The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  juridical sense, but something that is at once a lament, a curse, an expiation, an

  attempt to justify and rehabilitate oneself. . . . Conceiving and organizing the

  squads was National Socialism’s most demonic crime. (Levi 1989: 52–3)

  And yet Levi recalls that a witness, Miklos Nyszli, one of the very few who sur-

  vived the last “special team” of Auschwitz, recounted that during a “work” break he

  took part in a soccer match between the SS and representatives of the Sonderkom-

  mando. “Other men of the SS and the rest of the squad are present at the game;

  they take sides, bet, applaud, urge the players on as if, rather than at the gates of

  hell, the game were taking place on the village green” (Levi 1989: 55).

  This match might strike someone as a brief pause of humanity in the middle

  of an infinite horror. I, like the witnesses, instead view this match, this moment

  of normalcy, as the true horror of the camp. For we can perhaps think that the

  massacres are over—even if here and there they are repeated, not so far away

  from us. But that match is never over; it continues as if uninterrupted. It is the

  perfect and eternal cipher of the “gray zone,” which knows no time and is in

  every place. Hence the anguish and shame of the survivors, “the anguish in-

  scribed in everyone of the ‘tohu-bohu,’ of a deserted and empty universe crushed

  under the spirit of God but from which the spirit of man is absent: not yet born

  or already extinguished” (Levi 1989: 85). But also hence our shame, the shame of

  those who did not know the camps and yet, without knowing how, are specta-

  tors of that match, which repeats itself in every match in our stadiums, in every

  television broadcast, in the normalcy of everyday life. If we do not succeed in

  understanding that match, in stopping it, there will never be hope.

  1.9. In Greek the word for witness is martis, martyr. The first Church Fathers coined the word martirium from martis to indicate the death of persecuted Christians, who thus bore witness to their faith. What happened in the camps

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  has little to do with martyrdom. The survivors are unanimous about this. “By

  calling the victims of the Nazis ‘martyrs,’ we falsify their fate” (Bettelheim 1979:

  92). Nevertheless, the concepts of “witnessing” and “martyrdom” can be linked

  in two ways. The first concerns the Greek term itself, derived as it is from the

  verb meaning “to remember.” The survivor’s vocation is to remember; he cannot

  not remember. “The memories of my imprisonment are much more vivid and

  detailed than those of anything else that happened to me before or after” (Levi

  1997: 225). “I still have a visual and acoustic memory of the experiences there

  that I cannot explain. . . . sentences in languages I do not know have remained

  etched in my memory, like on a magnetic tape; I have repeated them to Poles

  and Hungarians and have been told that the sentences are meaningful. For some

  reason that I cannot explain, something anomalous happened to me, I would say

  almost an unconscious preparation for bearing witness” (ibid.: 220).

  The second point of connection is even more profound, more instructive.

  The study of the first Christian texts on martyrdom—for example, Tertullian’s

  Scorpiacus— reveals some unexpected teachings. The Church Fathers were con-

  fronted by heretical groups that rejected martyrdom because, in their eyes, it

  constituted a wholly senseless death ( perire sine causa) . What meaning could be found in professing one’s faith before men—persecutors and executioners—who

  would understand nothing of this undertaking? God could not desire something

  without meaning. “Must innocents suffer these things? . . . Once and for all

  Christ immolated himself for us; once and for all he was killed, precisely so that

  we would not be killed. If he asks for the same in return, is it perhaps because

  he too expects salvation in my death? Or should one perhaps think that God

  demands the blood of men even while he disdains that of bulls and goats? How

  could God ever desire the death of someone who is not a sinner?” The doctrine of

  martyrdom therefore justifies the scandal of a meaningless death, of an execution

  that could only appear as absurd. Confronted with the spectacle of a death that

  was apparently sine causa, the reference to Luke 12: 8–9 and to Matthew 10: 32–33

  (“Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before

  my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will

  I also deny before my Father which is in heaven”) made it possible to interpret

  martyrdom as a divine command and, thus, to find a reason for the irrational.

  But this has very much to do with the camps. For what appears in the camps

  is an extermination for which it may be possible to find precedents, but whose

  forms make it absolutely senseless. Survivors are also in agreement on this. “Even

  to us, what we had to tell would start to seem unimaginable” (Antelme 1992: 3).

  “All the attempts at clarification . . . failed ridiculously” (Améry 1980: vii). “I am

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  irritated by the attempts of some religious extremists to interpret the extermi-

  nation according to the manner of the prophets: as a punishment for our sins.

  No! I do not accept this. What is terrifying is that it was senseless. . . .” (Levi

  1997: 219).

  The unfortunate term “holocaust” (usually with a capital “H”) arises from

  this unconscious demand to justify a death that is sine causa— to give meaning

  back to what seemed incomprehensible. “Please excuse me, I use this term ‘Holo-

  caust’ reluctantly because I do not like it. But I use it to be understood. Philolog-

  ically, it is a mistake. . . .” (ibid.: 243). “It is a term that, when it first arose, gave me a lot of trouble; then I learned that it was Wiesel himself who had coined it,

  then regretted it and wanted to take it back” (ibid.: 219).

  1.10. The history of an incorrect term can also prove instructive. “Holocaust”

  is the scholarly transcription of the Latin holocaustum which, in turn, is a translation of the Greek term holocaustos (which is, however, an adjective, and which

  means “completely burned”; the corresponding Greek noun is holocaustōma).

  The semantic history of the term is essentially Christian, since the Church

  Fathers used it to translate—in fact with neither rigour nor coherence—the

  complex sacrificial doctrine of the Bible (in particular, of Leviticus and Deuter-

  onomy). Leviticus reduces all sacrifices to four fundamental types: olah, hattat,

  shelamin, minha. As Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert write in “The Nature and Function of Sacrifice,”

  The names of two of these are significant. The hattat was the sacrifice employed

  especially to expiate the sin called hattat or hataah, the definition of which given in Leviticus is unfortunately extremely vague. The shelamin is a communion sacrifice, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, of alliance, of vows. As for the terms ‘olah and minha, they are purely descriptive. Each recalls one of the special operations of sacrifice: the latter, the presentation of the victim, if it is of vegetable matter, the

  former, the dispatch of the offering to the divinity. (Mauss and Hubert 1964: 16)

  The
Vulgate usually translates olah by holocaustum ( holocausti oblatio); hattat by oblatio; shelamin by hostia pacificorum; minha by hostia pro peccato. The term holocaustum is transmitted from the Vulgate to the Latin Fathers, who used it primarily in the many commentaries of the Holy Writ to indicate the sacrifices of the

  Hebrews. (Thus in Hilarius, In Psalmata, 65, 23: holocausta sunt integra hostiarum corpora, quia tota ad ignem sacrificii deferebantur, holocausta sunt nuncupata.) Two points are particularly important here. First, early on, the Church Fathers used

  the term in its literal sense as a polemical weapon against the Jews, to condemn

  the uselessness of bloody sacrifices (Tertullian’s text, which refers to Marcion, is

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  exemplary: Quid stultius. . . . quam sacrificiorum cruentorum et holocaustomatum nidorosurum a deo exactio? “What is more foolish than a god who demands bloody

  sacrifices and holocausts that smell of burnt remains?” Adversus Marcionem 5, 5; cf.

  also Augustine, C. Faustusm, 19, 4). Second, the term “holocaustum” is extended as a metaphor to include Christian martyrs, such that their torture is equated with

  sacrifice (Hilarius, In Psalmata, 65, 23: Martyres in fidei testimonium corpora sua holocausta voverunt). Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is thus ultimately defined as a holocaust (Augustine, In Evang. Joah., 41, 5: se in holocaustum obtulerit in cruce Iesus; Rufinus, Origines in Leviticum, 1, 4: holocaustum. . . . carnis eius per lignum crucis oblatum).

  Thus begins the semantic migration by which the term “holocaust” in ver-

  nacular languages gradually acquires the meaning of the “supreme sacrifice in the

  sphere of a complete devotion to sacred and superior motives.” In English, the

  term appears in its literal sense in Tindale ( Mark xii. 33: “A greater thynge than all holocaustes and sacrifises”) and H. More ( Apocal. Apoc. 101: “In the latter part thereof stands the altar of Holocausts”). The term appears in its metaphorical

  sense in Bp. Alcock ( Mons Perfect C iija: “Very true obedyence is an holocauste

  of martyrdom made to Cryste”), J. Beaumont ( Psyche xxiv. cxciv: “The perfect

  holocaust of generous love”) and Milton, where it signifies a complete consump-

  tion by fire ( Samson 1702: “Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods

  embost, That no second knows nor third, And lay erewhile a Holocaust”). It is

  repeated, over and over again, through to the twentieth century (for example,

  Hansard Commons 6 March, 1940: “the general holocaust of civilized standards”)

  ( Oxford English Dictionary 1989: 315).

  But the term’s usage in polemics against the Jews also has a history, even if it

  is a secret one not recorded by dictionaries. In the course of my research on sov-

  ereignty, I happened upon a passage by a medieval chronicler that constitutes, to

  my knowledge, the first use of holocaust with reference to a massacre of Jews, in this case in a violently anti-Semitic fashion. Richard of Duizes testifies that on

  the day of the coronation of Richard I (1189), the inhabitants of London engaged

  in a particularly bloody pogrom: “The very day of the coronation of the king, at

  about the hour in which the Son was burnt for the Father, they began in London

  to burn the Jews for their father the demon ( incoeptum est in civitate Londoniae

  immolare judaeos patri suo diabolo); and the celebration of this mystery lasted so long that the holocaust could not be completed before the next day. And the

  other cities and towns of the region imitated the faith of the inhabitants of Lon-

  don and, with the same devotion, sent their bloodsuckers to hell ( pari devotione

  suas sanguisugas cum sang uine transmiserunt ad inferos)” (Cardini 1994: 131).

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  Insofar as it implies the substitution of a literal expression with an attenu-

  ated or altered expression for something that one does not actually want to hear

  mentioned, the formation of a euphemism always involves ambiguities. In this

  case, however, the ambiguity is intolerable. The Jews also use a euphemism to

  indicate the extermination. They use the term so’ah, which means “devastation, catastrophe” and, in the Bible, often implies the idea of a divine punishment (as

  in Isaiah 10:3: “What will you do in the day of punishment, when the so’ah will

  come from afar?”). Even if Levi probably refers to this term when he speaks of

  the attempt to interpret the extermination as a punishment for our sins, his use

  of the euphemism contains no mockery. In the case of the term “holocaust,”

  by contrast, the attempt to establish a connection, however distant, between

  Auschwitz and the Biblical olah and between death in the gas chamber and the

  “complete devotion to sacred and superior motives” cannot but sound like a jest.

  Not only does the term imply an unacceptable equation between crematoria

  and altars; it also continues a semantic heredity that is from its inception anti-

  Semitic. This is why we will never make use of this term.

  1.11. Several years ago, when I published an article on the concentration

  camps in a French newspaper, someone wrote a letter to the editor in which,

  among other crimes, I was accused of having sought to “ruin the unique and

  unsayable character of Auschwitz.” I have often asked myself what the author

  of the letter could have had in mind. The phenomenon of Auschwitz is unique

  (certainly in the past, and we can only hope for the future). As Levi points out:

  “Up to the moment of this writing, and notwithstanding the horror of Hiro-

  shima and Nagasaki, the shame of the Gulags, the useless and bloody Vietnam

  war, the Cambodian self-genocide, the desaparecidos in Argentina, and the many

  atrocious and stupid wars we have seen since, the Nazi concentration camp still

  remains an unicum, both in its extent and its quality” (Levi 1989: 21). But why unsayable? Why confer on extermination the prestige of the mystical?

  In the year 386 of our era, in Antioch, John Chrysostom composed his trea-

  tise On the Incomprehensible Nature of God. He opposed those who maintained that God’s essence could be understood, on the grounds that “everything that

  He knows of Himself we can also easily find in ourselves.” Vigorously arguing

  against his adversaries in affirming the incomprehensibility of God, who is “un-

  sayable” ( arrētos), “unspeakable” ( anekdiēgētos), and “unwritable” ( anepigraptos),

  John well knew that this was precisely the best way to glorify ( doxan didonai) and adore ( proskuein) Him. Even for the angels, after all, God is incomprehensible; but because of this they can glorify and adore Him, offering Him their mystical

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  songs. John contrasts the angelic hosts with those seeking in vain to understand

  God: “those ones [the angels] glorify, these ones seek to understand; those ones

  adore in silence, these ones give themselves work to do; those ones divert their

  gaze, these ones are not ashamed to stare into unsayable glory” (Chrysostom

  1970). The verb that we have translated “to adore in silence” is, in the Greek text,

  euphemein. Euphemein, which originally means “to observe religious silence,” is the origin of the modern word “euphemism,” which denotes those terms that

  are substituted for other terms that cannot be uttered for reasons of modesty or

  civility. To say that Auschwitz is “unsayable” or “incomprehensible” is equivalent

  to euphe
mein, to adoring in silence, as one does with a god. Regardless of one’s intentions, this contributes to its glory. We, however, “are not ashamed of staring into the unsayable”—even at the risk of discovering that what evil knows of

  itself, we can also easily find in ourselves.

  1.12. Testimony, however, contains a lacuna. The survivors agree about this.

  “There is another lacuna in every testimony: witnesses are by definition survivors

  and so all, to some degree, enjoyed a privilege. . . . No one has told the destiny of

  the common prisoner, since it was not materially possible for him to survive. . . .

  I have also described the common prisoner when I speak of ‘Muslims’; but the

  Muslims did not speak” (Levi 1997: 215–16). “Those who have not lived through

  the experience will never know; those who have will never tell; not really, not

  completely. . . . The past belongs to the dead. . . .” (Wiesel 1975: 314).

  It is worth reflecting upon this lacuna, which calls into question the very

  meaning of testimony and, along with it, the identity and reliability of the wit-

  nesses. “I must repeat: we, the survivors, are not the true witnesses. . . . We

  survivors are not only an exiguous but also an anomalous minority: we are those

  who by their prevarications or abilities or good luck did not touch bottom.

  Those who did so, those who saw the Gorgon, have not returned to tell about it

  or have returned mute, but they are the Muslims, the submerged, the complete

  witnesses, the ones whose deposition would have a general significance. They are

  the rule, we are the exception. . . . We who were favored by fate tried, with more

  or less wisdom, to recount not only our fate but also that of the others, indeed

  of the drowned; but this was a discourse ‘on behalf of third parties,’ the story of

  things seen at close hand, not experienced personally. The destruction brought

  to an end, the job completed, was not told by anyone, just as no one ever re-

  turned to describe his own death. Even if they had paper and pen, the drowned

  would not have testified because their death had begun before that of their body.

  Weeks and months before being snuffed out, they had already lost the ability

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