- Title
- Ruptures in understanding : the banality of evil and the differend
- Creator
- Pedersen, Cassie
- Date
- 2014
- Type
- Text; Book chapter
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/197883
- Identifier
- vital:18955
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848883307_004
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781848883307 (ISBN); 9789004371521 (ISBN)
- Abstract
- This chapter draws upon respective concepts of postmodern theorist, Jean-François Lyotard and political theorist, Hannah Arendt in order to account for the unspeakability and incomprehensibility attributed to Auschwitz. This will be achieved in a means which neither mystifies unspeakability and incomprehensibility, nor negates the legitimacy of that which is said to lie outside of speech and comprehension. Throughout his works, Lyotard uses the term ‘postmodern’ to describe what he deems to be the state of culture following on from certain transformations in conceptions of knowledge prevalent within the twentieth century. The postmodern condition, according to Lyotard, heralds incredulity towards legitimizing grand narratives and the subsequent visibility and proliferation of heterogeneous discourse genres. Due to their heterogeneity, genres of discourse are incommensurable and irreconcilable. It is within this context that the ‘differend’ emerges: the manifestation of the unspeakable, where one cannot express damages inflicted upon them, due to a lack of any universally applicable rule of judgment between heterogeneous genres of discourse. Arendt, on the otherhand, argues that the traumas associated with Nazi totalitarianism constitute a break with traditional ways of understanding; there has been a rupture in moral, political and juridical categories in the wake of Auschwitz. Specifically, this chapter will look towards Arendt’s account of Nazi senior functionary, Adolf Eichmann, who supposedly re-defined what it is to commit evil in terms of the banality of his crimes. Such banality signifies a rupture of pre-existing ways of making sense of evil, thus resulting in incomprehensibility and unspeakability. Through this discussion, it will be demonstrated that the incomprehensible can indeed emerge, when a phenomenon challenges one’s pre-existing ways of understanding the world - especially when these means of understanding are reliant upon universal, totalising regimes. In these instances, it is vital to acknowledge that one’s modes of judgment have been pushed to their limits, in order to explore the possibility of new ways of understanding. © Inter-Disciplinary Press 2014.
- Publisher
- Inter-Disciplinary Press
- Relation
- I Want to Do Bad Things: Modern Interpretations of Evil p. 21-31
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- Copyright @ Inter-Disciplinary Press 2014
- Subject
- Auschwitz; Banality; Differend; Evil; Incomprehensible; Juridical; Postmodern; Rupture; Understanding; Unspeakable
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