violence based on the gender stereotypes prevailing in such a context.
Continuing with this reading, I will contest that the traditional image of Auschwitz is either distorted or incomplete, as it is androcentric in such a way that it disregards the relevance of questions such as gender ideals and how these can help us understand the existing differences between the testimonies and experiences of the day-to-day life of men and women in the camps. My thesis is that, within the context in which Auschwitz took place, society assigned the values of caring, helping and protection to the female stereotype in such a way that the recognition of the vulnerability common to all human beings and the relationality that characterises us is closer to women and allows for the creation of modes of action different to those carried out by men. Among these modes of action, the capacity to establish the interpersonal relationships essential to survival, both physically and as subject, stands out. Bearing witness to these social bonds established in extreme situations is one more way of resistance that reflects understanding of the active dimension of vulnerability as a source for the capacity of agency It is from this perspective that we will approach the different voices that bear witness to the experience of harm the inmates of the concentration camp system lived through. This we will do starting from a fundamental concept that is intrinsically related to relationality: the loss of trust in the world. This is proposed by Jean Améry to account for the experience of the torture victim. As we will see in greater detail, Améry explains that the victim of torture loses his trust in the world from the first blow received where no help comes from any fellow being. Over the course of different chapters, I will endeavour to show that this loss does not necessarily follow from torture, but that there are other elements that lead him to assert this: expulsion from his homeland and mother-tongue, his inability to establish deep ties of friendship, to form part of a support network or to establish a relational bond, and the difficulties that arise from his self-image as an intellectual, given that the spiritual references he evoked in the Lager stopped having any deep resonance for him.
To perform this analysis, the first thing we'll look at in Chapter II is the relationship that is established between interpersonal bonds and the structure of harm, using the testimony of three survivors of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps: Marceline Loridan-Ivens, Jean Améry and Jorge Semprún. The chapter has two strands: 1) to analyse the concept of loss of trust in the world that Améry presents as a consequence of experiencing torture, and 2) to show, with Semprún, that this loss does not necessarily follow from torture and, with Loridan-Ivens, that neither does it follow from the radical experience of harm. In spite of the differences, I will advocate that Améry, Semprún and Loridan-Ivens all hold a shared metaphysical assumption that recognises the interdependence of individuals, the relevance of others in our relationship with the world and our own construction as subjects. These radical experiences of harm allow us to see more clearly how dependant we are on ties with others in order to inhabit this world as a home. Our relationship with the world is mediated by our relationships of solidarity and therefore we feel isolated if we do not form part of a moral community, we cannot feel the world as a home. And to feel that is a need of the soul, which is the central concept of the next chapter. In chapter III, I will introduce friendship as a need of the soul (a concept I have taken from Simone Weil), given that a lack of this kind of bond to another turns a person into a living dead. The principal voices here will be those of Jean Améry, Nora Strejilevich and Ruth Klüger and we will use their experiences to study how deeply the soul is wounded when unable to cover some of its fundamental needs. We will see that trust in the world is easily shaken for a person who has lost their roots, who is in exile, without a homeland or mother-tongue, and how interpersonal bonds allow for the creation of a habitable space in spite of the indelible wound of the victims of harm. I will thus emphasise the relevance of friendship and interpersonal bonds for the human soul, a relevance that becomes particularly evident when we are hurt or in a situation of need. On the other hand, though intimately related to the above, I will show that the essential element that leads Améry to assert the loss of trust in the world is that no-one fulfils the expectation of help that accompanies the experience of harm. For this reason, I will defend the relevance of feeling part of an us, be this the fruit of a bond of deep friendship or belonging to a support network, as in this way the victim recognises their life is worth living as a consequence of it being held as valuable by someone other than the victim themself. I will introduce these two kinds of rearticulation of the us with Strejilevich and Klüger and develop them in more detail in the following chapters. With Strejilevich we will see how a support network is created based on memory, political struggle and testimony, networks on which I will elaborate in chapter V, where I will also analyse the rearticulations of kinship that Klüger talks about. However, in chapter IV, I will look at the relevance of friendship as an act of resistance, the strength of the bond of friendship perceived by Klüger that enables the person to feel once again like a subject with a valuable life and as such worth fighting for. In chapter IV, therefore, I argue in favour of the thesis that the interpersonal bonds such as friendship and caring are acts of resistance in two respects: 1) they allow for a vindication of the humanity of those comprising it, facilitating a rejection, or at least lessening, of the day-to-day relevance of the dehumanisation and depersonalisation explicitly aimed for by the perpetrators in the Lager, and 2) they help maintain an interest in the fight for survival. To develop this thesis, I will introduce Butler's concept of relationality and Todorov's everyday virtue of caring, highlighting their relation with the idea of friendship and with the vindication of humanity. Following this, I will look at the testimony of two survivors that explicitly emphasises the importance of ties of friendship in survival in the Lager: Primo Levi and Margarete Buber-Neumann. I will conclude by stating that the rearticulation of friendship occurring between those finding themselves on the edge of the dominant normative framework can sometimes be more authentic, powerful and deep than those occurring at the heart of the framework itself.
In chapter V, I will look at the other forms of relationality highlighted by Strejilevich and Klüger: the support networks that have a political or affective origin and the rearticulation of the ties of kinship. To illustrate what these concepts refer to, I will begin the chapter looking at Butler's thoughts and then at the experience of three survivors of the Nazi Lagers: Mercedes Núñez, Jorge Semprún and Charlotte Delbo. With Núñez, we will see how networks are created that have their origin in political ideology and in the common need to continue with the anti-fascist project. With Semprún we will study how the thing that directs all the interpersonal relationships he establishes comes above himself and his colleagues: The Communist Party. Lastly, with Delbo, we will see the creation of support networks based on the concept of friendship, rearticulating the bond of a group of friends which cares for the particularities of each individual colleague without it ceasing to be a group. The origin of these networks lies in the recognition of common vulnerability, in the need for mutual support to escape from the situation in which they find themselves and in the relevance of the viewpoint of others that, especially in this situation, continues to interpellate. In an extreme situation, the interpellation of the other is stronger because, when everything around is created to dehumanise you, the search for a colleague's friendly gesture, a compassionate look, becomes an imperative for the deportee. Without this look and the help it makes possible, a person is condemned to being an abject, to falling into the depths of dehumanisation, which leads to them losing trust in the world, trust that seems necessary for survival and to continue living after liberation. In the sixth chapter I will show the relevance of affective bonds in maintaining the value of the poetic and spiritual references for the inmate of the Lagers, keeping the memory of their roots, so as not to lose all connection with who they were before deportation. I will begin by analysing the isolation of Améry in Auschwitz and how it prevented him from enjoying the spiritual references that bombarded him every day and that had previously helped him understand the world. We can understand his isolation from his self-image as an intellectual and how this makes him feel different from the other deportees. I will then turn to the testimony of Primo Levi, Nico Rost and Germaine Tillion in order to understand the relevance of finding someone to share these references. Intellectual exchange, be it reciting poetry, literary conversations with colleagues or the creation of a theatrical comedy, helped these deportees to keep their mind active, create a strong bond with others and to not lose their self-image - something that helped them re-establish the link with their identity, flee in some way from what they were immersed in every day and to come up with common projects for the future. Finally, I will conclude with a reflection on the conditions of life of those who survived extreme experiences of harm in order to reject the stereotypic images of the calm after the storm, which do not take into account the experiences of these survivors. Their reincorporation into life after liberation was very difficult, given that the wound is indelible. But such a wound does not seem to be definitive for those who managed to establish interpersonal bonds, because they continued to be confident in the expectation of help, an essential element of trust in the world that allows the world to be seen as a habitable space in which to feel at home.
