Between drowned and saved: Primo levi's testimony and the modern barbarity

• Grant number: 11/03998-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: August 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Maria Helena Oliva Augusto
• Grantee: Lucas Amaral de Oliveira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Adopting as objects of study the testimony of the writer Primo Levi (1919-1987), this research aims to convert your literary claims in problems of sociological character, attempting to contribute in this harvest of investigations opened by the testimonies of this great jewish-italian writer. My intention, then, is to work in the domain of the so-called sociology of testimony. For this, it will be used as methodological basis his experiences, his memories and his empirical statements related to the logic of Nazism, racism and extermination camps. I will examine that research´s material using a political and dialectical hermeneutics of two of his most significant texts, in order to grasp the extent to which the memoirs of once exception conditions can contribute to a socio-historical diagnosis of contemporary political life. The first hypothesis is that certain issues raised by him, like the racism, the totalitarian regimes and the catastrophic face of modernity, acquire today a matter of urgency, because they impose the necessity of a critic and effective reworking of the past, like to an "self-criticism" of the present, as well as a crucial questioning of the most capital values in modern discourse. As such, the research proposed here will draw upon an analytical framework that values, on the one hand, the testimony of Primo Levi on Auschwitz and the other, the actuality of their perceptions. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

OLIVEIRA, Lucas Amaral de. Primo Levi and the rumors of memory: limits and challenges in the construction of the testimony. 2013. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.