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April 9, 2006
In the previous post I asked what kind of ethics is Agamben pointing to in Remnants of Auschwitz? My reply was that this is where it gets fuzzy. Agamben does warn us about this. In the concluding sentence of his preface, Agamben declares:
For my own part, I will consider myself content with my work if, in attempting to locate the place and theme of testimony, I have erected some signposts allowing future cartographers of the new ethical territory to orient themselves. Indeed, I will be satisfied if this book succeeds in correcting some of the terms with which we register the decisive lesson of the century. . . .” (RA, p.14)
What are these signposts of the new ethical territory? We know that Agamben argues that 'ethics is the sphere that recognizes neither guilt nor responsibility; it is, as Spinoza knew, the doctrine of happy life'. (RA, p.24).
What we also know is that the figure of the Muselmann is regarded by Agamben as not only the symbol of the evil of Auschwitz but also the defining characteristic of a new, post-Auschwitz, paradigm of ethics. What Agamben does do in the text is unsettle and shake up our well-entrenched concepts and categories; our task is to resist cliches and our comfortable familiar ethical and political categories. For instance he rejects the tragic hero model of ethics based on the guilty-innocent person. Agamben says that:
The Greek hero model has left us forever; he can no longer bear witness for us in any way. After Auschwitz, it is not possible to use a tragic paradigm in ethics. (RA, p.99)
Agamben also rejects an ethics based on the guilt or shame at having survived the camps whilst others died; ashamed at having survived.
Agamben states that 20th century ethics opens with Nietzsche's critique of Judeo-Christianity, the overcoming of resentment, and Zarathustra's teaches us to will backwards. How promising is this as a mapping of the new ethical territory?
On Agamben's interpretation what Nietzsche offers us is conquering of the spirit of revenge in order to assume the past by willing its return for eternity--the doctrine of eternal return. Agamben acknowledges that Nietzsche's eternal return makes no sense of Auschwitz--who would wish that horror to be repeated for eternity or to love it as destiny?
Where does that leave us in terms of the new ethical territory ? With shame in terms of its ontological characteristics? Is this a signpost for this new ethical terrain?
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