En este trabajo intentamos hacer una aproximación a la problemática de la llamada singularidad del Holocausto. Tomamos como disparador inicial un suceso alusivo relativamente reciente que acaba de causar revuelo en la opinión pública, en el que una política Africana (Helen Zille) se declaró defensora de la singularidad del genocidio perpetrado por el régimen nazi. Desde allí intentamos aproximarnos a distintas articulaciones en favor y en contra de la tesis singularista ¿Fue el Holocausto un hecho único, sin precedentes, o apenas (...) otra manifestación de la violencia occidental, o quizás un poco las dos cosas? ¿Tiene la discusión sólo un sentido “objetivo” o también uno “subjetivo”, y en este último caso, cuál de los dos es más fundamental? En este sentido abordamos de manera sucinta las articulaciones elaboradas tanto por los defensores de la formulación extrema de la tesis singularista (específicamente Goldhagen, Katz, y Genwarth) como de sus objetores relativos (como, a nuestro entender, E. Traverso) y absolutos (por ejemplo Stannard). Intentamos mostrar que la aproximación a la problemática no resiste satisfactoriamente la adopción de posturas binarias a diferencia de lo que ocurre con acercamientos más tendientes a la conciliación como el de E. Traverso, cuyo acento en el estatus doble del Holocausto (como emergente histórico en el plano fáctico-objetivo e irrupción sin precedentes en términos del proceso de comprensión y auto-comprensión occidental del ejercicio de violencia) podría suponer antes que una resignificación del debate reciente, la inauguración, casi, de todo un nuevo horizonte de investigación. (shrink)

In his 1968 poetry collection „Fadensonnen“, Paul Celan offers a hermetic blend of existentialism and mysticism, which is unusual in two respects. Firstly, the European philosophy of existence, especially with its proponents Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Martin Heidegger, had gone to great lengths to criticize and delegitimize the Abrahametic religions, for the concept of god seemed to be an obstacle to humanity in pursuit of its own humanization. Secondly, in the aftermath of the holocaust, the idea of man wanting (...) to merge with a god that had not prevented this cruelty from happening had lost much of its plausibility. Despite these two objections, Celan's poems address the struggle of togetherness in a world that negates the mere possibility of otherness, trying to salvage the unique identity and dignity of the other. With this in mind, the modus operandi of his poems is that of a butcher: Whatever has previously been alive – before the Shoah – now has to be stripped bare of its layers of individual and collective history, has to become less than body and flesh. In this way, the poems' inherent pain and misery transform the reader into a nobody, for only a nobody has got the prerequisites to encounter other people unbiasedly in their unique wholeness. Within this space of encounter, only the reminiscence of body and sexuality exists, commemorating the other, so that radical corporeality seems to be the prerequisite for togetherness. In this ahistorical sphere there is no room for a god that permitted the holocaust, redefining mysticism as the connection between men instead of one between man and god. Celan's poems act as a catalyst, for they exclude god from the spheres of man, making poetry a memorial site to the dead and the ones living in pain. This way, the poems are trying to save Eros (in the sense of creaturely love) from being mutilated by the crimes of European history while at the same time aiming at rehabilitating mankind in a post-holocaust world. (shrink)