Primo Levi's Narratives of Embodiment: Containing the Human (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature)

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature

1. Testimony from the Nazi Camps French Women’s Voices Margaret-Anne Hutton 2. Modern Confessional Writing New Critical Essays Edited by Jo Gill 3. Cold War Literature Writing the Global Conflict Andrew Hammond 4. Modernism and the Crisis of Sovereignty Andrew John Miller 5. Cartographic Strategies of Postmodernity The Figure of the Map in Contemporary Theory and Fiction Peta Mitchell 6. Food, Poetry, and the Aesthetics of Consumption Eating the Avant-Garde Michel Delville 7. Latin American Writers and the Rise of Hollywood Cinema Jason Borge 8. Gay Male Fiction Since Stonewall Ideology, Conflict, and Aesthetics Les Brookes 9. Anglophone Jewish Literature Axel Stähler

10. Before Auschwitz Irène Némirovsky and the Cultural Landscape of Inter-war France Angela Kershaw 11. Travel and Drugs in TwentiethCentury Literature Lindsey Michael Banco 12. Diary Poetics Form and Style in Writers’ Diaries, 1915–1962 Anna Jackson 13. Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change Race, Sex and Nation Gerardine Meaney 14. Jewishness and Masculinity from the Modern to the Postmodern Neil R. Davison 15. Travel and Modernist Literature Sacred and Ethical Journeys Alexandra Peat 16. Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment Containing the Human Charlotte Ross

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment Containing the Human

Charlotte Ross

New York

London

First published 2011 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2011 Taylor & Francis The right of Charlotte Ross to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ross, Charlotte, 1974– Primo Levi’s narratives of embodiment : containing the human / by Charlotte Ross. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in twentieth-century literature ; 16) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Levi, Primo—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Holocaust survivors’ writings— History and criticism. 3. Human body in literature. 4. Mind and body in literature. 5. Humanity in literature. 6. Technology in literature. 7. Human body (Philosophy) I. Title. PQ4872.E8Z865 2011 853'.914—dc22 2010022054 ISBN 0-203-83719-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN13: 978-0-415-88041-1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-83719-1 (ebk)

For all those who struggle with and in their bodies, or whose bodies are made by others into sites of struggle. È evidente che un essere umano è un oggetto tremendamente complicato. It is clear that a human being is a tremendously complicated thing. (Primo Levi)

Contents

Note on Abbreviations and Translations Note on Terminology Acknowledgments Introduction

ix xi xiii 1

PART I Ontologies and Epistemologies 1

Containers and Their Contents

23

2

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity

41

3

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism

62

PART II Bodily Modifications and Mutations Foreword: Thinking of the Future: Science Fiction

89

4

Bodies, Prostheses, and Sentient Technologies

93

5

Bureaucratized and Technologized Bodies

113

6

Close Couplings and Docile Bodies

131

7

Recombining the Organic Human Body

148

Conclusions

164

Notes Bibliography Index

169 181 197

Note on Abbreviations and Translations

Citations from Levi’s works in Italian are drawn from the two-volume 1997 edition of Opere edited by Marco Belpoliti. This is referred to throughout as I and II, preceded by the abbreviated form of the relevant text, as specified in the following list. Where no abbreviation is used other than the volume number, the citation comes from notes or from texts that have not been published in book form. English translations are provided, drawn from published texts as far as these are available, as listed in the bibliography, and indicated by their abbreviated form. In some cases I have substituted my own version for published translations; in these cases I also provide references to the published translation to aid the non-Italian speaking reader to identify the source. Where no published version is indicated, all translations are my own. Individual works by Levi, and the English translations, are abbreviated as follows (see Bibliography for full publication details): Se questo è un uomo (1947) If This Is a Man La tregua (1963) The Truce Storie naturali (1966) partial trans. The Sixth Day Vizio di forma (1971) partial trans. The Sixth Day Il sistema periodico (1975) The Periodic Table La chiave a stella (1978) The Wrench Lilít e altri racconti (1981) partial trans. Moments of Reprieve partial trans. (including stories from VF and SN) A Tranquil Star La ricerca delle radici (1981) The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology

SQ IM LT T SN SD VF SD SP PT CS W L MR TS RR SR

x

Note on Abbreviations and Translations

Ad ora incerta (1984) Collected Poems L’altrui mestiere (1985) partial trans. Other People’s Trades I sommersi e i salvati (1986) The Drowned and the Saved Racconti e saggi (1986) The Mirror Maker Dialogo (1984) Conversations L’assimetria e la vita (2002) The Black Hole of Auschwitz

AOI CP AM OPT SS DS RS MM D C AV BH

Interviews anthologized in Primo Levi: conversazioni e interviste (1997, edited by Marco Belpoliti), are referenced by the name of the interviewer. Translations of some of these interviews are available in: The Voice of Memory: Interviews 1961–87. Primo Levi

VM

Note on Terminology

I am aware of, and sensitive to, the considerable problems associated with the term ‘Holocaust’, which Levi himself disliked intensely (Vigevani 1997, 219; see also Agamben 1999, 28–31 for a broader discussion of the problems associated with the term). However, I make use of it in this book due to its wide adoption in the critical literature. I also use the German term ‘Lager’, which Levi frequently employs in his writing.

Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe sincere thanks and gratitude to many people who have provided valuable help and advice along the way: to Ann Hallamore Caesar, Jenny Burns, Loredana Polezzi, Simon Gilson, Enza Minutella, Stefania Taviano, Giorgia Alù, and all the colleagues at Warwick who accompanied the first incarnation of this text as germinal PhD thesis; to Robert Gordon and Jonathan Usher for seeing it through to the next stage and for supporting my work; to friends and colleagues at the University of Birmingham who have offered sustenance in its subsequent transformations, especially Joanne Sayner, Clelia Boscolo, and Michael Caesar. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of this manuscript for their insightful comments. More broadly, I am grateful to all those accomplished scholars whose rigorous, challenging work has inspired and interpellated me. I hope to have done justice to their writing in my use of it. Thanks are due to the University of Birmingham for granting me a vital period of research leave in Autumn 2007, which enabled me to begin to engage fully with the demands of a monograph. Thanks to Germaine Greer for lending me a recording of her interview with Levi, and for permission to cite from this. Finally, more personal thanks go to my family and friends, for many years of love, support, and patience. In particular, thanks to Marc, who has seen this project through from start to fi nish, and who continues to be a source of inspiration. Thanks to Salma, who accompanied me for part of the way, and to Ludo, who has witnessed its completion.

Introduction

Primo Levi is well known as a survivor of the Holocaust. Imprisoned in the Carpi Fòssoli concentration camp in Italy in 1943, he was deported to Auschwitz in February 1944, where he remained in the Monowitz Lager (Auschwitz III) until its liberation in January 1945. His internationally acclaimed accounts of his experiences have earned him the painful distinction of being recognized as ‘the privileged witness of one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century’ (Belpoliti 1997a, 6). He is also known as a chemist, or more precisely, as ‘a chemist who wrote’: a hybrid scientistauthor with an eye for innovative linguistic practices and a deep belief in epistemological cross-fertilization (Belpoliti 1997a, 6). Notably, aside from his testimonial works, in which his career as a chemist is spliced into his memories and experiences as a deportee, Levi was also a science fiction writer who engaged with issues such as virtual reality devices, the cloning of human beings, and with phenomena that have now been theorized as posthuman subjectivity and cyborg bodies—that is, human subjects whose bodies and consciousnesses are aligned with and augmented by non-organic components, dissolving the boundaries between the biological and the technological. Seeking to fill an enduring void in the now considerable scholarship on Levi, this is a book about his depictions of bodies and the experience of embodiment. Somewhat perplexingly, this aspect of his work has hitherto received very little critical attention, despite his sustained fascination with diverse modalities of embodiment and modifications of the body, and his many engagements with the human struggle to negotiate the challenges of our (im)material existence. Whether human, inhuman, dehumanized, or posthuman, bodies appear on numerous occasions, and in various states of embodiment and disembodiment, across both Levi’s testimonial and his fictional writing. In what follows, I analyse Levi’s representations of embodiment, identifying a series of recurring narratives, both overlapping and divergent, which reveal particular tensions, anxieties, and desires relating to our psychic and somatic selves. By embodiment, I understand the experience of existing in and through the human body, and of being in the world thanks to our material presence—an ontological condition that

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varies enormously depending on individual circumstances and perceptions of the body. It is a state to which individual subjects devote differing degrees of conscious reflection, since, to some extent, the fact of being embodied only insistently demands our attention when it is a painful, uncomfortable experience, or when our mode of embodiment is subject to modifications, whether of our own volition or otherwise. Our condition as embodied subjects is profoundly inflected by the relationship between mind and body, psyche and soma, consciousness and fleshy matter, which may be perceived or experienced in multitudinous ways, from profound integration to defi nitive separation of these elements. Likewise, the relationship between body and world may vary from a sensation of utter alienation from our surrounding environment, to a deeply interactive fusion as the body seems to extend beyond its material boundaries and merge with external objects, sometimes annexing them to itself as prosthetic extensions (the tool as an extension of the hand, for example), absorbing them into its shifting contours. Levi’s multiple narratives of bodies and embodiment range from the dehumanizing reification of the human subject in the camps to metamorphic fusions with nature reminiscent of classical myth; from technologically modified posthuman beings whose bodies are encased in rigid exoskeletons and whose minds are rendered docile and passive, to phantasmatic doublings of the self through the apparent materialization of the unconscious. My discussion suggests new interpretative strategies for reading Levi’s work by relating these different narratives to a range of critical discourses on bodies and embodiment which have not yet been employed in the existing critical literature. I illustrate my argument by drawing on the full range of Levi’s writing, from the early testimonial works to his later interviews and essays, and devoting sustained consideration to his science fiction and ‘fantabiology’ stories.1 Although science fiction and testimonial writing may seem like radically divergent genres of text, significant resonances can be identified which bring the strands of Levi’s work together; indeed, as critics have argued, traces of Levi’s testimonial writings permeate his entire oeuvre: Levi never misses an occasion to make his mark; that is, to remind the reader that the person writing is the same one who experienced and recounted the events of Se questo è un uomo [If This Is a Man]. Levi never fails to do this, even when he is writing about other subjects. (Bertone 1994, 182) As a witness to the Holocaust, Levi was not alone in this tendency; Piotr Rawicz commented that ‘it would seem that one does not stop being a Holocaust writer whatever one’s theme is. Who knows? Our souls may have been tattooed, along with our hands’. 2 Rawicz’s reflection on the allpermeating quality of this experience, inscribed indelibly on both material and immaterial aspects of the self, asserts the primacy of the body as

Introduction

3

the bearer and location of experience and memory, and invites specifi c consideration of how the body figures in such recollections or refigurations of the Holocaust. I suggest that the sensations that tormented his experiences in the Lager, which derive from an embodiment marked by extreme suffering, can be identified even in Levi’s texts that do not deal explicitly with the Holocaust. 3 In his testimonial accounts, Levi depicts the destruction of the human being and the ‘non-human’ beings of the camps; in his science fiction stories, he portrays the ‘disumanesimo’ [antihumanity] of late capitalism and our (potential) proximate future. As I show, Levi’s work can be read as haunted by an ideal of embodiment, and by recurring obstacles to achieving this, whether in ‘real’ life or fictional contexts, whether in relation to his own experiences or to those of futuristic literary characters. Crucial to this ideal of embodiment in Levi’s thought, I argue, is an ability to negotiate our embodied state as one characterized by varying degrees of containment. This approach is inspired by his own defi nition of a human being, which rests on the creation of ‘recipienti’: recipients or containers. In his 1985 essay ‘Una bottiglia di sole’ [A Bottle of Sunshine], which I consider in detail in Chapter 1, Levi states that human beings are defi ned by their ability to make containers, a process which reveals two fundamental human qualities: the capacity to think about the future, and the capacity to predict the behaviour of material placed within these containers (RS II, 959).4 This essay is particularly intriguing for the loose ends it leaves, and for the peculiar, often contradictory resonances it has with many facets of Levi’s oeuvre; I therefore return to it as an enigmatic touchstone throughout this book. Of course, this is certainly not the only defi nition of human life that Levi offers the reader; indeed, much of his writing is animated by what may appear to constitute quite a different set of concerns regarding the defi nitions, practices, and consequences of humanity and inhumanity, conceived in relation to moral and ethical standards, which I discuss in detail in Chapter 2. However, the echoes of the defi nition of a human being as the maker of containers across Levi’s work and its broader significance for an understanding of the human condition in our (post-Holocaust) contemporary moment make it a rich vein for critical excavation. I suggest that the negotiations of embodiment as containment depicted in Levi’s work reveal a forward-looking gaze, which is often concerned with the potential long-term effects of containment on the substances, ideas or beings which are somehow circumscribed in this fashion. In my view, the recurring concept of the container can be productively identified, either as an image or as a conceptual metaphor, in many of Levi’s writings. My conjecture is that this metaphor is at its most compelling as it pertains to questions of ontology and epistemology that animate Levi’s work and thought. As regards ontological issues, Levi’s narratives of embodiment revolve around notions of the body as a ‘container’ of the self, both reinforcing

4

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

and deconstructing this concept, evoking classic and contemporary debates on the relationship between mind and body by thinkers as diverse as René Descartes, Sigmund Freud, and Katherine Hayles. Through his fiction, he explores the location of consciousness, the interface between the body and its surroundings, and the boundaries of the physical self which may be reinforced, breached, opened, modified, and redrawn in myriad ways. Levi’s reflections on epistemological concerns investigate and problematize fields of intellectual enquiry that have historically come to be understood as discrete ‘containers’ for certain types of knowledge and thought. As a ‘hybrid’ writer, he sought deliberately to dissolve the perceived gap between literary and scientific epistemologies and modes of expression, believing that the division between them was ‘una schisi innaturale, non necessaria, nociva, frutto di lontani tabù’ [an unnatural schism, unnecessary, harmful, the result of distant taboos] (AM II, 632; OPT, viii). This book argues that for Levi, issues of ontology and epistemology are fundamentally linked since our materiality is a formative aspect of our conscious selves. Therefore, if we are to enjoy life as ‘complete’, fulfilled beings, the body, consciousness, and the intellect need to function together, unifying physical processes and cerebral (as well as other) knowledges (D, 62; C, 62). In Levi’s thought, I suggest, this unifying process occurs ideally through a breaking down of historically or culturally constructed barriers between epistemological containers, between psyche and soma, and between the self and the other. However, the process is complicated by the difficulties of achieving this ideal harmony in practice, and by the challenges of striking a viable and liveable balance between sometimes confl icting objectives. These objectives include, for example, the preservation of the embodied self as an autonomous entity, while retaining links with those around us due to our social and ethical responsibilities to others; and an interest in ‘augmenting’ our human capacities, which stands in tension with a refusal to become overwhelmed by unwanted technological interventions on the container of our physical form. Overall, my aim is twofold. First, I offer a reading of Levi’s representations of human life as embodied existence, whether in the Lager or futuristic scenarios of hyper-technologized society. I analyse these representations as marked by negotiations of containment, itself a signifi cant recurring concept in his oeuvre. Second, I bring his thought into new dialogue with critical work on embodiment and build on analyses of Levi as humanist or posthumanist thinker. I am certainly not seeking to impose a monolithic interpretative model on Levi’s work, as will become clear as I outline the theoretical framework on which I draw; indeed, I agree with critics of his work who value precisely the ‘nonsystematicity’ of his thought (Philippe 2005, 126). Instead, my intention is to explore tensions and contradictions within Levi’s work, to probe this nonsystematicity which itself reveals a great deal about the complexities attending our status as embodied beings.

Introduction

5

EXISTING SCHOLARSHIP ON LEVI: BEYOND HUMANISM? While important, and in my view convincing, critical accounts of Levi’s work that engage with embodiment are few and unsustained: these include discussions of Levi’s portrayal of the body, especially the hand, as fundamentally linked to cognitive processes.5 In contrast, the one in-depth study of bodies in Levi’s work, Giuseppina Santagostino’s Primo Levi. Metamorfosi letterarie del corpo (2004), analyses the literary metamorphosis of bodies in Levi’s writing, positing that our corporeal form constitutes a privileged location for ethical reflection, one which Levi employs to great effect, endowing changing bodily forms with a rich array of metaphorical meanings. Far more numerous in the critical literature are indirect engagements with embodiment in Levi’s work. The majority of such analyses have considered how Levi represents the demolition of humanity in the Lager, examining his account of the process by which humans, understood as defi ned by their dignity, autonomy, and social networks, are degraded into ‘beasts’, into ‘things’, whose capacity for autonomous, rational thought is disallowed, leaving only a suffering creature that toils after the orders of others.6 Several studies have engaged with questions of the linguistic representability of the horror of the camps, to which Levi himself drew attention,7 with language as a marker of humanity (Sayre and Vacca 2001), and with the anthropological quality of Levi’s writing (Philippe 2005, 130). Analyses of the demolition of humanity have been supplemented by sustained considerations of the extreme consequence of this process. Giorgio Agamben and others have commented on Levi’s depiction of the Muselmann—the term used to describe the weakest inmates who were destined not to survive their imprisonment.8 Testimonial accounts such as Levi’s have depicted the Muselmänner as the drowned, lost witnesses, a legion of indistinguishable, condemned beings that no longer qualify as human. Some critical interpretations of this state have used Lukàcs’ concept of reification, specifically the reduction of the individual to the status of res—‘thing’—to elucidate Levi’s experiences.9 This interpretation of Levi’s texts echoes his own remarks in Se questo è un uomo about the reduction of humans to objects: ‘l’uomo è stato una cosa agli occhi dell’uomo’ [man was merely a thing in the eyes of man] (SQ I, 168; IM, 178).10 Drawing on a different set of critical discourses, Agamben has suggested that the distinction between the human and the ‘non-human’ can be explained by recourse to the concepts in classical Greek philosophy of living ‘appropriately’ as a human being who participates in political life, expressed by the term bios, and merely being alive, expressed by the term zoē. Levi’s annihilated beings, which have suffered the ‘“disappropriation” of identity’ in the camps (Eaglestone 2004, 337), and who cannot articulate their experiences, might be seen as representing a version of zoē, or ‘bare life’ (Agamben 1998).11 While offering valid contributions to the ongoing scholarly debates on Levi’s thought, these analyses do not explore in any sustained detail the

6

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

evolving states of embodiment and disembodiment described in Levi’s multiple narratives; nor do they consider the relationship between mind and body. Agamben goes furthest in this direction in his explorations of the Muselmann as an example of a biopolitical body: he notes that the distinction between zoē and bios is far from clear-cut, but rather is complicated by Michel Foucault’s suggestion that in our contemporary world, bare life is always already caught up in biopolitical power and the two cannot be separated (Agamben 1998, 3, 185–88). This is because while ‘for millennia, man [sic] remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question’ (Foucault 1978, 143). As a result, our bodies become the location for and the object of political struggles. However, while the implications of Agamben’s work are relevant to my study, informing discussion in Chapter 2 in particular, his focus lies solely with the Muselmann and he does not explore other depictions of embodiment in Levi’s work, even in the testimonial literature. A further related issue that continues to excite critical interest in Levi’s work is his relationship to humanist, Enlightenment, and post-Enlightenment/post-Holocaust thought. Influential interpretations of the Holocaust, such as the work of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, have suggested that when taken to their extreme conclusions, the principles of Enlightenment thought—universal reason and logic—actually resulted in deception and ‘totalitarian’ domination. They argue that ‘Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator toward men’, suspicious of ‘whatever does not conform to the rule of computation and utility’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 9, 6). Berel Lang elaborates on this view, arguing that against the ‘abstract, ahistorical self posited by the Enlightenment as an ideal of humanity’, markers of difference (such as Jewishness), have been perceived as signs of inhumanity that invite the destruction of the nonconformist element (Lang 1990, 194). While for these thinkers Enlightenment values are rendered untenably compromised in a post-Holocaust era, some critics of Levi’s work remain convinced that his perspective on the world was ‘imbued by an enlightened humanism’, even after the Holocaust; indeed, that Levi cleaved to this position despite all his experiences (Farrell 2004, 9, 17; Gordon 2001, 17). Similarly, Daniela Amsallem claims that Levi’s enduring belief in an optimistic reason prevented him from accepting Adorno and Horkheimer’s thesis. However, as she clarifies, in Levi’s view, Nazism and Fascism resulted not from the ‘extreme rationalization’ of the Enlightenment but from the failure of ethical reason (Amsallem 1997a, 365). As Levi remarked in a 1975 interview, it is not ‘order’ per se that is problematic, but the lawless perversion of this order.12 Jonathan Druker’s recent contribution to this debate takes issue with assertions of the unfl inching faith in Enlightenment thought in Levi’s work, seeking to show how his writings ‘not only recuperate Enlightenment values but also undermine them’ (Druker 2009, 6). He reads Levi’s work in light

Introduction

7

of ‘posthumanist’ thought, which he takes to indicate postmodern thought that engages critically with Enlightenment humanism—for example, Foucault’s critique of its disciplinary tendencies, and Jean-François Lyotard’s assaults on its grand narratives. Through the lens of these posthumanist perspectives, Druker identifies in Levi’s work both a critique of the horror of the Holocaust and moments of inadvertent complicity with authoritarian discourses (2009, 67–69). One example of such complicity is Levi’s recurring homages to Ulysses as emblematic of the triumph of reason and of a humanity ennobled by this faculty, which fails to acknowledge any alternative reading of the wandering hero—for instance, as aligned with narratives of Fascist domination.13 As should be clear from this brief summary, these discussions of Levi’s humanism and posthumanism once again do not engage directly with his depictions of embodiment. I rehearse them here in order to provide an overview of relevant scholarship on Levi which acts as a grounding and springboard for my analysis, and to introduce ideas that I revisit from a different perspective. Indeed, I believe that a consideration of bodies and embodiment in Levi’s work can help to enlarge the discussion of his attitude towards Enlightenment thought in several ways—for example, with regard to embodied and transcendental knowledge. Both Levi’s conviction that knowledge is embodied and his interest in the mind/body relationship ultimately tie his version of reason to a specific self, located within a sociohistorical context, thus distancing him from problematic notions of the ahistorical, transcendental subject. In addition, while he remains faithful to an ideal of reason, this is not necessarily the same ideal as that debunked by the posthumanist thinkers cited by Druker. In fact, Levi’s depictions of technologically augmented, posthuman embodiment often resonate with Foucault or Adorno’s critiques of the hyper-rational society that has been seen to result from the extreme manifestation of Enlightenment principles; for example, Levi’s narratives of technologized individuals who experience an embodiment marked by alienation from themselves, from others, and from nature, and whose individuality bleeds away into the conformity of the horde, chime precisely with Adorno and Horkheimer’s denunciation of this (1997, 13). Here, some clarification of what is to be understood by the term ‘posthumanism’ seems necessary. ‘Posthumanism’ is a complex concept that implies a series of different, but linked, perspectives. For Druker, posthumanist thought is a critique of the Enlightenment (humanist) tradition. Secondly, posthumanist theory analyses the ways in which the organic human body may be modified through contact with technology and augmented through artificial means. Finally, posthumanism may indicate what Cary Wolfe has called a ‘postanthropocentric concept of the subject’ (2003, 11), a view that dissolves rigid boundaries between species and which considers the human being as part of a continuum of life rather than as utterly discrete from other life forms. While Levi’s work predates critical work on

8

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

this concept,14 we can identify all three modalities of posthumanism in his writing. Moreover, all three forms relate in some way to issues of embodiment, with the result that critical analysis of these issues can shed new light on Levi’s brand of humanism. As Foucault reminds us, we should avoid facilely conflating humanism with Enlightenment thought (1984, 43). We should also avoid blanket condemnations of Enlightenment thought that focus on particular manifestations of hyper-rationalistic logic, while seemingly forgetting the importance of its legacies in demystifying an episteme of superstition, faith, and irrationality, and enabling a more autonomous, critical reason to develop. Onora O’Neil has noted how ‘we live with two incompatible pictures of the European Enlightenment’: on the one hand, ‘a triumph of reason over superstition . . . a movement towards human liberty and equality, knowledge and progress’, and on the other, a ‘disenchanted world . . . ruled by modes of social domination more complete and intrusive than those of the old despotisms’ (O’Neil 1990, 186). Druker’s analysis of Levi’s position suggests that he was aware of this double legacy and had sympathy for both sides. An understanding of both humanism and Enlightenment thought as necessarily multiple and complex, as interlinked while distinct, means that it is perfectly possible to accept a definition of Levi as a secular humanist,15 who privileges reason over untested belief, but who also undermines certain extreme forms of Enlightenment thought that tend towards domination. In addition, my analysis suggests that the descriptor of Levi as a ‘humanist’ might be supplemented by that of ‘posthumanist’—understood in the fullest sense of the definitions provided previously. The valorization of individual embodiment in his work offers a posthumanist challenge to Enlightenment thought; his narratives of technologically modified subjects depict alienated, postorganic, posthuman beings; his work also includes many short stories in which nature and the animal kingdom are anthropomorphized and humans develop an intense affinity with the natural world—an example of postanthropocentric posthumanism. Of course, Levi’s writing also contains statements regarding the clear distinction between humans and animals; for example, in I sommersi e i salvati (1986 The Drowned and the Saved), he asserts that ‘tutte le razze umane parlano; nessuna specie non umana sa parlare’ [All human species speak; no non-human species knows how to speak] (SS II, 1060; DS, 69). Yet, just as his work both recuperates and undermines Enlightenment values, so his depictions of embodiment both support and refute an anthropocentric humanism. Alongside statements exalting humanity for its unique abilities we find a belief in the vital connections between humans and the natural world, as well as the anthropomorphization of animals and matter, and hybrid human beings, all of which challenge a purist notion of humanity as superior to other forms of life.16 Having situated my approach in relation to existing critiques of Levi’s writing, on which I build, it should be clear that this study departs significantly from previous analyses in its detailed consideration of the

Introduction

9

representation of bodies and embodiment in Levi’s work. Accordingly, I illuminate my discussion through reference to a range of theoretical and critical discourses of embodiment, many of which have not previously been linked to Levi’s thought.

BODIES OF THEORY Di quale natura sia il tenue legame che vincola l’anima al corpo. (LT I, 243) [What is the nature of the slender tie that binds the soul to the body?] (T, 225)

My critical framework may prove a surprise to some readers of Levi; however, Levi’s work itself explicitly invites links to be made with such discourses, and a consideration of his work in light of these theoretical tools enriches our interpretation and appreciation of his writing. Levi may at times distance himself from debates on the relationship between mind and body; for example, in the episode in La tregua (1963, The Truce) alluded to in the preceding citation, he associates philosophizing on the psyche/soma relationship uniquely with the dialogues of Mordo Nahum and his Greek compatriots before the war, far removed from his own circumstances as a recovering Auschwitz survivor. However, Levi’s writing arguably engages with precisely this question on numerous occasions. Perhaps the most expected of critical frameworks on which I draw is scholarship on post-Holocaust humanity. In line with my contention that for Levi, humanity is necessarily an embodied condition rather than an abstract concept, this scholarship does engage, even if at times obliquely, with the importance of our corporeal selves.17 For example, critical thought regarding the destruction of humanity in the Lager has argued that this process was both physical and spiritual, as not only were the prisoners’ material bodies destroyed, but also their culture and imagination; furthermore, in the case of Jews, their faith was desecrated (Rosenbaum 2006, 492). If being human entails not only inhabiting a physical body but also embodying socio-cultural practices through this form, then the erasure of identity and the process of human ‘degradation into a bundle of functions’ (Adorno 1973, 68) had an impact on the prisoners’ ability to relate to each other socially, to look at each other’s physicality, as a result of the shame that they felt at their own defi lement (Patterson 1999, 216). These ideas fi nd broader resonance in the philosophical writings of Emmanuel Levinas who emphasizes the importance of ethical face to face engagement because it instils in us a sense of responsibility for the protection of our fellow beings (Levinas 1998, 186).18 Our moral sense of duty to others here is channelled through the body, not through a disembodied Enlightenment concept of abstract, universal moral laws.

10

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

More specific analyses of post-Holocaust humanity that take into account the gendered and sexed character of human existence have been contested since the Nazi project was motivated primarily by genocidal, not gendered, objectives; however, men and women experienced their degradation in different ways, due to factors such as the targeting of reproductive capacities, making gender a valid focus for analysis (Levi and Rothberg 2003, 147).19 Moreover, as Klaus Theweleit has pointed out, social and cultural constructions of gender, especially problematic fantasies of masculinity, influenced the subjugation of citizens under Fascism (Theweleit 1987, 434). Constructions and fantasies of gender also impacted upon how the degradation of prisoners unfolded in the camps (Heinemann, 1986). Focussing on the process for survivors of regaining ‘human’ status, Anna Reading has argued that this too is a gendered process; her work includes an analysis of regained humanity in Levi’s testimonial writing as a reattainment of masculinity (Reading 2002, 70–73). Such analyses take the body and its particularity as a starting point, without disregarding broader issues already raised. In a discussion that overlaps explicitly with the next set of critical discourses I outline, those that focus on the body and embodiment more generally, Robert Eaglestone articulates clearly why it is important to engage with theories of embodiment when discussing humanity. He argues, it is the very fact of our humanness that gives meaning as said or as narrative to the human animal and, likewise, the human animal gives a site to the human . . . the meaning and identity of the body is determined by the culture that it is already within. However, at the same time, the body in its needs and very form serves to give not a meaning to but is that which underlies the human. The idea of the human and the human body defi ne one another. (Eaglestone 2004, 324) Levi’s approach to the body, embodiment, and what it means to be human resonates strongly with this view, which valorizes the material form as much as the culturally inscribed human practices which animate it, since our very existence depends on this form. Turning now to other theories of bodies and embodiment on which I draw, these range from Descartes’ approach to the mind/body problem to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective; from Freudian psychoanalysis, through R. D. Laing’s notion of the embodied and disembodied self, to the cognitive theories of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson; from nineteenth-century notions of the body as a machine to postmodern understandings of the body as a shifting, discursive construction; and fi nally from theories of cybernetics to discourses on posthumanisms and science fiction approaches to the body. The range of theoretical positions mentioned reveals the richness and complexity of Levi’s depictions of embodiment, which can be productively placed in dialogue with all these approaches to the phenomenon of the embodied self. The mention

Introduction

11

of psychoanalysis, in particular, may raise some eyebrows, especially given that Levi openly admitted his hostility to psychoanalysis as a methodology for understanding the self, criticizing it as simplistic and approximate. 20 However, while Levi criticized psychoanalysis, he was not able to dismiss it altogether: in the preface to La ricerca delle radici (1981, The Search for Roots), a self-compiled anthology of texts that influenced Levi’s thought, he reluctantly concedes, ‘per quanto amo negarlo, uno straccio di Es ce l’ho anch’io’ [however much I want to deny it, there is a trace of the id in me too] (RR II, 1363; SR, 5). Furthermore, in a 1981 interview about this anthology, he divulges that his writing is a nocturnal activity, ‘spesso affidato all’inconscio’ [often carried out by the unconscious] (Andreoli 1997, 124; VM, 99). His revelation that he wanted to call the anthology ‘Un modo diverso di dire io’ [Another Way of Saying I’] might even lead readers to view it as a literary realization of his ego: in Italian the word ‘io’ is the fi rstperson pronoun but also denotes the ego (Andreoli 1997, 124; VM, 99). Thus, despite ostensibly disavowing the validity of psychoanalysis as a heuristic tool for reading the self, on several occasions Levi specifically invites a psychoanalytic reading of his work, which, as I show, enables productive critical engagements with his writing. Theoretical and critical discourses serve in my discussion to analyse the multiple narratives of embodiment that Levi recounts, which engage quite consistently with two main, overlapping themes: fi rst, the mind/body relationship, and the valorization of the material body as a cognitive instrument; second, the boundaries of the body and the self, including a concern with the split subject and the augmented body of the posthuman subject. I suggest that Levi’s thought stands in contrast to Descartes’ assertion of the superiority of the mind (res cogitans) to the unreliable, leaky body (res extensa), and his claim that the mind could exist without the body (Descartes 1968, 156). Descartes’ knowing subject is not located within experience but claims transcendental, objective status (Bordo 1999, 61), the legacies of which can be traced in Enlightenment thought that similarly marginalizes the soma. As Adorno and Horkheimer put it, after the ‘extirpation of all natural residues because they are mythological’ the reasoning subject ‘must no longer be either body or blood, or soul’ but is ‘sublimated into the transcendental or logical subject’ (1997, 29). Against these views, Levi’s position aligns most nearly with that of cognitive theorists who argue that our reason itself is embodied: we can only experience what our embodiment allows us to experience. We can only conceptualize using conceptual systems grounded in our bodily experience. And we can only reason by means of our embodied, imaginative rationality. (Johnson 1999, 81) For cognitive theorists, the mind and body interact constantly with each other, and it is through this interaction that our consciousness and reason

12

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

have evolved: cognitive science shows that there is no such thing as autonomous reason, but reason develops from our bodily capacities of perception and movement (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 17). The conceptual systems to which this leads, such as our perceptions of spatial relations, are based on the body and are therefore influenced by the body’s form (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 30–34). This (anti-Cartesian) position can also be found in Freud’s assertion that our rational, conscious self is based on an image of our body: he declared that ‘the ego is fi rst and foremost a bodily ego’, constituted by a mental projection of the surface of the body (Freud 1989a, 636). Here, despite Freud’s concern with the topographies of the mind, the body is shown to retain pivotal importance. Indeed, the relationship between mind and body sketched by psychoanalysis suggests a continuum rather than a dualism, a ‘psychical corporeality’ that might be understood through a model of the mind/body relationship as analogous not to a container and its contents but to the Möbius strip. 21 If the thinking subject is to be embodied, then the harmonization of psyche and soma is necessary, which has been rendered challenging and elusive by dualistic thought. Levi displays a sustained interested in how, as well as the degree to which, the psyche and soma cohere. His writings are populated by individuals whose experiences of embodiment fall at various points on the sliding scale between secure embodiment, defi ned by wholeness and a feeling that that self is ‘spatially co-extensive with the body’ (Laing 1965, 41), and disembodiment, a feeling of being unreal, incoherent, insubstantial, ‘precariously differentiated from the rest of the world’ and potentially severed from the body (Laing 1965, 41). In this scenario, the body becomes an object, and the individual fi nds it hard to engage directly with the world around him or her (Laing 1965, 69), ultimately subscribing to a ‘false-self system’ in which the self feels ‘“dead”, unreal, false, mechanical’ (Laing 1965, 144). On balance, Levi’s work features many more examples of ‘disembodied’ than of spatially secure individuals, portraying the struggles of individuals to resist this fate of being made to feel ‘“dead”, unreal, false, mechanical’, who yearn for full ownership of their bodies and minds. In his testimonial writings, Levi recounts an embodiment defi ned by torment, in which the body is often conceptually separated from the self in an attempt at self-preservation, due to its physical abjection. It is perceived as ‘not I’, and as carrying the threat of annihilation (Kristeva 1982, 1). Thus the self becomes split, in this instance leading to a feeling of disembodiment. Split subjects recur in various guises in Levi’s work, including in representations of himself. We encounter Levi as a hybrid of scientist and literary author. Sometimes he describes himself as a ‘centauro . . . diviso in due metà’ [centaur . . . split in two] (Fadini 1997, 107; VM, 85), sometimes as a subject haunted by a shadowy Doppelgänger: a figure of displacement which has been analysed as combining the split, alienated Marxist subject with the Freudian split subject, doubling the self and projecting externally

Introduction

13

a phantasmatic alter ego (Webber 1996, 3, 15). Other forms of disembodiment, particularly in the later science fiction stories, include a perceived reification of the body in a hyper-rationalized society, which leads the subject to feel ‘mechanical’, or involves the perforation of the boundaries of the body by invasive technology. Interpretations of the significance of our bodily boundaries have changed dramatically over the centuries: from medieval conceptions of the body as earthy, open, sometimes engaged in grotesque and carnivalesque practices, as identified and theorized in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1984); to modern notions of the individual, closed, and controlled body that seeks stability in a rapidly changing world (Birkett 1999, 131; Berman 1988, 6); and finally to the postmodern body as a self-questioning and perpetually palimpsestically self-replacing tangle of energies, which finds its extreme formlessness in Jean Baudrillard’s declaration that the age of simulacra signals ‘the end of the body and of its history’.22 In this genealogy of ideas, the ‘openness’ of the carnivalesque body to others and to nature is replaced, at least in the early nineteenth century, by a more strictly delimited and bounded body, with a clear inside and outside, comparable to a piece of machinery (Armstrong 1998, 2, 78). Subsequently, this bounded, mechanized body is dissolved into the fragmented, socially and discursively constructed self theorized by Foucault and Judith Butler, among others (Birkett 1999, 129–32; Foucault 1977; Butler 1990).23 Through processes of ‘civilization’, discipline and the changing relationship between humans and technology brought about by the industrial revolution and supervening revolutions in micro-technology, the boundaries that contain the body have been reinforced and perforated in sometimes problematic ways. Unsurprisingly, such evolutions can be seen to have impacted in profound, and profoundly differing ways on how individuals inhabit and conceive of their bodies. The bodily boundary may, in both its symbolically perceived form and its actual physiological incarnation, serve alternately (or simultaneously?) to protect the individual or to isolate and alienate him or her from the external world. However it manifests itself, scholars have argued, the sense of existing within, or in relation to this boundary as a contained being, often permeates our understanding of ourselves and the world, shaping our perceptions of and relationship with our surroundings (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 29). Mary Douglas’ important work in this area has been read as suggesting that ‘everything, in fact, symbolises the body, and that the body symbolises everything else’, so that concern about social organization or groups may be reflected in degrees of anxiety about the boundaries of the body (Williams and Bendelow 1998, 27).24 Similarly, in Levi’s work the perceived boundaries of the body hold a range of meanings, all of which can be viewed as intersecting with concerns about social issues. Whether they serve to protect the self, calcify into a type of individual prison, or dissolve in an ecstasy of union with nature, each different manifestation of the borders of the physical body in Levi’s work is charged with significance

14

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

not only about the individual but also about the particular socio-cultural context in which she or he lives. Embodiment is also an issue that has been discussed in gendered terms. Polarizing and essentializing discourses of sex and gender, many of which have their roots in Enlightenment thought when advances in the study of anatomy and pathology encouraged an emphasis on the differences between the sexes, have led to a dichotomous, Cartesian model. This perspective associates men with rational, abstract thought, and women with the leaky, unreliable, transgressive body—an association that can trace its roots back further in time, to Renaissance notions of the wandering womb.25 A focus on women’s reproductive capacities and anatomies has resulted in their bodies being conceptualized as fluid and even problematically uncontainable, contrasted with the hard, male body. Levi’s position on this issue is ambiguous, since he speaks of all human bodies as multifariously experienced and constructed, potentially contained and uncontainable, but also narrates experiences of embodiment that are specifically determined by socio-culturally imposed norms of sex and gender. As I show, there is a non-gendered quality to his representations of embodiment that blurs conventional categories, which implies both an awareness of, and a blindness to, the ways in which embodiment is framed by discourses of sex and gender. Sensitivity to sex and gender imbalances in society is revealed in brief but charged moments in his fiction and testimonial writing, where the inequalities of social norms and behaviours are laid bare; however, at times this seems more accidental than by design. Moreover, when making statements that appear to be directed at human beings in a universal sense, he casually oscillates between use of the inclusive term ‘umano’ [human] and the term ‘uomo’ [man], which claims to represent human life but which is of course specifically allied with the male and therefore excludes or elides the female. This practice indicates that he remained largely insensitive to the inevitable androcentric bias in this use of the term ‘man’. I pay attention to the sexing and gendering of embodiment in his work, exploring his conventional and non-conventional depictions, and noting the implications in his use of gendered terminology. One area in which he seems to make overt statements regarding sex and gender imbalances in Western society is in relation to a boundary that permeates much of his fiction: the interface between humans and technology, and how this has altered or might affect perceived or actual boundaries of the body and the self. There is an established tradition of thought which insists that as well as giving us shape and dividing the self from the other and from the world, the boundaries of the body have always been open to redefi nition and to incorporating external elements. On a relatively simple level this modification to bodily boundaries occurs when we pick up a tool, which, Martin Heidegger argued, then becomes an extension of self (1964, 64). A closer incorporation of external elements was envisaged and explored by fi rst-wave cybernetics of the 1950s, which again demonstrated that ‘the

Introduction

15

boundaries of the human subject are constructed rather than given’ (Hayles 1999, 84), and may therefore be opened, altered, made permeable or united with non-organic components.26 Running parallel to and inspired by developments in scientific thought, science fiction conceptualizations of the technologically ‘improved’ body and medical interventions on our ‘real’ bodies have opened up spaces in which to explore hypothetical elaborations of the modified body. Through developments in technology and changes in the ways that the body is perceived, our somatic limits have been thoroughly remapped, and rendered porous. Armstrong has shown how, in modernist discourses, perceptions of the body underwent a dramatic shift, from early nineteenth-century understandings of the soma as ‘the machine in which the self lived’, closed and bounded by the skin which science, especially medicine, had not yet penetrated, to a post-Darwinian awareness of the body as potentially threatening to contemporary civilization: ‘Darwinian science suggested a substrate of primitive material within the body and brain, and aroused widespread fears of regression, destabilizing relations between self and world’ (Armstrong 1998, 3). As in Descartes’ thought, the body thus became a potential liability, but one that new technologies and knowledges strove to render stable and adequate to the challenges of modern living. Yet the ‘technological compensation’ offered (Armstrong 1998, 3) carried a further set of challenges which impacted on subjectivity and embodiment, as organic energy and impulses were effectively placed in competition with mechanical power, which swiftly seemed to gain the upper hand. As Berman comments, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ‘it appear[ed] that some very important kinds of human feeling [were] dying, even as machines [were] coming to life’ (Berman 1988, 25). Levi’s fiction dramatizes the interface of humans and machines, depicting instances of alienation in factory or industrialized settings where indefatigable machines seem to outstrip the tired workers, whose very movements are controlled by seemingly endless restrictions. 27 Technology here is a disciplinary power, creating ‘docile bodies’, which are obedient to imposed orders that are normalized over time (Foucault 1977, 138). Levi also narrates the interface between human beings and technologies that augment the body’s capabilities, such as devices fitted into the body, or that alter the biological processes of birth, reproduction, and death. However, rather than a positive addition, these extensions function largely as repressive devices that threaten or eclipse the freedoms promised by Western democracies. In both the more familiar industrialized setting and futuristic scenarios, Levi’s work seems driven by a concern about a creeping form of annihilation akin to that which he describes in the Lager, in which humans are emptied of their personalities, creative potential, and freedom of movement, and ultimately also of their thought. This concern is as much a criticism of the past and present (Levi’s present), as a warning about the future. Indeed, Berman’s concerns that during nineteenth- and early twentieth-century industrialization machines

16

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

seemed more dynamic than the humans that created them are echoed in philosopher of science Donna Haraway’s laments that in the age of nanotechnology, ‘our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert’ (Haraway 1991, 152). Critical and theoretical work on this issue, and on which I draw, ranges from Norbert Wiener’s writings on early cybernetics (Wiener 1954) to recent studies of posthumanism (Wolfe 2010). Cyborg beings (cybernetic organisms) inspired by cybernetic experiments, whether ‘real’ or fictional, are generally understood as a human being that is seamlessly united with an intelligent machine, in which the boundaries between organic and inorganic have become porous. In contrast, the category of ‘posthuman’ is more flexible and has potentially fewer visible, distinguishing features. As Hayles points out, ‘it is important to recognize that the construction of the posthuman does not require the subject to be a literal cyborg’, but simply a human with an altered consciousness (Hayles 1999, 4). In this view, posthumanity shifts defi nitions of what it means to be human without necessarily impacting on the physical boundary of the body. Critical thinkers such as Hayles and Haraway have noted that in contemporary Western culture humans interact ever more closely with smaller and more ergonomic technologies, which exert an influence on our subjectivities through the organization of social life and especially of working conditions. Although ostensibly designed to augment our quality of life, these technologies may lead to the alienation of the individual through the rationalization of society, but also the rationalization of the body itself. Cartesian dualism remains a point of reference as discourses of the mind/body split persist, positing virtual reality (akin to abstract thought) as superior to material life, constrained as it is by the limits of lived ‘reality’. The material body, our fleshy container which Levi argues is vital for the development of our intellectual capacities, remains largely devalued, although, in an interesting consumeristic twist, it can be ‘enhanced’ through recourse to technology and becomes a potentially coveted form of fashion accessory (Hayles 1999, 5). Hayles’ work on posthumanism provides a productive framework through which to analyse Levi’s work, especially in relation to her valorization of physical embodiment in an era of virtual experience. She warns that ‘embodiment can be destroyed but it cannot be replicated’ (Hayles 1999, 48). Yet she is certainly not unswervingly opposed to technological development. Like Levi, she calls not for a halt to this development, but for an ethical framework that would support particular technologies that protect the autonomous, fully embodied individual—technologies that are to be clearly distinguished from those which erode individual autonomy (Hayles 1999, 100). However, recent work on posthumanism, which informs the fi nal chapter of the book in particular, has shifted away from Hayles’ account of posthumanism that sketches a chronology in which the (technologized) posthuman comes after the human, towards a recognition that we may always already have been posthuman.28 Against an understanding of

Introduction

17

posthumanism as necessarily situated in a cybernetic era, even if the body itself is not rendered a literal cyborg, scholars such as Bruno Latour have posited alternative notions of ‘nonmodern’ bodily morphism and hybridity as ways of understanding bodily evolutions, which are not tied to a teleological model of posthumanism as resulting from successive industrial and technological developments.29 However, despite these divergences in understandings of the genealogy of posthumanism, the thinkers on which I draw, including Haraway, Hayles, and Wolfe, can be linked by as common stance, which might be defi ned as broadly anti-Enlightenment in their critiques of disembodied, ahistorical, pseudo-objective reason as the uniquely privileged source of knowledge. While some theories of posthuman ontology, such as ‘transhumanism’, seek to valorize and reinscribe their derivation from ‘ideals of human perfectibility, rationality, and agency inherited from Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment’ (Wolfe 2010, xiii), Hayles, Wolfe, and Haraway problematize the fetishization of rational efficiency and the drive to disembodiment identifiable in some discourses of posthumanism. Thus while their thought originates in quite different moments and traditions to Levi’s writing, their critical positions on posthumanism resonate with and interrogate Levi’s work in illuminating ways. Hayles’ work is also helpful to this study thanks to her perspective as an interdisciplinary scholar; for example, like Levi, she argues for the importance of identifying and privileging the connections between literature and science as reciprocally influential fields of knowledge and activity (Hayles 1999, 21). In her analysis of discourses of posthumanity, she reflects on both scientific and literary texts but comments of the latter that they offer considerably greater resistance to ‘abstraction and disembodiment’ than do theoretical writing: ‘with its chronological thrust, polymorphous digressions, locations actions and personified agents, narrative is a more embodied form of discourse than is analytically driven systems theory’ (Hayles 1999, 22). In what follows, I suggest that literary narrative performs exactly this function for Levi, allowing him to valorize individual freedoms, subjectivity and embodied experience to a far greater extent than his scientific work would ever have allowed him to do. Moreover, as a testimonial author, and one who weaves autobiography into many of his texts—essays, journalism, and hybrid texts such as Il sistema periodico (1975, The Periodic Table)—Levi is arguably the epitome of an embodied author, who stands in contrast to Roland Barthes’ arguments for the ‘death of the author’ (Barthes, 2000). If, as Jane Gallop has suggested, the ‘death of the author’ is ‘a way of separating the text from any human who might have lived in a body’ (Gallop 1988, 19), then we might read Levi’s work as insisting on the value and inevitability of the author’s material, embodied presence, and on the value of human beings in general as constituted by and reliant upon this very materiality. As Levi observes, ‘un essere umano è un oggetto tremendamente complicato’ [a human being is a tremendously complicated thing] (Greer 1985).30 In my analysis of his depictions of human beings, I

18 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment investigate not only how he engages with and represents this complexity, but also how it both relies on and shapes the materiality of the body.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK The book falls into two parts. Part I considers questions of ontology and epistemology as they relate to notions of embodiment and/as containment, with a focus on Levi’s testimonial and autobiographical writing, and on essays that relate predominantly to the ‘real’. Part II continues to reflect on embodiment and containment, but its focus is on bodily mutations and modifications, both mythic and posthuman, predominantly in Levi’s fiction, but also in his essays. Unsurprisingly, there are significant resonances between the two parts. In Part I, the fi rst three chapters explore Levi’s definition of the human being as the maker or discursive invoker of containers in relation to his accounts of: the mind/body relationship; the destruction of humanity in the camps; language and linguistic expression; conceptions of knowledge; the disciplinary fields of science and literature. Chapter 1 identifies how the metaphor and conceptual image of the container figures across Levi’s work as it relates to his defi nitions of human beings. I begin with an account of the key essay ‘Una bottiglia di sole’ and proceed to trace the concept of the container as it appears throughout Levi’s œuvre, while critically evaluating and problematizing the implications of his use of this concept. Through a discussion of contrasting models of embodiment I identify two main modalities in Levi’s work: the contained body in which the self resides, and an understanding of the human subject as an uncontainable tangle of energies. These modalities of embodiment evoke a range of critical interpretations, from Cartesian to postmodern thought. Significantly, there is a degree of slippage and overlap between these conceptions of embodiment in Levi’s writing, complicating any (in my view misguided) attempt to pin him down in one camp or other, and opening the way for the proliferation of contrasting narratives of embodiment considered in subsequent chapters. Having sketched a broad overview of Levi’s representations of bodies, in Chapter 2 I discuss modalities of embodiment in his testimonial works, particularly Se questo è un uomo and I sommersi e i salvati, engaging with the demolition of the human being and the reattainment of ‘human’ status. I consider critical debates on key concepts such as zoē/bios, and the figure of the Muselmann. To analyse these issues I employ Kristeva’s theories of abjection, together with critical work on introjection and the discursively constructed self, and the creation of the coherent, symbolic self. This chapter also introduces issues of gender, which reappear in the second part of the book, and which here are considered in relation to Levi’s depictions of both dehumanized prisoners and the process of ‘rehumanization’ that occurs on his voyage home, narrated in La tregua.

Introduction

19

In Chapter 3 I analyse Levi’s engagements with language and with bodies of knowledge; however, the material body nevertheless remains a focus. Building on the discussion of Cartesian dualism already outlined, this chapter argues that for Levi, both language and knowledge emanate from or are mediated by the body; thus his approach seeks to heal the psyche/ soma rift. Moving between the overlapping terrains of thought, language, and knowledge, I explore how in Levi’s work, the body acts as a sort of ‘contenitore di processo’ [processing container] (RS II, 959). It functions as an enabling host to a process of radically embodied intellectual reflection and realization, which transcends the body and our conscious selves in compelling, telling ways through the involuntary expression of our unconscious: the unconscious of the individual, of language and of knowledge itself. I draw on the partially autobiographical texts Il sistema periodico, La chiave a stella (1978, The Wrench), the anthology La ricerca delle radici and the collection of essays L’altrui mestiere (1985, Other People’s Trades), as examples of embodied texts that seek, among other objectives, to narrate Levi’s self. These texts include explicit comments on the ‘Two Cultures’ debates, on the relationship between science and literature, and aim to break down perceived barriers between science, literature, and technology. The negotiations of containment discussed here relate to disciplinary fields, but also to the halves of Levi’s divided self as he narrates them. Part II is prefaced by a brief Foreword outlining Levi’s approach to science fiction writing as an engaged way to hypothesize futuristic, but possible, mutations of the human body. Chapters 4 to 7 consider Levi’s depictions of bodies and embodiment in his futuristic and fantastic writing. These include his accounts of posthuman bodies, whose organic substance has been ‘augmented’ in some way by non-organic technologies, or postanthropocentric bodies that undergo mythical metamorphoses. The texts analysed—essays, stories, and novels—date almost entirely from the latter part of Levi’s writing career, from 1966 onwards. Often, these bodies are depicted as containers which have in some way been invasively permeated or suffocatingly sealed off, rendering life less ‘human’. I begin in Chapter 4 by discussing the prosthetic enlargement of the human body, from extrabodily implements that are absorbed into the human image, to machinery onto which humans project sentience, or in which they divine it, and fi nally to apparently sentient artificial being such as robots. I draw on the work of Elaine Scarry, Marx, and Kristeva to explore Levi’s narratives of sentience in machines as potentially both reassuring and terrifying. The human body figures as one of a series of containers, and the alienated, multiple self confronts the, often fraught, interface of the ‘I’ with the ‘not-I’ (using Kristeva’s terminology). Both Chapters 5 and 6 discuss Levi’s science fiction narratives of the technologization and bureaucratization of the human body and consciousness, and of human processes such as reproduction, birth, and death. The ‘not I’ of the sentient machine begins to encroach ever more closely on the

20 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment human body, conditioning human existence in terms of both psyche and soma, often reproducing a negative Cartesian split as the body is no longer felt to belong to or to be in the control of the individual. This is the biopoliticized body whose very form is at stake in socio-political discourses and practices. I explore ‘couplings’ between organic humans and technological apparatuses, and the relationship between sexed and gendered bodies and technological devices, which tend to render the body a rigid container, alienating the individual from ‘human’ relationships with others, often repressing sexuality, or rendering it problematic. Finally, Chapter 7 explores a more positive form of posthumanism, or postanthropocentrism, that is inspired by mythology as much as by scientific innovation. Levi recounts the spontaneous metamorphosis of bodies in a way that recalls classical mythology but often has a contemporary twist. His work throngs with hybrid beings, already discussed in relation to concepts of the dual or multiple self, here figured in literal form as bodies grow wings and mutate. This fi nal chapter analyses the most postmodern and the most sexualized of Levi’s narratives of embodiment, with bodies that, in one instance, actually dissolve during sexual intercourse. However, I argue that these bodies and selves do not aspire to total etherealization, but retain a keen sense of the heuristic value of embodiment which permeates Levi’s work.

Part I

Ontologies and Epistemologies

1

Containers and Their Contents l’uomo è costruttore di recipienti; una specie che non ne costruisce, per defi nizione non è umana. (RS II, 958) [Man is a builder of receptacles; a species that does not build any is not human by defi nition.] (OPT, 19)

In the late essay ‘Una bottiglia di sole’, which appears in the 1986 collection Racconti e saggi, Levi meditates on what constitutes a human being. If one only considers those alive today, there is, he feels, no ambiguity about which beings are human and which are not; it is only when we look back into the past that doubts spring up regarding the point at which we became ‘human’. Was it when our ancestors began to walk upright, or when the institutions of marriage and justice were established? In other words, is it a question of physiological evolution or of socio-cultural development? Rather than answering this question by recourse to Darwinian evolutionary theory, which we might have expected given his sympathies,1 Levi provides the curious defi nition of a human being cited previously, that humans possess a unique ability and propensity to construct receptacles or containers. He goes on to explain that this activity is symptomatic of two vital human characteristics: the capacity to think of the future and the capacity to predict the behaviour of material placed within these containers. Significantly, this was certainly not the first time that he had reflected on the importance of constructing certain types of container, which may serve to protect the self, enveloping the body and easing the mind. We might consider this observation from Se questo è un uomo, published nearly forty years earlier: La facoltà umana di scavarsi una nicchia, di secernere un guscio, di erigersi intorno una tenue barriera di difesa, anche in circostanze apparentemente disperate, è stupefacente, e meriterebbe uno studio approfondito. Si tratta di un prezioso lavorio di adattamento, in parte passivo e inconscio, e in parte attivo . . . In virtù di questo lavoro . . . si riesce a raggiungere un certo equilibrio, un certo grado di sicurezza, di fronte agli imprevisti, ci si è fatto un nido, il trauma del travasamento è superato. (SQ I, 50) [The human capacity to dig oneself in, to secrete a shell, to build around oneself a tenuous barrier of defence even in apparently desperate circumstances, is astonishing and merits a serious study. It is based

24

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment on an invaluable activity of adaptation, partly passive and unconscious and partly active . . . By virtue of this work . . . one manages to gain a certain equilibrium, a certain degree of security in face of the unforeseen; one has made oneself a nest, the trauma of the transplantation is over.]2

As critics have noted, both Se questo è un uomo and other of Levi’s writings display a pronounced anthropological character, which here is articulated in the attention to the human capacity for adaptation (Belpoliti and Gordon 2007, 56).3 More specifically, it is an adaptation that involves negotiations of containment. If we look across Levi’s writings, the frequency with which he refers to containers, shells, barriers, boundaries, and niches, in relation to human embodiment and cultural practices, indicates that the allusion to containing structures here is not merely a casual observation; it is part of a discourse on contained embodiment, or embodiment as containment, that runs through his work and thought. Taking inspiration from Levi’s conviction, expressed previously, that this process deserves close attention, in this chapter I identify and discuss instances of container building and the container metaphor at work in Levi’s writing, in relation to his representations of human life, the body, embodiment, and humanity more generally. I begin by considering the concept of containers and containment as posited in Levi’s essay ‘Una bottiglia di sole’ and then move on to reflect more broadly on his testimonial writing and his essays. Throughout the chapter, I argue that Levi’s accounts of embodiment are multiple and potentially contradictory, displaying both materially bounded and postmodern, discursive characteristics, but that all relate to the human condition as one marked by negotiations of containment.

CONTAINING THE UNCONTAINABLE Despite the assured tone of the definition of a human being that Levi gives in ‘Una bottiglia di sole’, it is far from watertight, since, as he admits, this does not constitute clear grounds on which to distinguish us from animals: bees, ants, and some birds also make containers. However, he argues that humans are set apart from these species by virtue of the great leaps we have made in our technical ability to build specialized containers, while the bees are still reproducing the same traditional form. Levi then proceeds to list various and vastly diverse types of human-made container which boast a range of characteristics, from openness of access (a bag or a basket), to the facilitating of certain processes (such as a cooking pot), to necessary impenetrability (as, for example, required by a lead capsule containing radioactive waste). It becomes clear through his comments that Levi has deliberately drawn together a class of objects that, like animals and plants, defy the categorization we instinctively wish to impose upon them. Thus,

Containers and Their Contents 25 just as it is impossible to provide a defi nite chronological borderline that delimits or contains the advent of human life as we know it, the containers we construct—in a process which apparently renders us human—defy containment. The infi nitely diverse nature of the containers described enables them to permeate the boundaries of kind or type; they share characteristics with the selectively permeable recipients Levi subsequently enumerates, such as mosquito nets, water fi lters, and window blinds. Thus the category of ‘container’ acts as an epistemological meta-container which itself might form part of Levi’s list—a postmodern, self-conscious, self-reflective category of receptacles that invite critical interrogation of both their validity as ‘containers’ and of the very process of systematic classification. By indirectly highlighting the difficulties of categorization, Levi’s list shares qualities with Jorge Luis Borges’ discussion of an entry in a Chinese encyclopaedia which divides animals into apparently random, highly idiosyncratic categories, such as the fabulous; the innumerable; those that have just broken a vase; those that from a long way off look like flies (Borges 1964). Borges’ list was cited as a key inspiration by Foucault in his Preface to The Order of Things (2000), a text that reflects critically on genealogies of classification. Foucault relished the list for the disconcerting way in which it juxtaposed ‘real’ with ‘imaginary’ categories, containing the uncontainable in the only place this tenuous containment can work: ‘in the non-place of language’ (Foucault 2000, xvii). As explored in Chapter 3, Levi was similarly fascinated by the myriad ways in which language functions to contain meaning, or in which meaning transcends the limitations of words themselves, which might also have figured on Levi’s list of semi-permeable containers. While Levi’s engagements with categorization evoke the work of thinkers such as Borges and Foucault, his defi nition of human beings as the makers of containers may seem particular to him; indeed, in her biography Carole Angier suggests that it is uniquely his (Angier 2002, 684). However Levi’s defi nition resonates with other earlier and contemporary analyses of human life, to some of which he briefly or obliquely alludes in ‘Una bottiglia del sole’: for example, Levi’s comparison of the building abilities of humans and bees recalls Marx’s distinction between bees and architects, on the grounds that the latter plan their buildings before erecting them while bees do not (Marx 1976, 284). Levi also asks whether the label of ‘Homo’ began to apply to us when we developed the ability to make tools (RS II, 958; OPT, 19), evoking the term homo faber, which for Hannah Arendt describes humans as fabricators of human art, craft, and technology (Arendt 1958, 80).4 This point has been argued by anthropologists who have defi ned the human being as ‘a social animal, distinguished by “culture”: by the ability to make tools and communicate ideas’ (Oakley 1967, 1). In line with such arguments, Levi’s containers can be seen as a delimited subset of the generic category of ‘tools’; yet for Levi, as for Marx in his discussion of architecture, tools or constructions are not

26

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

simply implements that enable individuals to complete a task in the present moment, to serve an immediate need, but rather they are designed around the capacities for future planning and prediction which until recently were held by scientists to be particular to human beings.5 Containers created by humans reveal a sophisticated understanding of, and an ability to predict (to a greater or lesser extent), fi rst, what changes may occur in external circumstances which might render a container necessary, and second, what kind of relationship there might be between substances within these containers and the material of which the receptacle is made, which would affect the type of material employed or eventual reactions between the two substances. As regards the second aspect of the anthropological defi nition, the communication of ideas, specialists have argued that, uniquely, we usually arrange our ideas into, or understand them as pertaining to, different categories. Indeed, it has been suggested that our tendency to compartmentalize information is the most significant characteristic particular to humans: ‘we are symbolic creatures . . . Only human beings, as far as we know, mentally divide up the world around them into discrete entities to which names are given’ (Tattersall 2007, 133). As suggested previously, these entities, classifications, or conceptual categories, may also be viewed as types of virtual container. In the essay ‘Una bottiglia di sole’, Levi’s definition of the human being is largely based on the containment of tangible objects (although light and air are also implicitly referenced as substances to be contained), distinguishing his approach from the symbolic imposition of conceptual categories on the world. However, the Borgesian quality of his list fi rst evokes and then unravels the concept of symbolic classification by showing how the criteria for items included within a particular category may be based on a highly subjective logic—one that, in this case, includes as types of container everything from tins for conserving food, to letter boxes, to water filters, to barbed wire fences to prevent prisoners from escaping. Levi seems to be claiming indirectly that almost all the objects around us, from buildings to coffee pots, fall into the category of container. Indeed, he goes as far as to assert that the issue of containment has become a central defi ning concern of our epoch: ‘il nostro avvenire energetico, ossia il nostro avvenire tout court, dipende esclusivamente dalla soluzione di un problema di recipienti’ [our energy future, that is, our future tout court, depends exclusively on the solution of a receptable problem] (RS II, 961; OPT, 22, original emphasis). From the humble coffee pot to the ‘bottle of sunshine’ referred to in the title—a ‘container’ for the process of obtaining energy from hydrogen through fusion, which would probably be a magnetic field rather than any tangible receptacle—Levi sketches a view of human life as animated by the recurring challenge of containment. His examples range from banal but telling everyday items to the ‘bottle of sunshine’, which potentially threatens the survival of the human race. Despite this extreme divergence of implications, however, he suggests that we should view all

Containers and Their Contents 27 the containers he mentions, from physical containers to conceptual categories, as forming part of a continuum, as different varieties of the same phenomenon. In this vein, two thinkers who engage with the creation of symbolic categories as a uniquely human ability, but who root their remarks fi rmly in the material, are socio-linguists and cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. They argue that we constantly create metaphorical containers; indeed, ‘even when there is no natural physical limit which could help to define a container, we impose limits, dividing a territory in such a way that it has an internal part and an external surface’ (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 29). In their view, this is because the container concept is a vital heuristic device for understanding and coming to terms with ourselves as embodied beings. Significantly, Lakoff and Johnson trace the desire for delimited areas back to our engagements with our bodies, asserting, Each of us is a container with a surface which sets its limits in an insideoutside direction. We project our inside-outside direction on to all other physical objects which are bounded by surfaces, and we conceive them as containers with an inside and an outside. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 29) In this account of the body as a delimited phenomenon, the container model applies not only to our bodies, but also to houses, rooms, solid objects, fields of knowledge—the list is potentially endless and would include all the containers mentioned by Levi in ‘Una bottiglia di sole’, as well as the disciplinary fields of science and literature that he criticised as being arbitrarily and unhelpfully divided. Here, Lakoff and Johnson claim that our ongoing interest in identifying and creating containers stems from our conceptions of our physical selves; our view of the world is shaped by our perception of our bodies as bounded, with an inside and outside. Other critical views that resonate with and may have inspired this perspective include Douglas’ work on the boundaries of the body (Douglas 1970) and the psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu’s concept of the skin ego: ‘a mental representation of the experience of the body’s surface used by the infant’s emerging ego in order to construct itself as a container capable of containing psychic contents’ (Lafrance 2010). Of course, contrasting discourses have emphasized not the boundedness of the body, but its openness to prosthetic extension or its unstable, postmodern, discursive, immaterial constitution (Howson 2004, 6). In my reading of Levi’s work, taking the essay ‘Una bottiglia di sole’ as a starting point, it is possible to trace the container metaphor through Levi’s writing, revealing sustained discourses on embodiment and human existence as negotiated containment, within which these differing theoretical views on contained and uncontainable embodiment jostle together. Significantly, while, on the one hand, I identify a varied panorama of potential modalities of embodiment, they all share a concern for the location and quality of the boundaries of, within, and around the body.

28 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment (UN)CONTAINED BODIES Among Levi’s multiple narratives of embodiment, we might identify two broad, variegated strands. One strand describes the contained self as posited by Lakoff and Johnson, housed within the protective barrier of the body; but it also narrates how the self then replicates this barrier in the world around it to increase its security, or capacities, a process culminating in the incorporation of the tool into the body image as a ‘vital’ element of our embodied humanity. A second strand reveals Levi’s interest in the divided self, which may be a hybrid of two clearly distinct halves, a dual being, or a chaotic mixture of diverse elements in tension with one another. Both forms of self are also located within a context delimited by a variety of different boundaries, from the symbolic to the very concrete. In Levi’s writing, all of these containers can have negative repercussions or significance, when they function to imprison us or to curtail our freedoms; yet some of the containers that he evokes are further instances of the semipermeable containers listed in ‘Una bottiglia di sole’, since they allow, and sometimes even encourage, productive interactions between substances and individuals, between the body and the world. Beginning with the broader context, Levi remarks that, as human beings, we are limited by our finite nature, penned into an imperfect present by the inevitable, delimiting boundary of death (SQ I, 11; IM, 23). Aside from our imperfect human condition, additional negative forms of containment are inflicted upon us; the most extreme example of this in Levi’s experience was physical imprisonment, which led him to state defi nitively that ‘human beings are not made to be contained. That is why . . . prison is the worst and oldest punishment’.6 The threat of being imprisoned reappears many times in Levi’s work, whether by external factors or imprisonment of the self within the body, a scenario which recurs most frequently in his science fiction stories as the soma is mechanized and rationalized, hardening around the alienated psyche contained within it. One clear example of this is the metallic protective suit that characters are forced to wear in the 1971 story ‘Protezione’ [Protection].7 Further constricting situations range from threatening crowds to social responsibilities, as Levi also implicitly applies the metaphor of containment to less tangible and harmful situations, such as our location within social and cultural networks. An example of threatening containment appears in the 1959 poem ‘Erano cento’ [There Were a Hundred] (AOI II, 539; CP, 23), as one hundred shadowy men encircle and slowly close in around the narrator. The figures are menacing in their refusal to reply and their robotic control of their gestures (‘Le loro palpebre non battevano’ [Their eyelids did not flicker]), as though they were an army of uncanny automata, engaged in a slow but unstoppable campaign of imprisonment. In contrast, socio-cultural delimitation is exemplified in Levi’s declaration in a 1986 interview with Philip Roth that ‘family, home, factory are good things in themselves, but they deprived me of something that I still miss; adventure’

Containers and Their Contents 29 (Roth 2001, 19). The containment of the individual, and of his or her desires and wanderlust by the constraints of work, kinship ties, and the home clearly represents a significantly different level of infringement of liberty to physical imprisonment, yet this may nevertheless function to effectively ‘imprison’ an individual, preventing or impeding movement, growth, and change. Without wishing in any way to belittle the trauma of imprisonment in the camps, which hovers behind all Levi’s accounts of imprisonment, I believe we can see this form of socio-cultural containment as a further example of life as marked by negotiations of containment, which falls on a continuum with other, more and less extreme forms. As regards more positive representations of containers as protective structures, Levi makes several statements which echo the passage from Se questo è un uomo cited at the beginning of this chapter, emphasizing the human capacity to build containers, nests, and barriers, and its need of them as a form of self-defence. On a very fundamental level, in the Lager, the protective layer of clothing is perceived to offer some degree of security not only against the cold, but against attack, against dehumanization and humiliating nudity, symbolizing ‘civilized’ humanity as opposed to prehuman, inferior life forms: Un uomo nudo e scalzo si sente i nervi e i tendini recisi: è una preda inerme. Gli abiti, anche quelli immondi che venivano distribuiti, anche le scarpacce dalla suola di legno, sono una difesa tenue ma indispensabile. Chi non li ha non percepisce piú se stesso come un essere umano, bensì come un lombrico: nudo, lento, ignobile, prono al suolo. Sa che potrà essere schiacciato ad ogni momento. (SS II, 1080) [A naked, barefoot man feels that all his nerves and tendons are severed: he is a helpless prey. Clothes, even the foul clothes that were distributed, even the cruel clogs with their wooden soles, are a tenuous but indispensable defence. Anyone who does not have them no longer perceives himself [sic] as a human being but rather as a worm, naked, slow, ignoble, prone on the ground. He knows that he can be crushed at any moment.] (DS, 90) Aside from the symbolic layer of clothing, which offers no real protection from violence or death but which is felt to provide safety, there are multiple ways to create a defensive shell around the self. Here, Levi gives three specifi c examples of the practice of creating a protective container: di piantare un chiodo sopra la cuccetta per appendervi le scarpe di notte; di stipulare taciti patti di non aggressione coi vicini; di intuire e accettare le consuetudini e le leggi del singolo Kommando e del singolo Block. (SQ I, 50)

30

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment [of hammering in a nail above one’s bunk to hang one’s shoes on at night; of concluding tacit pacts of non-aggression with neighbours; of understanding and accepting the customs and laws of a single Kommando, a single Block.]8

Such apparently simple acts have potentially lifesaving consequences. First, hanging up one’s shoes is not merely practical, but could save them from being stolen and therefore prevent potentially fatal injuries to the feet. The importance of shoes for survival is underlined in Levi’s account of his torturous journey home from the camps to Turin, La tregua, by the inimitable Greek, Mordo Nahum (LT I, 233; T, 215). Second, establishing peace with your neighbours and knowing which rules to abide by might also prevent death. Levi’s shell, niche, or barrier, then, may be material and visible, such as a shelter, clothing, or a symbolically delimited private space; it may be interpersonal, such as the establishing of personal boundaries with others; or it may involve memorizing and then embodying certain actions or practices, through what Foucault theorized as the disciplining of the subject through internalized self-surveillance (Foucault 1977, 195–228). Levi implicitly includes the body as a potential material element in the construction of the protective container, which may be static, or constituted by an enacted behaviour. These careful processes of creating a shell around the self might be interpreted through different but overlapping theoretical frameworks—for example, Gaston Bachelard’s theory that human beings retreat into nests or shells in order to feel safe, coupled with his observation that the body itself might be viewed as ‘as assemblage of shells’ (Bachelard 1994, 113); or Elaine Scarry’s observations on the shelter as functioning to relieve pressure on the protective ‘wall’ of the bodily boundary by erecting a further layer, whether material or immaterial. She explains, walls, for example, mimic the body’s attempt to secure for the individual a stable internal space—stabilizing the temperature so that the body spends less time in this act; stabilizing the nearness of others so that the body can suspend its rigid and watchful postures; acting in these and other ways like the body so that the body can act less like a wall. (Scarry 1985, 39) Both perspectives posit that humans create or construct material and immaterial protective structures, in the world around them as well as of their bodies. Such frameworks enable us to analyse the actions and behaviours that Levi describes as ‘shells’ or ‘walls’ of a sort which function as supplementary boundaries around the body, relieving the pressure on our physical form as fi rst line of defence, lessening the degree to which the boundaries of the body are exposed. In Scarry’s analysis, as a consequence of this enlargement of bodily boundaries the individual is free(r) to project him or herself into the world, to shift the focus from protection of the

Containers and Their Contents 31 body to what surrounds it—free to turn his or her attention to the work of civilization, in which the body is supplemented by other protective layers (homes, clothes, social behaviours), and by prosthetic appendages. During this process, the limits of our physical form evolve, and our very physicality assumes an altered significance. Adorno and Horkheimer would argue that this development involves a forgetting of the body, a suppressing of our flesh and blood selves as ‘prehistory’ that is replaced by the rational, ‘civilized’ Enlightenment subject (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 29). Instances of this prosthetic enlargement as a process of progressive evolution, or in Freud’s words, a ‘perfecting’ of the human body (Freud 1961, 90), are found in Levi’s testimonial work; for example, implements of ‘civilized’ life, such as the spoon, become vital markers of humanity that are absorbed into an ideal body image. Without the spoon, Levi tells us, prisoners in the camps are forced to lap their soup like animals (SS II, 1080; DS, 90). Just as the shell, shelter, or ‘walls’ provide necessary protection for the body, so implements such as this function in a cognate fashion to prevent the individual subject being reduced to an ‘unaccommodated . . . poor, bare, forked, animal’,9 signifying a distinction between human and beast. Levi’s anthropological observation of the human propensity to build barriers around the self, and interest in the relationship between the self and these ‘walls’, continues after he returns from the camps. On a large scale, he describes his home, Turin, as the city ‘dove mi sono scavato la nicchia’ [where I carved a niche for myself].10 Strikingly, he takes up precisely the same vocabulary he used in the earlier passage on the human capacity for adaptation (SQ 1, 50). On a more intimate scale, there are other ‘niches’, the house and the body itself, which Levi maps onto one another by drawing an analogy between the architectural contours of his home and his physical form, comparing the inner containing boundary of his body to the outer container, the walls of his house. He states: ‘Abito a casa mia come abito all’interno della mia pelle’ [I live in my house as I live inside my skin] (AM II, 636; OPT, 5). This statement occurs in the 1985 essay ‘La mia casa’ [My House] (AM II, 633–36; OPT, 1–5), a light-hearted discussion of Levi’s account of his particular relationship to his home in Turin, and of how he rather passively remained throughout his life within an unremarkable apartment that he made little attempt to personalize.11 Due to his long residence, Levi has become so accustomed to his surroundings that the thought of moving to even another area of Turin seems as unnatural as exchanging his skin for that of another (AM II, 636; OPT, 5). Like a miniature ecosystem, ‘La mia casa’ contains the germs of several key themes that spread and mutate across Levi’s work. First, Levi’s sedentary relationship to his house is linked through metaphor to biological organisms—molluscs in their shells. The house then becomes a ‘macchina per abitare’ [machine for living] (AM II, 633; OPT, 2), a functionally minimalist apparatus, pared down to the basic necessities for day to day existence. Next, it is personified as an old friend. This is followed by an

32

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

explanation of how our domestic spaces can function as mnemonic aids if we invest each corner with a different projected fact. Levi’s house is deeply invested with memory, a historical palimpsest in which he can detect the ghostly traces of his past. Finally, the house becomes his own skin. In only a very few pages, a stone structure is presented as a biomorph and a machine; characterized as a friend and used as an external model for the structure of human memory; identified as the unfl inching backdrop for a gamut of historical events of which it bears the scars like a ‘veteran’ (AM II, 633; OPT, 1) and fused with Levi himself. As a result, the house becomes animated by its perceived metamorphoses and reveals a great deal about human life because it is so saturated with human life. Here, Levi’s account of his house evokes several discourses on the relationship between human subjects and their home. First, Freud’s remarks on the symbolism of the home as a replacement for the lost womb, ‘the fi rst lodging, for which in all likelihood man [sic] still longs, and in which he was safe and felt at ease’ (Freud 1961, 91). Bachelard takes up and develops this view in his observation that ‘a house constitutes a body of images that give mankind [sic] proofs or illusions of stability’ (Bachelard 1994, 17). Second, Levi’s description recalls Anzieu’s notion of the skin ego—the mental image of the ego—as containing and protecting the self.12 Third, Scarry’s comments on walls as a defensive extension of the body remain relevant. Levi explicitly narrates the melding of consciousness, body, and building, implying that his consciousness has seeped out of his own embodied self into the extended self constituted by the architecture of this supplementary shell. Scarry’s reflections on embodiment and sentience serve to elucidate further the implications of this extension of consciousness. She analyses the processes of projection and introjection by which we relate to the external world, imprinting ourselves upon it and incorporating external elements into ourselves. In her view, projection works as part of a cycle in which human beings project their bodily powers and frailties into external objects . . . and these objects in turn become the object of perceptions that are taken back into the interior of human consciousness where they now reside as part of the mind or soul and this revised conception of oneself . . . is now actually ‘felt’ to be located inside the boundaries of one’s own skin. (Scarry 1985, 256) Levi projects his life, experiences, and emotions onto the house, and although it does not become internalized, it symbolically melds with his body. Certainly, the architecture of his house seems to impact on the way he experiences his self as residing within his body. In this essay, Levi implicitly claims that consciousness dwells inside the skin as the individual resides in a stone building: two comparable examples of containers and containment which support a delimited understanding of embodiment that distinguishes between container and contents in a rather

Containers and Their Contents 33 Cartesian manner. By depicting his house as an external bodily shell, Levi makes connections between the way in which he conceives of his embodied experience and the physical architecture of his living environment: an approach that is entirely consistent with the patterns detected by Lakoff and Johnson in their declarations that we perceive objects in the world as having an inside and outside because that is how we perceive our bodies. It is also consistent with Levinas’ reflections on the relationship between the self and body as paralleling or resulting from that between the body and the home: ‘the body is my possession according as my being maintains itself in a home at the limit of interiority and exteriority. The extraterritoriality of a home conditions the very possession of my body’ (Levinas 1969, 162). Likewise, in Levi’s description, our understanding of the relationship between self and body is influenced by the meeting of interior and exterior at the boundary of the body, where self meets skin, and skin meets the external world. Elsewhere Levi talks in a similar way about humans as contained beings, describing them as ‘“campioni”, esemplari in busta chiusa, da riconoscere, analizzare e pesare’ [‘samples’, specimens in a sealed envelope, to be identified, analysed and weighed] (SS II, 1102; DS, 114).13 He also discusses the human body in the context of phenomena which pose the problem of how to package liquids, solved ingeniously by a series of containers: ‘le membrane cellulari, il guscio delle uova, la buccia multipla degli aranci, e la nostra pelle, perchè liquidi infi ne siamo anche noi’ [cellular membranes, eggshells, the multiple peels of oranges, and our own skins, because after all we too are liquids] (SP I, 861; PT, 141).14 Strikingly, the two ‘architects’ of these containers (humans, eggs, oranges, cell membranes) are specified as chemists, and God (the latter invoked ironically, we must assume, given Levi’s Darwinian sympathies), both of whom have been challenged by the difficulties of packaging liquids. These seem to be straightforward examples of embodiment as delimited containment; the liquid, formless self is housed in the structured form of its bodily architecture. As such they are subject to criticism by poststructuralist and postmodern philosophers. Drawing on ‘new topographies’ such as chaos theory, which seeks to explain how ideas of change within one system may influence patterns of behaviour in another, contemporary philosophical discourses have insisted on the impossibility of self-contained systems. For example, Christine Battersby notes how according to chaos theory forms are not fi xed, but are ‘temporary arrestations in continuous metastable flows, potentialities or evolutionary events’ (1998, 52). Thus it follows, Battersby asserts, that the body is not a ‘three dimensional container’ (or ‘sealed envelope’, as Levi suggests), but can be conceptualized and experienced as ‘an event horizon, in which one form (myself) meets its potentiality for transforming itself into another form or forms’. Battersby continues, Those who are aware of themselves as centred ‘inside’ an insulated container . . . are captured by an illusion generated by the mechanisms

34

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment of ego-protection, as well as by spatial models inherited from a classical science which is no longer compelling. (1998, 52)

Yet before we apply this criticism to Levi’s depictions of embodiment as containment, it is important to note that his accounts may not be as clear-cut as they initially seem. Levi’s house is not separate from but infused with his life and experiences. Indeed, his description suggests that we build a cultural world around ourselves to echo and supplement the body, as Merleau-Ponty argues (1992, 146). Levi also implies a correspondence between, on the one hand, the organizing structures that influence the relationship between the body and consciousness, and on the other, those underpinning contemporary Western social and domestic arrangements—a linking of our internal bodily microcosm with the external socio-cultural macrocosm. Thus both the house itself and Levi’s body are understood and elaborated within a discursive context. If, as Scarry notes, the shelter replaces the ‘walls’ of the body, the room also acts as a crucial point of access between the individual and the world: ‘it enables the self to move out into the world and allows that world to enter’ (Scarry 1985, 38). Thus the room or the home assumes a double valency, being simultaneously ‘a magnification of the body’ and ‘a miniaturization of the world, of civilization’—a doubleness that Levi captures beautifully in his description of his home. For Scarry, it is precisely because the room graphically echoes the body that it becomes ‘so emphatic an instance of civilization’ (Scarry 1985, 39); thus she asserts the primacy of the body in all our human endeavours, whose influence is far from being ‘self-contained’. Of course, it must be noted that Levi’s relationship to his home was marked by his status as a deportee who was prevented from returning to Turin for some considerable time. Gordon has suggested that Levi’s longstanding residence in his familiar home can be seen as ‘emblematic of his resistance to the moment of exile, alien hostility and disconnectedness represented by Auschwitz’ (Gordon 2001a, 219). Levi himself commented that his sense of ‘rootedness’ was indeed very strong, but also asserts that deportation, imprisonment, and his prolonged journey home were in fact an adventure, a kind of gift which enriched his life (Roth 2001, 20). Thus Levi’s residence may smack of home as a bourgeois possession, criticized by Adorno as ‘intolerable’ in an age in which dwelling is ‘impossible’, and in which it seems paradoxically moral ‘not to be at home in one’s home’ (Adorno 2003, 40–1). However, it must be seen in the context of Levi’s particular experience of displacement which is complicated by his appreciation of exile. Home for Levi is a place of stability, which is supplemented by reference to temporary, but significant niches he has carved out elsewhere, which too were formative of his self. In a further rebuttal to possible poststructualist critiques of Levi’s work, the example of liquids which require containment through the right kind of packaging—the ‘sealed envelope’—reveals itself to be similarly complex. Levi may speak of humans as individual specimens, but he also breaks

Containers and Their Contents 35 human life down to the cells of which our bodies, and indeed all forms of natural life around us, are composed, tracing a structural similarity between micro- and macroscopic phenomena. One effect of this is to dissolve perceived barriers between humans, plants, and animals, and to emphasize the physiological substance of the body as well as its shell-like exterior surface. Moreover, once one explores Levi’s sense of our moral selves, it becomes clear that his vision is certainly not in thrall to debunked illusions of living in a ‘three dimensional container’ (Battersby 1998, 52). Indeed, he explicitly emphasizes the impossibility of living as if we were self-contained entities. In the essay ‘Contro il dolore’ [Against Pain] (AM II, 673–75; OPT, 182–84), he presents an anti-solipsistic argument, dismissing the possibility that our senses have fooled us into believing in a false external reality. He declares unequivocally that ‘il solipsismo è una fantasia puerile: gli “altri” esistono’ [solipsism is a puerile fantasy: the ‘others’ do exist] (AM II 674; OPT, 184). Our task as human beings is to work towards diminishing the polluting substance of pain that invades our lives and those who accompany us on our route, including animals. It is worth noting that in this essay living beings are not ‘contained’ within their separate species but placed on a continuum, in contrast to the distinction between humans and beasts that Levi draws elsewhere. However, the key thrust of this short piece is the vital orientation of the individual towards others. Our duty as a human being is thus to engage with and help others, a duty which renders the possibility of hermetically sealed human containment unthinkable, and alienation both unhealthy and painful. This essay does not mention the Lager, or the ways in which this solidarity between humans was broken down, but it seems likely that Levi’s insistence on our responsibility to others is inspired at least in part by having experienced the absolute inverse of this.

DIVIDED SELVES Levi’s narratives of contained selves considered so far are certainly not facile depictions of a rigid relationship between psyche and soma, self and world, but evoke complex belongings and interconnections. There are also more sustained ways in which Levi portrays human embodiment as transcending the container of the body, which resonate with postmodern conceptions of self, composed of cultural as well as material elements, and with psychoanalytic theories. He explicitly describes the human condition as constructed in culture and experience, and as consisting of both material and immaterial components: ‘Siamo fatti di Io e di Es, di spirito e di carne, ed inoltre di acidi nucleici, di tradizioni, di ormoni, di esperienze e traumi remoti e prossimi’ [We are made up of ego and id, spirit and flesh, and furthermore nucleic acids, traditions, hormones, remote and recent experiences and traumas] (AM II, 677; OPT, 158). Indeed, in much of Levi’s work the human condition is represented not as one of hermetic containment but as characterized by a fraught,

36

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

centaur-like duality: ‘l’uomo è centauro, groviglio di carne e di mente, di alito divino e di polvere’ [Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust] (SP I, 746; PT, 9). This self is hybrid, divided not along Cartesian lines, but as an interwoven tangle of contrasting impulses and phenomena. Here we see the two main ways in which Levi represents the divided self: either as dual, composed of conscious and unconscious self, or as an inextricably interwoven combination of energies in tension with one another. Examples of the dual self often follow the model of Freudian psychoanalysis, reproducing the topography of the psyche as divided into the conscious ego and the unconscious id. On several occasions he reifies this dualism to the extent that he discusses the unconscious in the same architectural terms as he describes his relationship to his body, jokingly referring to it as ‘l’inquilino del piano di sotto’ [the tenant on the floor below] that will make its presence felt whether specifically evoked or not (AM II, 847; OPT, 208).15 While this seems to be a relatively amicable co-habitation, elsewhere the unconscious appears to take on a more troubling role as our internalized self of memory becomes our own ‘other’. Levi asserts that our human condition means that ‘siamo condannati a trascinarci dietro, dalla culla alla tomba, un Doppelgänger, un fratello muto e senza volto, che pure è corresponsabile delle nostre azioni’ [we are condemned to drag with us, from cradle to grave, a Doppelgänger, a mute, faceless sibling, who is nevertheless is coresponsible for our actions] (AM II, 677).16 We are endowed with an extra self, a self of experience and emotion to complement that of bodily materiality, but it is depicted as a weight, a burden, an added confusion, even though the shared responsibility this double offers might have eased the existential struggle. In the Lager this extra self appears as the embodiment of memory, the ‘companion’ who materializes to torment quiet moments when prisoners have the painful pleasure of recalling their former lives (SQ I, 138; IM, 147). These ‘other’ selves transcend the contained individual in the form of twin beings that hover around our conscious, or ‘real’ self, literally outside the Heim of the skin. They trouble the boundary, the skin-ego, which for Levi seems to represent an important source of stability, with the result that the self is no longer ‘spatially co-extensive with the body’ (Laing 1965, 41). Significantly, Levi shows interest in previous literary representations of this figure, having chosen in 1976 to translate an untitled lyric by Heinrich Heine in which the Doppelgänger appears: Davanti è un uomo che guarda nel buio E si torce le mani per la pena. Ecco si volge, e il suo volto è il mio volto: Mi son sentito stringere ogni vena. O mio doppio, mio pallido compare Che vieni a scimmiottare il mio tormento Che fai tu qui, di fronte a questa porta Dove venivo a piangere nel vento? (AOI II, 591)

Containers and Their Contents 37 [There a man stands to and stares aloft And wrings his hands in agony I shudder when I see his face The moon shows me my own shape. You Doppelgänger! You pale fellow! Why do you ape the pain of my love That tormented me at this spot On many a night in times of old?]17 As Webber has noted in his analysis of the Doppelgänger, this double symbolizes a ‘power play between ego and alter ego’, which impedes mastery of the self. Moreover, its divisive effects also perturb temporal chronology, since often the Doppelgänger harks from a previous period, like the Freudian return of the repressed (Webber 1996, 3), or the materialization of Levi’s memory ‘companion’ in the Lager. Freud tentatively diagnoses the double as conflictual or troubling, like repressed memories; it is the result of ‘the urge towards defence that has caused the ego to project the material outward as something foreign to itself’ (1955, 236).18 Certainly, Levi’s ‘companion’ in the Lager signals troubling recollections, so far removed from his present experiences that they seem to belong to another individual altogether. The Doppelgänger is unheimlich, uncanny in the Freudian sense, known and not known, the self and not the self, reconstructing the Lacanian mirror stage through phantasmatic projection (Webber 1996, 3). In Levi’s rather free translation of Heine’s verse this mirroring of the self is made quite explicit, in the line ‘si volge, e il suo volto è il mio volto’ [he turns and his face is my face].19 However, the resemblance is never absolute; rather, the mirrored double crystallizes the misalignment of our multiple selves: ‘just like the soul, the shadow, the mirror image, haunts the subject like his [sic] other, which makes it so that the subject is simultaneously itself and never resembles itself again’ (Baudrillard 2003, 95). Levi’s fascination with mirroring recurs in other texts; it is compellingly narrativized in his 1986 story ‘Il fabbricante di specchi’ [The Mirror Maker] (RS II, 894–98; MM, 55–60). Timoteo, the protagonist of the story, creates the ‘Spemet’, a small mirror that is stuck on the forehead, and which reflects an individual’s appearance as seen through the eyes of the beholder. Having experimented with friends, family, and girlfriends, Timoteo concludes that since no two images are the same, no real Timoteo exists (RS II, 897; MM, 60). While the Doppelgänger is seen through the eyes of the individual and the Spemet reveals the perceptions of others, both of these semi-reified externalizations of the alterity within us reveal the self, as well as the body (which in the case of the Spemet actually changes to better reflect the perceived self), to be fundamentally unheimlich. In contrast, rather than externalizing alterity, the self as a combination of energies tackles this otherness within its form, often in the form of violent, or sexual, impulses that, it is implied or explicitly stated, we should control. Levi talks about the violence in every one of us, ‘il diavolo

38 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment in corpo’ [the devil within our bodies] (Lo Presti 1997, 56) that threatens to surface, and which recurs in several of his short stories. 20 In the 1966 story ‘Quaestio di centauris’, he depicts the usually mild-mannered centaur Trachi as overcome by an irresistible sexual urge that can only be assuaged through raping numerous mares (SN I, 513–16). Similarly, two stories in the later collection Lilìt e altri racconti (1981) depict a ‘devil within’. ‘Lilìt’ [Lilith] tells how the eponymous anti-heroine, although made of the same clay as Adam, becomes a murderous she-devil (L II, 18–23; MR, 35–46); 21 ‘La bestia nel tempio’ [The Beast in the Temple] (L II, 87–92) recounts the tale of the beast condemned to rage within the confi nes of the temple ruins, trapping itself inside the rubble as it smashes in vain against the narrow stone passageways. Thus it is protected from those waiting outside, armed with knives, who would slaughter it if it ever escaped, and in so doing would heal the world. But, Levi declares ominously (L II, 92), it will never escape but will rage within the world, within us, in perpetuity. Controlled human existence is a precarious state, it seems; just like some chemical elements, any semblance of stability may suddenly evaporate as passionate, often destructive forces reign; the beast within us that cannot be expunged. Elsewhere, Levi tells us that this condition of precarious security, which he exemplifies by recounting an anecdote about spontaneous combustion, is called ‘metastability’, and it applies to all living and organic substances (AM II, 780; OPT, 99). He reveals that he is also tempted to apply the condition to less concrete substances, such as i nostri comportamenti sociali, le nostre tensioni, l’intera umanità d’oggi, condannata e abituata a vivere in un mondo in cui tutto sembra stabile e non è, in cui spaventose energie (non parlo solo degli arsenali nucleari) dormono di un sonno leggero. (AM II, 781) [our social behaviours, our tensions, all of humankind today, condemned and accustomed to living in the world in which everything seems stable and is not, in which awesome energies (I am not speaking only of the nuclear arsenals) sleep a light sleep.]22 The appearance of calm is thus only ever superficial, and conceals lurking dangers that we should seek to subdue, a view that Levi reiterates on other occasions. In two interviews in 1979, Levi presents himself as an Enlightenment humanist, stating that we became human by exercising our reason (De Rienzo and Gagliano 1997, 116), and that we must remain vigilant to ensure that we do not lose this ability, since that would signal a potential ‘ritorno alla barbarie’ [return to barbarism] (Lo Presti 1997, 54). If barbarity lurks within us, a remnant of our base animal origins, a ‘substrate of primitive material’ troubling our civilized self (Armstrong 1998, 3), Levi figures it as woven into our material and immaterial form,

Containers and Their Contents 39 but simultaneously effects a Cartesian separation of reasoned intellect and brute instinct, the latter of which is located tellingly below the brain. Trachi the centaur is a clear example of this division, as the upper, ‘superior’, human parts of his hybrid form are overcome by ‘baser’ animal lust. Similarly, Lilith’s diabolic rage, coupled with her sexuality, are located in the lower part of her body, literally below the belt: ‘è donna bella fi no alla cintura / Il resto è fiamma fatua e luce pallida’ [she is a beautiful woman down to the waist. /The rest is will-o’-the-wisp and pale light] (AOI II, 543; CP, 26). Similarly, Levi imposes this hierarchical division on the human form itself. Discussing violence within us, Levi evokes a comparable barrier between the reasoning, peaceful self and the violent aggravator lurking within, asserting that there is ‘qualcosa dal collo in su, qualcosa a livello razionale che dovrebbe controllare la violenza’ [something from the neck up, something rational that should control violence] (Lo Presti 1997, 56). Hence, even when Levi adopts a more postmodern approach to embodiment, his tendency to dualism is pronounced. Moreover, here Levi demonizes the very body that elsewhere he credits with a fundamental role in our cognitive development, condemning the threat to rational control posed by desiring flesh—a position that resonates with Enlightenment thought which advocated objectivity and composure. This chapter has begun to explore Levi’s defi nition of the human as the creator of containers in relation to his depictions of embodiment and humanity. Already it should be apparent that these depictions are immensely varied and highly metaphorical, and cannot be subsumed within a monolithic model. Instead his multi-stranded, overlapping series of accounts veer between aligning themselves with delimited/material and postmodernist/discursive understandings of embodiment. On the one hand, he depicts a model of the self as contained within the boundaries of the physical body, with a focus on the inside and outside. This resonates with conceptions of the body that posited a core self closed off from the world within a rationalized form, which seeks to establish its stability. On the other hand, he portrays a model of human existence as a chaotic tangle of confl icting energies, in which the focus is on the dynamic between these impulses. This is a postmodern body and self, radically multiple and shifting in their form and significance, since their meaning is derived not from an inner essence but from their location within a matrix of sociocultural relations and discourses (Birkett 1999, 130–32). Yet to further complicate issues, even these models are inverted as the contained body transcends its container and the postmodern body is at times marked by an essentialism that insists on a destructive sexuality located in our ‘baser’ physical parts. In Levi’s work, the body is never only biological, but is also composed of our introjected and external projected sentient selves, the selves of experience; he views the embodied self as composed of what Douglas called the ‘social body’ and the ‘physical body’ (1970, 65). Levi specifically invites

40 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment analyses of human life that consider the biological alongside the experiential, and which valorize both as equally vital to and constituent of human existence: bios and zoē are caught up and entwined together. Indeed, while some of Levi’s depictions of embodiment appear at fi rst glance to warrant poststructuralist critiques on account of their rigid, unrepresentative approach, Levi’s ‘centaur’ model of human existence as a tangle of energies and experiences resonates closely with Battersby’s postmodern discourses of embodiment, and his frequent, profound problematizations of the phenomenon of containment reveal his antipathy for outdated, unrepresentative spatial models. In analysing Levi’s position, therefore, it is important to move between different critical and theoretical frameworks to accommodate the complexities and contradictions his work offers us. I am not interested in arguing that postmodern conceptions of embodiment are more or less ‘progressive’ on some level than container-based interpretations of the psyche/soma relationship; my interest lies with how Levi attempted to understand human existence, embodiment, and knowledge, and how the container features in a variety of ways, both as a symbol of security and a frontier to be breached in different contexts in his work. One consequence of moving between theoretical frameworks to interpret Levi’s writing is that it encourages us to question the assumed ‘progressive’ nature of postmodern thought. Despite the attractions of postmodern discourse which trumpets fluidity, virtual existence, and freedom from the limitations of the body, we are nevertheless materially embodied beings, and there is a value to the physical body—a position that Levi would, on the whole, espouse, despite his apparent anxiety about embodied sexual desire. 23 Indeed, it is arguably the value and status of the material body that Levi is attempting to reflect on, question and narrativize in his work.

2

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity

As has been noted, a careful reading of Se questo è un uomo, La tregua, and I sommersi e i salvati elucidates Levi’s philosophy on humanity and inhumanity, on the demolition of the human by the inhuman, and the creation of the non-human. Levi’s position chimes fundamentally with Levinas’ view that our humanity lies in our ethical recognition of the other, and of our responsibility to protect him or her—an ‘inalienable responsibility’ that is summoned and claimed by the other’s face. For Levinas, this is not the inevitable state of the world, but ‘a breach made by humanness in the barbarism of being’ (Levinas 1998, 186–87), just as in Levi’s work the threat of a ‘return’ to, or a degradation into, barbarism is often real, or hovers menacingly within the realm of possibility (Lo Presti 1997, 54). In the Lager, where barbarism is all too normalized, it is precisely these breaches by humanness that Levi searches for: they are few, but are clearly, deliberately signalled. In contrast to the necessary selfishness seemingly required for survival in the camps, the ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality,1 Levi witnesses or experiences small acts of generosity, such as others sharing their rations of bread. When another prisoner does just this, in the infi rmary after the guards have left, Levi describes it as the fi rst human gesture to occur between prisoners, which marked the beginning of a slow process of rehumanization (SQ I, 156; IM, 166). Likewise, Levi explicitly draws attention to what he considers to be acts of inhumanity, in which he is treated as an inferior being, like an object: in the infi rmary, the nurse prods Levi like a corpse, laughing mockingly at his state of extreme emaciation, prompting Levi to declare: ‘mi pare di non avere mai, in tutta la mia vita, subito un affronto piú attroce di questo’ [I feel as if I had never in all my life undergone an affront worse than this] (SQ I, 43; IM, 55); on another occasion, the Kapo Alex unthinkingly wipes his dirty hand on Levi’s back as if he were an object, or entirely abject, for which Levi explicitly judges him (SQ I, 103; IM, 113–14). If these enactments of humanity and inhumanity are achieved through interactive behaviour, it is a behaviour that hinges on engagements with the human body, just as Levinas’ (posthumanist) defi nition of ethical responsibility relies on the relationship between embodied subjects, not on abstract

42

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(Enlightenment) ideas of what is morally right. The offering of bread is a recognition of another’s bodily needs; the prodding of Levi’s body and Alex’s disrespectful gesture deny Levi’s body as that of a fellow human being. Thus Levi’s philosophy of humanity is an embodied one; it overlaps with and relies on the experience of human embodiment. As Levi explains, Se questo è un uomo approaches this issue from its negative state since it is a book about ‘il non piú uomo’ [the no longer human], in which the ‘disumanità’ [literally the ‘de-humanity’ or ‘anti-humanity’] of the perpetrators is echoed in the ‘disumanizzazione’ [dehumanization] of the victims. 2 The particular use of language here is significant, as unlike its near synonym ‘inumanità’ [inhumanity], which describes a state in which humanity is simply lacking,3 the prefi x ‘de-’ implies a process in which a previous form of humanity is dissolved or dismantled in the individual—a process which Levi observes in the camps, that seeks to demolish the body, the individual and social relations in specific, interconnected ways. This chapter explores these processes of demolition in Levi’s testimonial works as they relate to a sense of contained embodiment, or containment more generally, considering how states of humanity/inhumanity/non-humanity, as well as axes of sex and gender, intersect with experiences of embodiment and disembodiment. I then consider the processes of regaining ‘human’ status, narrated in La tregua. Of course, all Levi’s experiences in the Lager take place within a context of ‘contained’ imprisonment, which he describes as being penned into a restricted space, behind a ‘muro che ci rende morti al mondo’ [wall which keeps us dead to the world] (SQ I, 79; IM, 88). This is also a temporal imprisonment as the inmates are trapped in suspended time, with any prospect of a future life cut off by a seemingly insuperable barrier (SQ I, 113; IM, 123). In addition to this dehumanizing experience, prisoners in the camp suffered from the ways in which their bodies and selves were treated, which prevented them from experiencing full embodiment. I show how a close reading of Levi’s vocabularies of deand rehumanization reveals a sustained interest in the human condition as reliant on full embodiment and as compromised by disembodiment; however, as always, Levi’s narratives are multiple and divergent and include the range of modalities of embodiment identified in the previous chapter.

NARRATIVES OF DEHUMANIZATION Arendt has written of the destruction of the human being in the Lager as a three-fold process: first, the transportation of prisoners to the camps removes their juridical rights, destroying the civil person; second, solidarity is eroded between prisoners who are forced to collaborate in each other’s deaths, destroying the moral person; third, the individual is eradicated, through the removal of a person’s hair, name, dignity, and sense of autonomous self (Arendt 1985, 447–55). We see this same process recounted in Levi’s work,

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 43 although, since it is based on personal experience, there is a less pronounced sense of the systematic logic at work in this destruction and more of an emphasis on bodily discomfort, which manifests itself in different, differently acute ways. Levi depicts the process of dehumanization through several concurrent narratives which I have grouped into three broad sets of overlapping experiences: abjection, the degradation of the human being into raw needs, and the hardening or emptying of the bodily container. Within a short space of time, Levi and the other newly arrived Italian prisoners fi nd that their bodies begin to be transformed and made abject by the harsh regime. After only two weeks they are already suffering from chronic hunger, they have open wounds on their feet that will not heal, and they feel literally disembodied. Levi remarks, ‘già il mio stesso corpo non è piú mio: ho il ventre gonfio e le membra stecchite, il viso tumido al mattino e incavato la sera’ [already my own body is no longer mine: my belly is swollen, my limbs emaciated, my face is thick in the morning, hollow in the evening] (SQ I, 31; IM, 43). The yellowing and greying hues to their skin, coupled with the fact that they no longer recognize one another, discourage them from meeting up. Here, we see the human image ‘defiled’ (Patterson 1999, 213) as the prisoners experience their bodies as abject and shameful.4 No longer able to look one another in the face, they experience what Levinas considers the disintegration of ethical relations, what Arendt would term the beginnings of the destruction of the moral person, or, as Levi puts it, ‘la privazione anche di ogni sentimento di solidarietà’ [the deprivation of every trace of solidarity as well] (Poli and Calcagno 1992, 67). The prisoners’ bodies have become abject as in Kristeva’s defi nition, in that they are no longer identified closely with the individual but are now ‘opposed to I’, a substance that ‘drags me towards the place where meaning collapses’ and which threatens to annihilate the self (1982, 1). The perceived, fragile boundary separating the coherent body image of the symbolic from ‘the unnameable, abject domain that continually threatens to overrun its carefully established borders’ has been dissolved (Weiss 1999, 42); moreover, because the ‘specter’ of the abject is ‘incarnated’ in the body, the refusal of the abject also entails ‘a corporeal refusal of corporeality’ (Weiss 1999, 42): the prisoners’ rejection of their own bodies. In Levi’s descriptions, the prisoners’ bodies are made abject in two main ways; fi rst, by their increasing lack of resemblance to the known, ‘civilized’ ‘I’ of the post-Enlightenment individual subject, or to the coherent self of the symbolic, as they approach death and become increasingly bestial. 5 Levi employs animal vocabulary to describe the beast-like nature of their existence, reflected in the use of the German word ‘fressen’ to describe prisoners eating their watery soup, which refers to animals feeding, as opposed to ‘essen’ which refers to humans eating (SQ I, 71; IM, 82). The dehumanization of individual subjects to animals is a physiological and mental degradation, seen particularly in the depictions of those who, as a result of the extreme maltreatment they has suffered, were reduced to ‘larve’ [larvae]

44

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(SQ I, 167). As Horkheimer and Adorno have argued, the fiction of the Enlightenment subject is predicated on the repression of our animal bodies as the abstract universalities of reason and law suppress our material selves whilst privileging ‘civilized’ life. This produces an effective equation of ‘the animate with the inanimate’, as the more civilized one is, the less one acknowledges or appears to have a physical body (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 16).6 Similarly, the presence of the abject represents ‘an insistence on the subject’s necessary relation to death, to animality, and to materiality’ which provokes the subject’s simultaneous ‘recognition and refusal of its corporeality’ (Grosz 1990a, 89). Second, the prisoners’ bodies become abject through their leakiness, emphasized in the descriptions of emptying the slop toilet during the night (SQ I, 55; IM, 67) and the oozing wounds of what Athena Athanasiou (2003) has called ‘the cut body’ that will not stay whole, that will not heal: Levi recounts how as he gets down from his bunk in the morning and puts on his shoes, ‘allora mi si riaprono le piaghe dei piedi, e incomincia una nuova giornata’ [the sores on my feet reopen at once and another day begins] (SQ I, 58; IM, 70). A second narrative of dehumanization recounts how the body undergoes a process of ‘degradation into a bundle of functions’ (Adorno 1973, 68), so that all that is experienced is need: ‘siamo la fame, fame viventi’ [we ourselves are hunger, living hunger] (SQ I, 69; IM, 80). There is no space here for the thinking self, since energies are focused on the most urgent bodily needs which become all engulfi ng. Levi’s words here are echoed by Elie Wiesel’s accounts of his experiences in Auschwitz: All that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup-those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time. (2006, 52) The consequences of this state are, as already intimated, a growing disdain for the material body. Wiesel recalls how during the death march from the camps he increasingly resented his own body: I was putting one foot in front of another, like a machine. I was dragging this emaciated body that was still such a weight. If only I could have shed it! Though I tried to put it out of my mind, I couldn’t help but thinking that there were two of us: my body and I. And I hated that body. (2006, 85) Similar dualisms mark Levi’s experiences of embodiment: I disagi materiali, la fatica, la fame, la sete, il freddo, tormentando il nostro corpo, paradossalmente riuscivano a distrarci dall’infelicità grandissima del nostro spirito. Si aspettavano i pochi momenti

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 45 d’ozio, di tregua, come una liberazione e poi il piacere dell’ozio si risolveva in una grande infelicità, il privilegio di pensare, per qualche minuto, diveniva tormento. Eppure anche questo tormento era, a sua volta, di sollievo. Perché lo si avvertiva come un’infelicità superiore, piú nobile, che distraeva da quella materiale. (Poli and Calcagno 1992, 67) [As material discomforts, fatigue, hunger, thirst, cold, tormented our bodies, paradoxically they managed to distract us from our enormous spiritual unhappiness. We awaited the few moments of repose, respite, like a liberation, and then the pleasure of repose became a great unhappiness, the privilege of thinking for a few minutes became a torment. And yet even this torment was a relief, in its own way. Because we experienced it as a superior, nobler form of unhappiness, that distracted us from material discomfort.] This split self is undeniably Cartesian, as the unreliable body is chastised and despised, and despite the discomfort provoked by emotional distress, psychic torment is nevertheless coded as superior to material suffering. As critics have noted, Descartes’ formulation of the mind/body split occurred at a time when people were increasingly encouraged to scrutinize, regulate, and control their bodily sensations, giving the impression that the mind and the self were distinct from the body that housed them (Birkett 1999, 18–19). Although the circumstances in the Lager were evidently much more extreme, intense bodily deprivation required prisoners to scrutinize their bodies in similar ways, as well as to confront their own mortality regularly. This heightened their sense of their own physical abjection, inevitably leading them to devalorize the material body as an enemy. The third narrative of dehumanization recounts the emptying or hardening of the bodily container, which overlaps with the reduction of people to objects through a process elaborated by Georg Lukàcs as reification: the reduction of the individual to the status of res [thing].7 For Levi this was partly caused by the inhuman or dehumanized manner of treating the prisoners as objects, which constitutes a clear breach of the ethical recognition of the other advocated by Levinas. A particular characteristic of this type of reified dehumanization is the way in which it empties the self and the body. Prisoners are described as ‘vermi vuoti di anima’ [worms emptied of their soul] (SQ I, 64); the individual is a ‘uomo vuoto’ [empty man] (SQ I, 21), or a mere ‘husk’ of a human being.8 Similarly, in the poem ‘Buna’ (1945) Levi addresses a fellow prisoner with the words: Compagno stanco . . . Hai dentro il petto freddo fame niente . . . Compagno vuoto che non hai piú nome. (AOI II, 521)

46

Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment [Tired companion . . . In your breast you carry cold hunger nothing . . . Empty companion who no longer has a name.] (CP, 5)

Another prisoner, Null Achtzehn, is described as a further example of a hollow man: ‘vuoto interiormente, nulla piú di un involucro, come certe spoglie di insetti che si trovano in riva agli stagni, attaccate con un filo ai sassi, e il vento le scuote’ [empty inside, nothing more than an involucre, like the slough of certain insects that one fi nds on the banks of swamps, held by a thread to the stones and shaken by the wind] (SQ I, 36; IM, 48). Yet what is it that is emptied here? And from where? In these examples, Levi implicitly evokes a container metaphor to describe our state of embodiment: the properly human subject is ‘full’, while the dehumanized being has been emptied out leaving a body empty not of organs but of its identity. Thus the ‘contents’ of the contained self are immaterial. In a much cited passage, Levi describes the beginning of the process of annihilation as prisoners enter the camps and undergo the stripping of the body and emptying of the self, or in Arendt’s terms, the destruction of the individual: Ci hanno tolto gli abiti, le scarpe, anche i capelli . . . ci toglieranno anche il nome . . . consideri ognuno, quanto valore, quanto significato è racchiuso anche nelle piú piccole nostre abitudini quotidiane, nei cento oggetti nostri che il piú umile mendicante possiede: un fazzoletto, una vecchia lettera, la fotografia di una persona cara. Queste cose sono parte di noi, quasi come membra del nostro corpo . . . Si immagini ora un uomo a cui, insieme con le persone amate, vengano tolti la sua casa, le sue abitudini, i suoi abiti . . . sarà un uomo vuoto, ridotto a sofferenza e bisogno, dimentico di dignità e di discernimento, poichè accade facilmente, a chi ha perso tutto, di perdere se stesso. (SQ I, 20–21) [They have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair . . . they will even take away our name . . . Consider what value, what meaning is enclosed even in the smallest of our daily habits, in the hundred possessions which even the poorest beggar owns: a handkerchief, an old letter, the photo of a cherished person. These things are part of us, almost like limbs of our body . . . Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes . . . he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself.] (IM, 33) What Levi narrates here is a process of emptying out the contents of the container of the self, leaving only a shell-like physical recipient, a cipher. This passage is revealing of how Levi conceives of the self. It is constituted at once of our material parts—our hair and familiar appearance, Douglas’

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 47 ‘physical body’—and of our immaterial presence—our memories, social networks and ways of being in the world: the ‘social body’ (Douglas 1970, 65). It is also constituted by objects which become symbolically charged with significance, and which Levi describes here as so closely associated with our sense of who we are as to be almost part of our very bodies. Finally the self is defi ned in relation to its personal spaces, particularly the home, which as he observes, we endeavour to recreate in new surroundings to overcome the trauma of being unhoused, uncontained, un-situated, and undefi ned. These objects and the protective barrier of the home recall Scarry’s reflections on the home as an external bodily ‘wall’ discussed in Chapter 2 (1985, 39). We might also trace similarities with Levinas’ notion of the perceived ‘contents’ or ‘direct objects’ of the body, such as labour, thought, nourishment, happiness and experiences (Levinas 1969, 111–12). Levinas assumes a rather fluid interaction between the body and the world around it, the body and the self are felt to be constituted by experiences as much as by their material elements. However Scarry’s reflections on embodiment, sentience, projection, and introjection provide the most detailed framework for interpreting Levi’s description. In her view, the objects onto which we project our emotions, which are then introjected into our ‘revised’ ideas of ourselves, appear to actually replace our biological organs: [These objects are] actually ‘felt’ to be located inside the boundaries of one’s own skin where one is in immediate contact with an elaborate constellation of interior cultural fragments that seem to have displaced the dense molecules of physical matter. Behind the surface of the face in the mirror is blood and bone and tissue but also friends, cities, grandmothers, novels, gods, numbers and jokes. (Scarry 1985, 256) Although Scarry does not engage with psychoanalytic theory, her remarks here echo Melanie Klein’s work on ‘internal objects’; significant people and objects that are introjected into the psyche, which become a part of our body from which we draw emotional sustenance.9 Scarry concludes that the second group of elements residing under the skin—the ‘socialization of sentience’, or friends, places, and socio-cultural discourses—will be experienced more immediately by the individual than the properly biological elements such as bone and tissue. Thus it follows that Levi’s emptied beings experience the loss of their loved ones, habitual location, and topics of conversation even more keenly than if a part of their body had been removed. Moreover, due to the process of projection of the self into objects such as handkerchiefs and clothes, the removal of these items, although theoretically unconnected to the body, also feels like a removal of a limb.10 In Levi’s narratives of disembodied dehumanization, particular words recur, assuming a heightened significance because of this recurrence. Levi uses the word ‘vuoto’ [empty] many times, emphasizing the void within the emptied body which rings hollow, stripped of its internal objects. In

48 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment contrast, another word, ‘corazza’ [barrier, armour], indicates a perception of the body not as a lifeless husk, but as bounded by a protective, hardened layer, or shell. As exemplified in the extracts discussed in the previous chapter (SQ I, 50; SS II, 1080), this layer may distance threats, keeping danger at one remove, or giving the impression of doing so. Prisoners cling desperately to the ‘illusoria barriera delle coperte calde, l’esile corazza del sonno’ [illusory barrier of the warm blankets, the thin armour of sleep] (SQ I, 57; IM, 69); alternatively, they encase themselves in a numbing layer of emotional and psychological delusion, ‘involti (e forse protetti) da una spessa corazza di insensibilità o di aperta follia’ [sealed up (and perhaps protected) by a thick armour of insensitivity or open madness] (LT I, 227; T, 209). In these instances, ‘protective’ barriers are shown to be ineffective or even potentially harmful if they sever links with others.11 However, these defence strategies are less unexpected when we consider that solidarity between prisoners was far from guaranteed; Levi remarks, again evoking boundaries, that the divisions between friend and enemy were dangerously slippery: ‘il nemico era intorno ma anche dentro, il “noi” perdeva i suoi confi ni, i contendenti non erano due, non si distingueva una frontiera ma molte e confuse, forse innumerevoli’ [the enemy was all around but also inside, the ‘we’ lost its limits, the contenders were not two, one could not discern a single frontier but rather many confused, perhaps innumerable frontiers] (SS II, 1018; DS, 23). Thus, rather than a group able to mobilize together to fight for freedom, the prisoners are isolated by perceived barriers as the ‘armour’ of self protection impedes collective action, rendering them instead ‘monadi sigillate’ [sealed-off monads] (SS II, 1018; DS, 23).12 All of these processes of dehumanization evoke the issue of containment in different ways. On the one hand, the leaky body is abject because the boundary between the symbolic and the abject, always fragile, has been dissolved: the ‘unnameable, abject domain that continually threatens to overrun its carefully established borders’ has done precisely that, corrupting the imagined, coherent container of the self and contaminating the entire body (Weiss 1999, 42). However, this is not only due to circumstantial physical abjection, but can be seen to result from our human condition more broadly which, as Levi remarks in I sommersi e i salvati, is one of incoherence: he dismisses as false the notion of the human subject as ‘concorde con se stesso, coerente, monolitico’ [in harmony with him or herself, coherent, monolithic] (SS II, 1033).13 On the other hand, in contrast to these messy, insecure modalities of embodiment that spill over their ‘appropriate’ location or lack clear, logical organization, the Cartesian split subject is motivated by disdain for the body. Here physical need is aligned with the physical form, but the self is conceptualized as somehow superior to and unaffected by these needs—as external to the base/debased container of the animal body. There is no coherent, over-arching narrative of emdodiment, or indeed of disembodiment in Levi’s account, but instead a complex, interwoven series of experiences, in which containment functions in a variety of ways

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 49 and is invested with differing meanings. As in the previous chapter, we see both echoes of delimited interpretations of the body in the emptied container, and more postmodern accounts of the body and embodiment in the internalization of experiences and discourses. However, we might tentatively identify two recurrent tropes in Levi’s depictions of embodiment in the camps. First, beneath the socially constructed body invested with memories and ennobled by its ‘civilized’ character lies the husk of the dehumanized, unthinking material form: the larvae, the worm, the empty shell, the hungry body, the bundle of functions. In these narratives of embodiment, the container which remains after the ‘demolition’ of human life has taken place is portrayed in a negative light, as the devalued Cartesian soma which ultimately symbolizes ‘the undoing of the modern post-Enlightenment subject’ (Gordon 2001, 16). Second, the closed-off, monadic form, separated from others, is portrayed as ethically problematic and likely to impact negatively on both the degree of humanity retained by the subject, and on the possibilities of survival.

THE MUSELMÄNNER: DEFINITIONS OF NON-HUMANITY In Levi’s testimonial writings, as in those of other survivors, we find extreme examples of emptied, desubjectified beings, who can no longer communicate with others, who are categorized as the Muselmänner or the non-human.14 Levi represents them as an ever-shifting but ever-present anonymous mass of silent automata, who no longer seem to be alive (SQ I, 86; IM, 96). As mentioned in the Introduction, several scholars have engaged critically with the figure of the Muselmann, both with Levi’s specific accounts and as it appears in survivor testimony more widely.15 Agamben, who devotes considerable space to the issue (1998, 1999), analyses the Muselmänner as examples of zoē, beings that are merely alive, whose existence he calls ‘bare life’, as opposed to beings whose ability to participate in political society qualifies their life as bios. In one reading, the distinction seems clear: if we relate these reflections to either Cartesian thought or nineteenth-century conceptions of embodiment as the intellectual self contained within a brute physical body (Birkett 1999, 136), then bare life equates to the physical container, the husk which remains when human are stripped of their dignity and individuality, and reified, while bios is the realm of experience, animated by the trappings of civilization. In line with this view, Levi’s Muselmann is a Cartesian empty vessel from which the human spirit is absent (SS II, 1057; DS, 65). These ‘non-humans’ figure once more in I sommersi e i salvati, where Levi describes them as neither living nor dead, and incapable of articulating or testifying to their experiences, since ‘la loro morte era cominciata prima di quella corporale. Settimane e mesi prima di spegnersi avevano già perduto la virtù di osservare, ricordare, commisurare ed esprimersi’ [their death had begun before that of their body. Weeks and months before being snuffed out, they

50 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment had already lost the ability to observe, to remember, compare and express themselves] (SS II, 1056; DS, 64). For Arendt, using the terminology that would later be picked up by Agamben, these beings lack bios, since bios is chiefly characterized by being ‘always full of events which ultimately can be told as a story’ (Arendt 1958, 57). By implication, the life stripped bare, leaving only an empty person, lacks biographical details and narrative, and therefore cannot be told. However, as Agamben has identified (1999, 82), Levi presents a paradox in that he claims that ‘i testimoni veri’ [the true witnesses] of the Holocaust are not survivors like himself who have articulated their accounts (SS II, 1055; DS, 63); rather, despite their inability to testify, the ‘complete witnesses’ (‘testimoni integrali’) are in fact the Muselmänner (SS II, 1056; DS, 64). It is they who have undergone the full experience of demolition, not the exceptional, ‘saved’ individuals like Levi. By endowing the Muselmänner with the theoretical ability to testify, Levi complicates any binary breakdown of political life and bare life, maintaining on some level the ‘humanity’ of these ‘non-human’ beings. In an attempt to resolve Levi’s paradox, and convinced that an ethical stance cannot simply disregard such creatures by disqualifying them from the category of ‘human’, Agamben declares these ‘non-humans’ as necessarily part of humanity (1999, 64). Thus, as Philippe notes, like Levi, ‘Agamben situates in ethics rather than in traditional humanism the possibility of defi ning the human’ (2005, 128). This declaration resonates with a further observation on the fraught relationship between our bodies and our sense of ourselves as ‘civilized’ beings, namely, that we simultaneously distance ourselves from and cultivate our sense of ourselves as originating from bare life, ‘in an inclusive exclusion’, just as bare life is simultaneously caught within and excluded by the state (Agamben 1998, 8–9), just as the abject is the underside of the symbolic. Indeed, Agamben suggests that while we tend to regard bare life as somewhat abject, it is an inextricable part of our existence, requiring complex negotiations over the status of the body itself, which classical forms of political life and Enlightenment notions of the subject sought to transcend and often to subdue, but upon whose subjugated presence the power of biopolitics relies in a capitalistic society. Agamben declares that he has resolved Levi’s paradox in his conclusion that the human and the non-human are ‘co-extensive, and, at the same time, non-coincident . . . the non-human is the one who can survive the human being and the human being is the one who can survive the nonhuman’ since ‘what can be infinitely destroyed is what can infi nitely survive’ (Agamben 1999, 151). It is hard to know what to make of this conclusion. On one level, Agamben implies that the reduction of individuals to apparent non-human beings is a reversible process, at least in theory, and that our greatest challenge is to survive our fellow (inhuman) humans through a process that ultimately conserves our humanity but may temporarily render us non- or

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 51 inhuman in some way. On another level, in light of Agamben’s defi nition of humans as linguistic beings who separate themselves from their bare life through language (Agamben 1998, 8), the ‘co-existence’ he evokes is that of the fractured human being elaborated by Lacan, whose expression of self always involves a splitting and a deferral (Lacan 1977); or as Nicholas Chare expresses it, ‘the human can never be fully present to itself; selfpresence or self-sameness is an illusion . . . I (bios) cannot coincide with me (zoē)’ (Chare 2006, 47). Perhaps as a result of the many ambiguities they contain, not least the slippage in meaning between zoē as simple natural life and the non-human character of bare life, Agamben’s arguments have been criticized on several accounts (Hartman 2002, 90; LaCapra 2003; Chare 2006, 58); those criticisms which are most relevant to the present discussion challenge the importance that Agamben, using Levi’s paradox as his focus, attributes to the lost verbal testimony of the Muselmann. Both Chare and Bernstein are suspicious of Agamben’s emphasis on the loss of language represented by the Muselmann as the ultimate demolition of the human; in particular, Bernstein criticizes Agamben for focussing on the loss of language as the marker of what constitutes a reduction to bare life, rather than on the psychic and physiological ‘dismemberment’ of the embodied self (Bernstein 2004, 4, 14).16 While Agamben’s account of the construction of the human subject rests almost exclusively on the ability to express oneself through language, Bernstein draws on the work of thinkers such as Lacan, Adorno, Foucault, and Arendt to provide an alternative model. Bernstein’s human subject is constructed on the basis of the Enlightenment repudiation of the animal body (zoē), which nevertheless resurfaces as an element in the imagined construction of the socialized, intact, and coherent self—a narrative that we reassert continually to affi rm our integrity as individuals (Bernstein 2006, 50). Bernstein refers to this process of investing the body with a coherent narrative of the self as ‘memberment’. If this narrative is somehow rent asunder, we experience a process of ‘dismemberment’, which may be both psychic, as our imagined selves prove illusory, and physical, as our material bodies suffer. Bernstein suggests that the animal body is only fully experienced when the imagined self is compromised: ‘we only experience the claim of our living body on the cusp of its mortal dismemberment’ (Bernstein 2004, 9). In Bernstein’s analysis the Muselmann represents ‘the dismembered body, the body in fragments, the body that fails the ideal form of animal embodiment’ (Bernstein 2006, 50), which undoes our idea of ourselves as integral and coherent. Thus the Muselmann is not bare life without language, as Agamben suggests, but the undoing of our normative narratives of individual, embodied coherence (Bernstein 2006, 51). This is Arendt’s destruction of the individual, or Levi’s emptying of the self to leave a hollow vessel, stripped of its imagined, socially constructed and elaborated self. Finally, Bernstein follows up his observations that ‘bare life’ is inadequately defi ned in Agamben’s analysis with the clarification that, contrary to Agamben’s implications,

52 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment [t]he logic of the camps does not produce naked life, zoē without bios; on the contrary, it is zoē in the image of that which does not live, not bare life but life in the image of nonlife, the reduction of life, as nearly as possible, to thing and machine, organic life approaching its inorganic limit. (Bernstein 2006, 46) Here Bernstein points to the ambiguity within Agamben’s argument which sees the meaning of zoē oscillate between a ‘natural’ form of simple life, imbued with a certain ‘sweetness’ or goodness, as Aristotle suggests in his Politics (and which Agamben quotes: 1998, 2), and a total domination of that life through biopower—a logic which, followed to its extreme in the camps, produces something other than humanity, ‘life that does not live’, or the Muselmann (Bernstein 2004, 5).17 Relating these reflections directly to Levi’s work, remembering that Levi does not himself employ the terms zoē or bios, what light do these discussions shed on his depictions of human and non-human embodiment and experience? Partially in line with Chare and Bernstein’s positions, I would argue that Levi’s notion of the human being is reliant not only on language as Agamben suggests, but also on a feeling of memberment.18 In the chapter ‘Comunicare’ [Communicating] in I sommersi e i salvati, Levi makes the link between humanity and language several times (SS II, 1060; DS, 69), echoing the Aristotelian philosophy on which Agamben draws: ‘Among living beings, only man [sic] has language’.19 As Levi notes, the Nazis believed that German culture was the only culture, and consequently whoever could not speak German was considered ‘barbaro’ [barbarian]; s/he ‘non era un Mensch, un essere umano’ [was not a Mensch, not a human being] (SS II, 1062; DS, 71). Levi recounts how an absence of linguistic communication contributed to the demolition of the human being: if you could fi nd someone with whom to converse in whatever fashion, you might hold together; if not, ‘la lingua ti si secca in pochi giorni, e con la lingua il pensiero’ [your language/ tongue dries up in a few days, and your thought along with it] (SS II, 1062).20 Importantly, in Levi’s account, language, like thought, is embodied and therefore constitutes a crucial aspect of the memberment of the self that Bernstein discusses, in which the imagined self interacts with the material one, which, as a result of projection and introjection, is felt to be composed of both biological organs and the accumulation of socialization. The demolished self, like Arendt’s destroyed individual, has experienced the death of its civil and moral components, which include the loss of language, but, vitally, this is just one amongst other losses. Equally testing is the forced confrontation with the abject, dismembered body. In Levi’s account, we are confronted by the Muselmänner’s loss of language but also by their reduction to an infi nitely self-replicating anonymous mass of beings that have been totally deprived of their capacity for individual reflection and motivation: he describes them as ‘automi’ [automatons] (SQ I, 45; IM, 57). These are not autonomous subjects who are able to act independently,

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 53 but ‘ghastly marionettes with human faces, which all behave like the dog in Pavlov’s experiments, which all react with perfect reliability even when going to their own death, and which do nothing but react’ (Arendt 1985, 455). In this sense, the camps achieve utter domination over the individual, producing not subjects but ‘bundles of reactions’ which are infi nitely interchangeable (Arendt 1985, 438; Bernstein 2006, 35). Levi’s bare life as represented by the Muselmänner is not zoē; it holds no traces of sweetness for its own sake. Indeed, Levi’s ‘complete witnesses’ are incarnations of bare life that have lost all patience and consciousness of themselves, and will not survive. However, Levi’s account also includes many examples of the ambiguous state between bare life as non-humanity and zoē as mere living; this includes himself and all the individuals he names and converses with, which trouble Agamben’s rigid, reductive distinction between bios and bare life, as Dominick LaCapra notes (2003, 297). Whether they survived or not, these prisoners with whom Levi speaks are examples of bare life as defi ned by Levinas, who asserts that ‘the bare fact of life is never bare’, but is always imbued with some form of ‘contents’ (Levinas 1969, 112). Indeed for Levinas, attempts to demolish a human being can never fully succeed since even if the individual suffers reification, an ambiguity remains through a persisting consciousness of this fact; thus ‘while non-free, [the subject] is yet free’, since the patience of enduring this infl icted pain, although passive, allows some form of mastery (Levinas 1969, 238). Levi depicts both the ‘remnant’ of humanity as seen in Levinas’ and Agemben’s descriptions of bare life, and bare life as nonlife. LaCapra resolves Levi’s paradox simply, by deeming it ‘acceptable hyperbole’ (LaCapra 2003, 290). Another possible resolution is by understanding Levi’s identification of the Muselmänner as the ‘complete witnesses’ as an impossible wish rather than as a descriptive statement; he desires to hear the unarticulated testimony, as opposed to asserting that it could actually be spoken, in an effort to save the submerged if only through imagined testimony. This avoids the highly problematic implication in Agamben’s work that the Muselmann should somehow be eulogized, as if their status were worthy of aspiration, while still recording an empathetic desire to engage with them and recognize their extreme suffering. I have dwelt on these issue at some length here since, as I argue subsequently, Levi’s writing is haunted by these limit figures who are moving towards a status comparable to the Muselmann, and by the interface of the human and the non-human; therefore I return to discussions of the distinction between bios and zoē at several points in the book. We encounter many individuals in Levi’s fiction whose individuality is threatened, but who retain enough of the contents of their being to speak, at least to the reader. These figures can be compared in several ways to prisoners in the camps, not least due to their particular relationship with their bodies which are often described in abject terms, due to a process of dismemberment of their bios: their civil, moral, and socially constructed selves. In Levi’s understanding, it seems that bios is

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essential for a being to qualify as human, but that it is possible to lose this and be reduced to a non-living form of bare life. It is relevant therefore to ask not only when we began to be recognizably human, the question posed at the beginning of Chapter 1, but under what circumstances we might lose this status, which is revealed as precarious. Indeed, Levi continues to ask this question in his essays and fiction throughout his work.

SEXED AND GENDERED BODIES In the extreme circumstances considered thus far, the question of bodies as both sexed and gendered phenomena seems almost irrelevant, since the pressing needs are those of basic survival, and, on one level, both male and female prisoners experienced similar processes of corporeal and intellectual privation. They are mistreated and despised because they are considered non-humans, not because they are male or female, as expressed in the German laboratory assistant’s refusal to answer Levi’s question because he is a ‘Stinkjude’ [stinking Jew] (SQ I, 139). 21 However, it is important to note that however dehumanized, Levi experienced the demolition of individuality in a male context, was treated as an objectified man and experienced trauma as a human being but also as a male human being, socially gendered as masculine. 22 This status is not often explicitly remarked upon; however, it has a bearing on Levi’s experiences and on his defi nitions of the process of dehumanization. The poem ‘Shemà’, the epigraph to Se questo è un uomo and from which the title of the novel derives, distinguishes between dehumanized men and women rather crudely; while the men suffer through forced labour in the dirt, the women suffer through lacking their hair—a sign of feminine beauty, on which their identity as women is perceived to depend in a normative logic of sex and gender—and because their wombs and bodies are unwarmed by the presence of children (SQ I, 3; IM, 17).23 The Biblical echoes of God’s condemnation to Adam and Eve are palpable (Genesis 3: 16–9: ‘In pain you will bring forth children’; ‘In the sweat of thy brow shall thou eat’), which is unsurprising given the Biblical inspiration for the poem as a whole. 24 In the camp, however, both women and Levi’s awareness of bodies and individuals as sexed and gendered disappear almost entirely from the frame of reference after the separation of men, women, and children on their arrival at the camp (SQ I, 13–14; IM, 25–26). Reading has called this an ‘enduring silence that dominates the text which stems from the moment of the separation of the able bodied men from the women, children and elderly men’ (Reading 2002, 70). In her view, this silence can be linked to ‘the unspeakable emasculation of husbands, fathers, brothers and sons forced to bear witness, as well as their guilt and shame at being unable to protect “their” women from the enemy’ (Reading 2002, 59). Thus while, on one level, gender may appear to be an almost unarticulated

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 55 issue in Levi’s work, Reading asserts that ‘Levi’s legacy is to remind us that genocide demolished the established conventions of being a man’ (Reading 2002, 70). Indeed, Levi’s desire to adhere to, or sense of himself as diverging from, conventional norms of sex and gender resurface at telling moments in his testimonial writing. Failure to adhere to these norms elicits derision, as when Levi is despised by the Kapo Alex not only because he is Italian and Jewish, but also because out of all the prisoners Levi is ‘quello che piú si scosta dal suo caporalesco ideale virile’ [the one furthest from his sergeants’ mess ideal of virility] (SQ I, 101; IM, 111). This is a virility dependent on the strong physical form, construed as a sort of masculine ‘body armour’, subduing the ‘feminine’ interior (Theweleit 1987, 434). Levi evokes precisely these conceptions of masculinity when recounting the hanging of a prisoner in the Lager, a grim spectacle that the other inmates were forced to watch but which had the effect of raising the condemned man to heroic status. Afterwards, he recalls, Alberto ed io siamo rientrati in baracca, e non abbiamo potuto guardarci in viso. Quell’uomo doveva essere duro, doveva essere di un altro metallo del nostro, se questa condizione, da cui noi siamo stati rotti, non ha potuto piegarlo. (SQ I, 146) [Albert and I went back to the hut, and we could not look each other in the face. That man must have been tough, he must have been made of another metal than us if this condition of ours, which has broken us, could not bend him.] (IM, 156) Here Levi measures his masculinity against that of those around him, against a steely, armoured ideal, and finds himself lacking, weak, and ashamed. As Reading suggests, Levi’s masculinity is ‘relational’, since it is forged through interactions and comparisons with other men and women (Reading 2002, 72). However, when Levi strives to regain a sense of himself as a (gendered) human being, rather than cleaving to militaristic models of masculinity, he privileges intellectual capacities and kindness. The much-cited episode in which he strives to regain a sense of his own humanity by reciting the ‘Canto di Ulisse’ from Dante’s Divina Commedia can be read as a fantasy of bourgeois, Enlightenment masculinity, which in Cartesian fashion privileges the male intellect over the brute (female) body and, as Druker has pointed out, echoes Emmanuel Kant’s Enlightenment motto ‘sapere aude (dare to know)’ (Druker 2009, 41). Indeed, the lines of Dante’s poem that Levi cites, in which Ulysses addresses his men, reinforce this exhortation: ‘Fatti non foste a viver come bruti /Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza’ [You were not born to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge] (SQ I, 109).25 This is a vision of humanity driven by an adventurous and intellectual calling, associated with a conviction in the unassailable superiority of

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reason. Druker has noted the stark contrast between Ulysses as a heroically noble, iconic figure of humanity and the empty, struggling prisoners, suggesting that this discrepancy ‘call[s] into question the ethical soundness of Enlightenment universality’ (Druker 2009, 9). If Ulysses epitomises humanity, then the prisoners are, logically speaking, not human, since they diverge so radically from what he symbolizes. In Druker’s analysis, Ulysses is a contradictory figure, promising the possibility of rehumanization for the prisoners, but simultaneously showing how Enlightenment logic could be complicit with Fascist fantasies of dominance that judged certain sections of the population to be non-human through their failure to meet dubious ‘universal’ standards (Druker 2009, 41). While agreeing that Levi’s instrumentalization of Ulysses has potentially problematic implications, it is important to note that besides intellectual thought as a stimulus to regain humanity, Levi emphasizes the need to retain or regain the qualities of kindness and selflessness. In contrast to the epic figure of Ulysses stands Levi’s relationship with Lorenzo, the civilian who regularly gave him food and enabled him to write to his family, which played a fundamental role in Levi’s survival. Levi tells us that Lorenzo was ‘un uomo; la sua umanità era pura e incontaminata’ [a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated] (SQ I, 118; IM, 128). Lorenzo functions as a model for Levi, as a symbol of the distant possibility of good in the world, which encourages him to hold onto his own humanity, his own sense of himself as a man, and to aspire to Lorenzo’s generous, gentle modality of masculinity, premised on an ethical responsibility to the other: ‘Grazie a Lorenzo mi è accaduto di non dimenticare di essere io stesso un uomo’ [Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man] (SQ I, 118; IM, 128). This complementary vision of humanity tempers the heroism of Ulysses, suggesting a humanity and a masculinity based on reciprocal nurturing and quiet acts of generosity which nourish both the body and the spirit of the other. Friendships such as Levi and Lorenzo’s were widespread in the male camps. Intriguingly, despite the camps being segregated by sex, this contact between prisoners and civilians is often narrated as a relationship between different genders. Prisoners talked about their civilian contacts who slipped them provisions in the same tone charged with insinuation and illicit pride that ‘uomini del mondo’ [men of the world] reserve to discuss ‘relazioni femminili’ [feminine relationships] (SQ I, 116; IM, 125). Here the civilians function to bolster the challenged masculinity of the prisoners who boast to each other of their ‘conquests’. Indeed, Levi even uses the term ‘seduttori’ [seducers] (SQ I, 116; IM, 126) to describe the prisoners who enjoyed the benefits of this protective relationship, ascribing them some sort of symbolic, sexual power. This discursive invocation of gender roles through language confirms gender to be socially constructed, not biological; yet social codes dictate that normative modalities of masculinity and femininity remain strong points of reference. The ‘emasculated’ male prisoners reinforce their sense of (heterosexual) masculinity through discursively feminizing their

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 57 male, civilian contacts. Levi implies that his and Lorenzo’s friendship was untouched by these role-plays of gender difference; it was a rapport between men in which his masculinity was reinforced through mirroring, not through the feminization of the civilian, as though his identity were constructed differently to that of the other male prisoners. However, whether gender-difference role-play occurred or not, the relationships between prisoners and civilians reinforced the prisoners’ masculinity through relationality, either of perceived sameness or difference. In contrast, for civilians who did not cultivate friendships with prisoners, the inmates are considered ‘“Kazett”, neutro singolare’ [‘Kazett’, a singular, neuter word] (SQ I, 117; IM, 127). They are considered to be unsexed and ungendered. The perceived neutrality of the prisoners adds a further dimension to earlier discussions of the emptying of their bodies; along with their names and memories, their sex and gender are perceived to be ‘emptied’ or demolished. Levi’s sense of himself as a gendered and sexed being is unsure, as becomes apparent in his rather inconsistent accounts of his encounters with women in the camps, all of which leave him feeling troubled. When he begins to work in the laboratory he encounters German women, which provokes a brief series of indirect reflections on sex and gender, both his own and of the women he meets. It transpires that female workers, Ukrainian and Polish women, do circulate in his camp, but they are rather derisorily described as not ‘proper’ women, in that they are not traditionally feminine: ‘massicce e violente come i loro uomini. Erano sudate e scarmigliate d’estate . . . lavoravano di pala e di piccone, e non si sentivano accanto come donne’ [huge and violent like their men . . . They were sweaty and dishevelled in the summer . . . they worked with shovels and pickaxes, and did not feel like women next to us] (SQ I, 138).26 In the later story ‘Lilìt’ (1981), Levi seems to have erased the Ukrainian and Polish women workers from his mind (or from the category of woman) completely, declaring that ‘capitava di rado di vedere una donna da vicino, ed era un’esperienza dolce e feroce, da cui si usciva affranti’ [it rarely happened that one saw a woman close up, an experience both tender and savage that left you shattered] (L II, 19; MR, 40). Here, implicitly, women are unknown quantities, ‘others’ that remain primarily objects of desire, a desire that resurfaces in Levi’s accounts only very occasionally and indirectly and which is tempered by a traditional understanding of masculinity and femininity as necessarily conforming to reciprocally reinforcing binaries. In contrast to the Polish and Ukrainian women prisoners, the German laboratory staff members are ‘properly’ feminine: they have ‘la pelle liscia e rosea’ [smooth, rosy skin], wear colourful clothes, sing, and gossip (SQ I, 139; IM, 149). Despite this normative beauty, however, they are monstrous in their treatment of Levi, and in their revulsion at the prisoner’s involuntary dirtiness and abject appearance; yet Levi, acutely aware of his failure to conform to normative standards of masculine attractiveness, feels shame under their female gaze, recalling that only a year previously he possessed

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‘un corpo agile e sano’ [an agile and healthy body] (SQ I, 139; IM, 149). Evidently, his feeling of shame is bound up with issues of health and hygiene as well as with a perceived loss of masculinity, but his lost sense of himself as sexed and gendered nevertheless pervades this scene. In a binary logic of sexual difference, these German women are Levi’s ‘other’; however, given his fragile sense of himself as either masculine or human, they are in fact triply other, since besides being women they are both free and aligned with the oppressors. As a result they seem to Levi and the other prisoners like a different species: ‘creature ultraterrene’ [creatures of another world] (SQ I, 138). Gender and sexual difference are certainly not the primary conditions of embodiment which affect and affl ict Levi in the Lager; however, they do mark the narrative at specific points such as this episode in the laboratory, where it is their absence as axes of self-definition as much as their presence which holds poignancy. In La tregua, Levi recounts a more prolonged contact with a woman in the camps to whom he does not allude in Se questo è un uomo; Flora, the Italian cleaner in the cellars of Buna, who secretes rations of bread for himself and Alberto (SQ I, 351–52). Echoing the shame he felt before the German women in the laboratory, Levi feels embarrassed by his appearance in her company, mythicizing her as ‘bellissima, misteriosa, immateriale’ [beautiful, mysterious, incorporeal] (LT I, 351; T, 334) until he discovers that she is also engaging in prostitution, which he, somewhat naively and judgmentally, fi nds squalid (LT I, 352). 27 When he encounters her in the Russian camp at Staryje Dorogi, where she is living with a man who beats her and uses her as a slave, he does not declare his identity ‘per carità verso di lei e verso me stesso’ [through charity towards her and towards myself] (LT I, 352; T, 335). He feels his humanity and vigour returning but sees that she is still deeply subjugated, and therefore distances himself from her; it is thus far from apparent how his lack of acknowledgment might constitute a kindness to Flora. 28 While we might respect this account for its honesty, it also confi rms how the prisoners’ experiences of regaining their humanity are shaped by norms of sex and gender which impact in tangible ways on their bodies. In Staryje Dorogi it is the men who visit the female prostitutes in the woods—local women not former prisoners—who are forced to prostitute themselves out of desperation. Levi recounts this fact quite neutrally, and then remarks that the women’s extreme need gave the male clients a sense of playing the bountiful protector to them, giving rise to an interpretation of this transaction as a ‘scenario fiabesco-esotico’ [exotic fairy-tale scenery] (LT I, 337; T, 319). Here, as with Flora, the different ways in which women may be physically enslaved and exploited by men because of their sex are not fully acknowledged by Levi—nor is his male privilege. On the whole, Levi’s attitude to gender roles is quite traditional and normative; he is also rather prudish about sex in most of his work, distancing himself from the surge of sexual encounters in the immediate aftermath of

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 59 the liberation of the camps (LT I, 221–22; T, 202–3), and clarifying that he did not frequent prostitutes on the journey home, as discussed below. In some sense, despite his many friendships with brisk, efficient, and kind women along the way, women remain mysterious and mythicized to him in a manner that risks ignoring the physical and mental suffering that many undergo. However, he is drawn towards an unconventional form of masculinity that may idolize intellectual and heroic prowess but which rejects aggressive virility and favours gentleness. I return to the issue of sex and gender difference in later chapters, particularly in relation to his fiction, where it becomes a more significant element of his characterization than in his testimonial writing.

REHUMANIZATION If Se questo è un uomo narrates multiple processes of disembodiment, La tregua offers some tentative accounts of re-memberment, often marked by an awakening sexual desire or sensuality which were almost completely absent in Se questo è un uomo. As the text progresses, the survivors’ experiences become gradually less painful and more pleasurable; however, as the episode of the Russian prostitutes in the woods demonstrates, this impression may be created by passing over in silence the experiences of women, for example. Initially, for Levi, this return of sexual drives and awareness is a source of anxiety. Just as the contact with the German women in the laboratory had inspired a series of troubled reflections on his lack of external attractiveness, so increased contact with women outside the Lager motivates an acute and sometimes shameful awareness of his ‘aspetto miserevole’ [miserable appearance] (LT I, 255; T, 237). Alienated from his abject body that besides its physical weakness continues to be feverish, he expresses a desire to heal the split self, which he attempts through turning to nature: sentivo un bisogno imperioso di riprendere possesso del mio corpo, di ristabilire il contatto, rotto da ormai quasi due anni, con gli alberi e con l’erba, con la terra pesante e bruna in cui si sentivano fremere i semi, con l’oceano d’aria che convogliava il polline degli abeti. (LT I, 295) [I felt an imperious need to take possession of my body again, to reestablish a contact, by now broken for almost two years, with trees and grass, with the heavy brown soil in which one could feel the seeds chafing, with the ocean of air wafting the pollen from the fi r trees, wave upon wave.] (T, 278) If previously his self was experienced as split, the tormented body severed from a sense of damaged personhood, it is now through an openness to the

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pullulating vivacity of springing nature that Levi seeks to re-establish his humanity. Ever prudish about sexual desire, or undesirous of potentially exploitative contact with another human being, Levi does not frequent the women pimped by the Greek Mordo Nahum, but instead craves sunlight on his skin, wishing to lie naked in a meadow where the earth and plants seems to be steaming in the heat (LT I, 313; T, 296). His fellow Italian survivor Cesare is also described in the language of nature as he regains his strength: ‘Cesare rifioriva, visibilmente, di giorno in giorno, come un albero in cui monta la linfa di primavera’ [Cesare flourished visibly, day by day, like a tree nourished by the spring sap] (LT I, 275; T, 257). These images of ripening plants contrast starkly with a description of a groups of German soldiers, now prisoners, encountered in Žmerinka, who are depicted using the vocabulary of emptiness previously employed for prisoners in the Lager: they are ‘automi’ [automata], ‘svuotati e inerti, come le foglie morte che il vento ammucchia’ [emptied and inert, like barren leaves piled up by the wind] (LT I, 309; T, 291–92). Here Levi implies a cycle of rebirth and decay; having witnessed the downward turn in which dismembered bodies were sloughed off like empty husks, he is now moving upwards, passing by the non-living shells of German soldiers, progressing towards a regenerative physical metamorphosis that is crystallized in his meeting with Flora. He explains that he fails to identify himself partly because he feels as if he now belongs to a different species from her: ‘mi sentivo cambiato, intensamente “altro”, come una farfalla davanti a un bruco’ [I felt changed, intensely ‘different’, like a butterfly before a caterpillar] (LT I, 353; T, 335). In this simile, the abject body of the tormented prisoner is felt to have been cast off, allowing the superior, winged inner self to emerge, untainted by that horror. If imprisonment resulted in an experience of embodiment characterized alternately by feelings of abjection, need and emptiness, the process of regaining humanity is similarly multiple. While, on the one hand, intellectual succour is provided by Levi’s voracious reading of any book he comes across (LT I, 287; T, 270), rehumanization may also involve a combination of experiences directly linked to the body: the distancing of the former abject body; a (re)merging of self and body leading to pleasurable physical sensations; and a transcendence of the bodily container as the self seems open to and interacts with nature. Moreover, the evocation of the butterfly seems to suggest that it might be possible to transcend the category of species, in a pulsing, tangled energy of life forces. This is the uncontainable self, no longer imprisoned in the moment, scrabbling for survival, but able to look to the future. It is a self that is becoming reattuned to nature, not to the animal kingdom that was evoked in previous discourses of bestial degradation, but to plant and insect life, springing and light. Significantly, while hegemonic masculinity may be gained by men ‘being estranged from their bodies and dominating the bodies of others’ (Gallop 1988, 7), Levi both eschews the oppression of others and seeks to meld his self and body. Thus his narratives of

Embodying (In/Non-)Humanity 61 embodiment diverge from conventional, normative understandings of the relationship between maleness, masculinity, and embodiment. Just as the concepts of zoē and bios, and discourses of sex and gender are evoked throughout Levi’s work, these narratives of (dis)embodiment return in his oeuvre, often signalled by recurring words and images. For example, in Part II, I consider fictional narratives of disembodiment which feature subjects afflicted by emptiness, trapped within a ‘corazza’ [armour], as well as several references to the butterfly as a charged symbolic figure, and to the enriching re-memberment of bodily fusion with an overflowingly fertile nature. It therefore seems possible to suggest that Levi’s enduring interest in embodiment derives in part from the profound impact of his experiences in the camps, and that his fiction seeks to work through the accumulated trauma that this provoked. Before I consider these issues in more detail, the fi nal chapter in this part of the book moves away from Levi’s explicitly testimonial work to consider his semi-autobiographical writings, and explore his perspectives on epistemological and linguistic issues as they relate to embodiment.

3

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism

For Levi, the human body was a knowing or thinking body—a phenomenological view akin to Merleau-Ponty’s ‘sentient body subject’ (Williams and Bendelow 1998, 52). As previously suggested, and elaborated more fully in this chapter in relation to Levi’s representations of embodiment, this is fundamentally an anti-Cartesian position which rejects Descartes’ conviction that the body is mere extended matter while intellectual reflection takes place only in the unextended psyche. Although in the initial paragraph of Se questo è un uomo Levi describes how, after four years of oppression under the 1938 racial laws, he had been reduced to living ascetically, ‘in un mio mondo scarsamente reale, popolato da civili fantasmi cartesiani’ [in an unrealistic world of my own, a world inhabited by civilized Cartesian phantoms] (SQ I, 7; IM, 19), perhaps seeking to eschew the difficulties of oppressive material reality by seeking (disembodied) intellectual freedom, this feeling did not persist in his later accounts of his life. Indeed, even the sense of the body as abject, inimical to and distinct from his intellectual self, which he narrated as part of his experiences in the Lager, seems to have dissolved in works such as Il sistema periodico which are marked by a strong valorization of fully embodied subjectivity, explored in relation to Levi’s experiences both pre- and post-deportation. As Valerio Ferme has commented, while it may be true that as part of the Turinese intelligentsia Levi was ‘trained to determine his worth as a man by his ability to think’, it becomes clear upon reading his work that ‘the ability to think and talk is tied to the awareness of being, and of being human’ (Ferme 2001, 54). Both his experiences in the Lager and his activities as a chemist encouraged him to develop the view that one determines one’s worth by measuring body alongside mind, and that the body is a valuable ‘instrument of . . . “comprehension”’ (Merleau-Ponty 1992, 235). As well as contrasting with Cartesian dualism, Levi’s perspective also stands in opposition to Kant’s form of ‘transcendental realism’, which posits ‘the structures of human comprehension as already contained in the a priori principles of mind’ (Birkett 1999, 78). Indeed, Levi expresses explicit doubts regarding Kant’s conception of the a priori moral law, questioning how this can be the case in light of equivocal human ambitions such

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 63 as the race for nuclear armament, which seems to negate any possibility of an innate moral standard (AM II, 786; OPT, 10).1 Instead, in Levi’s work, reflecting the conviction of cognitive scientists (Johnson 1999), as well as poststructuralist challenges to notions of an objective ‘truth’ (Jaggar and Bordo 1992, 3), the body is the privileged location of thought, which is enabled through its situation in a particular socio-cultural and historical context. This chapter considers Levi’s perspectives on embodiment, thought, knowledge, and language, including his lived experience of his two professions of chemist and author. I suggest that the body functions in his work as a sort of ‘contenitore di processo’ [processing container] (RS II, 959), one of the types of container enumerated in ‘Una bottiglia di sole’ that serves not only to store a substance but in which it may be transformed. Consequently, thought ‘depend(s) for its specificities on the embodied form enacting it’ (Hayles 1999, xiv). With this interdependent relationship in mind, I trace similarities between Levi’s depictions of the embodied self, and of language and knowledge as channelled through the body. I argue that, just as Levi conceives of the embodied self as potentially constituted by material and immaterial components, so language and knowledge too are narrated as composed of more tangible (containable) and more abstract (uncontainable) parts. One way of reading these components is as conscious and unconscious elements, which, although distinct on some level, remain interrelated. With reference to the partly autobiographical texts Il sistema periodico, La chiave a stella, the anthology La ricerca delle radici, and the collection of essays L’altrui mestiere, I explore how these elements of knowledge and language, and the relationship between them, are presented and narrated in Levi’s work. Of course, autobiographical writing lends itself particularly well to embodied writing—writing that represents lived experiences. Jay Prosser remarks that ‘autobiography works like a skin; it is the skin the author sends out that at once conceals and reveals the self’ (Prosser 2001, 65). Much of Levi’s autobiographical work can be seen to function analogously, as a textual ‘body’ that he articulates in a process of narrative memberment, which insists on the radically interwoven quality of the relationship between bodies and texts and which engages with both conscious and unconscious dimensions. However, my analysis reveals a contradiction. In many ways, Levi’s approach to such issues posits a continuum, between mind and body, conscious and unconscious, inviting us to conceive of the relationship between the intellect and the body, the ego and the id, through the analogy of the Möbius strip, as in Grosz’s model of ‘psychical corporeality’ (Grosz 1994, 22). This is echoed in Levi’s calls for the two cultures of science and literature, to which he contributed, to be conceived as a continuum of interrelated intellectual and practical activity. Yet he also insisted that his scientific and literary selves were not only distinct, but fundamentally irreconcilable. Thus he narrates an embodiment marked by an epistemological split, and a problematic experience of

64 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment disciplinary containment which stands in opposition to the epistemological and ontological continuums he exalts elsewhere. I begin by exploring Levi’s views on knowledge and language before moving onto a consideration of his professional dualism.

DISABUSED KNOWLEDGES One way in which Levi reinforces his understanding of the body as heuristic is through idiomatic expressions that convey the somatic origins of thought; he describes how an idea originates ‘nella pancia’ [in my stomach], 2 or how he stores information ‘in corpo’ [in my body] (AM II, 819). When asked in an interview with Germaine Greer what he understands by the verb ‘conoscere’ [to know], Levi defi nes himself as a ‘realista naif’, stating, ‘conosco con le mie mani, e col naso. Credo ai miei sensi’ [naïve realist: I know with my hands and my nose. I believe in my senses] (Greer 1985). This is at least partially due to Levi’s ‘official’ profession of chemist, which, he explains, produces integrated subjects, whose bodies and minds function symbiotically, and who make full use of their cognitive and physiological abilities: ‘il mestiere di chimico ti integra nella funzione di persona completa, che non trascura nessuna delle sue faccoltà possibili’ [the profession of chemist renders you a complete, integrated person, who does not ignore any of their possible faculties] (D, 62).3 As a result of his training in chemistry, Levi attributes a cognitive value to the process of learning skills in addition to—or even in place of—facts (AM II, 814; OPT, 90). Ability to ‘do’ usually requires some degree of manual dexterity and a general sensitivity to the physical world—indeed, to our own physicality—thus dissolving the dualisms of Cartesian thought and making way for an integrated knowledge. As Valabrega (1997) has noted, the hand plays a vital cognitive function in Levi’s work; indeed, Levi asserts that to lack manual dexterity is to be in a state of ‘atrofia’ [atrophy] (SP I, 759; PT, 24). Individuals whose hands are untrained are deeply impoverished, as discovered by the Western ethnographers in Levi’s story ‘Gli stregoni’ [The Sorcerers] (L II, 151–61; TS, 108–22). Finding themselves stranded with the Siriono tribe in Eastern Bolivia, and relieved of the technological devices upon which they have come to rely, the ethnographers are forced to admit the inadequacy of their hands, and the difficulty of proving the widely proclaimed advantages of Western civilization in which the body itself and manual activity have been eclipsed by a reliance on technology (L II, 157; TS, 117–8). Levi’s epistemological approach has been defi ned as pragmatic and empiricist (Antonello 2005, 107), as well as ‘disabused’, manifest in his concern to remain sceptical of everything he encounters (Greer 1985). Concurring with this latter description, Levi explains that this approach derives from his training in the laboratory (Greer 1985), which, as he elaborates

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 65 elsewhere, includes the instructive cycle of trial, error, and correction (AM II, 642; OPT, 175), akin to the Popperian process of falsification (Popper 1959). His instinctive mistrust of appearances means that reliable knowledge comes from direct experience, which grants ‘l’autorità di chi insegna le cose perchè le sa, e le sa per averle vissute’ [the authority of one who teaches things because he [sic] knows them, and knows them through having lived them] (RR II, 1423; SR, 74). We might see echoes here of Leonardo Da Vinci’s conviction that learning must be fi ltered through the body in order to serve us well: ‘Knowledge that has not passed through the senses can produce none but destructive truth’.4 Without direct experience, Levi maintained, it was at least difficult, and at most dishonest, to attempt to predict the future outcome of any situation (CS I, 1093; W, 158–59). Moreover, Levi’s conviction that the future is both unknown and unknowable led him to cast doubt on large predictive claims based on a logic of cause and effect. These are often pure invention, he asserts, made up by those who are removed from the primary experience that would teach them the naïve error in their theory (CS I, 1096; W, 163). My contention is that Levi’s view of knowledge, like the self, can be analysed as constituted by a conscious and an unconscious component, which remain in tension in his work. For the purposes of my argument, the ‘conscious’ element is that which falls into the category of direct, empirical evidence gained through experience, an extreme example of which is given in the interview with Greer. When asked what he understands by the process of ‘knowing’, he responds, Quando ho capito che cosa succede dentro una storta sono piú contento. Ho conosciuto una cosa in piú. Non ho conosciuto la realtà, la verità; ho solo ricostruito un piccolo segmento del mondo . . . per me chimico, ‘conoscere’ vuol dire prevedere una piccola area di avvenire. Se io so cosa capiterà fra un’ora dentro il recipiente di reazione, conosco. La mia conoscenza è questa, molto modesta. Non pretendo di conoscere l’universo. Mi piacerebbe ma non posso. (Greer 1985) [When I have understood what happens inside a retort I am happier. I have learned something more. I haven’t discovered reality, or the truth, I have only reconstructed a little segment of the world . . . for me as a chemist, ‘to know’ means to predict a little bit of the future. If I know what will happen in an hour inside the apparatus, I know. That is my knowledge, very modest. I don’t claim to know the universe. I’d like to but I can’t.] This is a cautious mode of knowing that advances by minute steps and checks its progress through empirical results. Yet while it may offer some sort of guarantee, this approach focuses on localized detail at the expense of the overall picture. Levi did admit that there were significant gaps in

66 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment his knowledge, explaining that this was because he preferred to remain on known territory rather than venturing into unfamiliar terrain; like a woodworm, he would ‘fare un buco e poi rosicchiare dentro a lungo’ [make a hole and then gnaw away inside for a long time] (RR II, 1364; SR, 7). He sought not to infer universal truths, or to make grandiose claims, since these serve only to provoke more uncertainties (RR II, 1383; SR, 25). His epistemological scepticism, which acknowledges the impossibility of knowing the entire universe, found resonance with the physicist Tullio Regge. In conversation with Levi, he observes that if, as Gödel argues, any logical system is radically incomplete, then we can never push the boundaries of our knowledge sufficiently far to achieve a final unifying theory (D, 47; C, 47). However, given that in the interview with Greer Levi also admitted that he felt a violent desire to understand the world around him in all its complexities, the scaling down of knowledge to an extremely limited form of empirical research, to the prediction of a determined action within the determined space of a piece of scientific apparatus (perhaps the only situation in which the relationship between cause and effect may remain consistent), seems unexpected and due to cause frustration. Notably, Levi emphasizes to Greer that his responses are valid ‘per me chimico’ [for me as a chemist] (Greer 1985). Thus he evades what knowledge might mean to him more broadly as a socio-culturally located, embodied individual, effectively splitting his approach to knowledge in two—the implications of which I explore in due course, in relation to his ‘scientific’ and ‘literary’ selves. Alongside this rather restrictive defi nition of knowledge as only that which is entirely verifiable, Levi also embraced the matrix of knowledge offered by an important symbol in his imaginary: Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table. As Levi narrates it, Mendeleyev’s table shone an illuminating, comforting light on the disordered world so that ‘il caos dava luogo all’ordine, l’indistinto al comprensibile’ [chaos gave way to order, the indistinct to the comprehensible’ (D, 9; C, 9–10).5 This too might be thought of as ‘conscious’ knowledge, albeit on a much larger scale, resulting from the processes of organic chemistry as involving investigation, identification, and classification, through experiments that lead to an improved understanding of the elements contained within a given substance and their individual character or potential. However, empirical precision and a vision of the elemental composition of the world as somehow ‘knowable’ are supplemented by Levi’s alternative perspective on knowledge which positively embraces uncertainty, which we might consider as an ‘unconscious’ element. Philosophers of science have challenged scientific objectivity, unmasking the ideological and subjective components in all scientific endeavour to reveal both the necessarily situated nature of the ‘knower’ and his or her inevitable investment in the object of knowledge.6 In the broader context, this position mirrors developments in poststructuralist thought that seek to reveal an inherent lack of order in the world which evades attempts at mastery through linguistic or other codes. It also evokes

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 67 the spectre of the unconscious that disturbs knowledge. In line with these positions, in his work as a chemist Levi recounts how he often encountered and sought to reveal a distinct lack of order, which required him to grapple in innovative ways with confusing and complex issues (Grassano 1997, 124). In addition to his professed mode of knowing that proceeded cautiously based on empirical observation, he also advocated a certain degree of cognitive flexibility: una flessibilità intellettuale che non teme le contraddizioni, anzi le accetta come un ingrediente immancabile della vita; e la vita è regola, è ordine che prevale sul Caos, ma la regola ha pieghe, sacche inesplorate di eccezione, licenza, indulgenza e disordine. (AM II, 798) [an intellectual flexibility that does not fear contradictions, indeed welcomes them as an inevitable ingredient of life; and life is rule, it is order prevailing over Chaos, but order has crevices, unexplored pockets of exception, license, indulgence and disorder.] (OPT, 199) This statement evokes what Foucault has called ‘the negative side of science—that which resists it, reflects it or disturbs it’, and which will always persist around the limited information that we may provisionally accept as being accurate (Foucault 2000, xi). Foucault describes this negative side of science as an ‘unconscious’ of scientific knowledge; however, he claims that there are actually two unconsciouses, the second being the ‘positive unconscious of knowledge: a level that eludes the consciousness of the scientist and yet is part of scientific discourse, instead of disputing its validity and seeking to diminish its scientific nature’ (Foucault 2000, xi; original emphasis). Despite Levi’s professed preference for the empirical approach, he acknowledged that it results in a necessarily incomplete picture, and remained deeply aware of the knowledge that eludes our grasp, of its unconscious that is both secreted within it and transcends expressions of information. While an analogy between the processes of organic chemistry and discourses of psychoanalysis may seem arbitrary, it was in fact drawn by Freud himself. In a discussion of his choice of the term ‘analysis’, Freud asserts that ‘there really is an analogy’ between these processes (Freud 1955a, 159). He explains that the patient in psychoanalysis shows composite symptoms, but is unaware of the motives that provoke these symptoms. The work of psychoanalysis is thus to ‘trace the symptoms back to the instinctual impulses which motivate them . . . and of which he [sic] has hitherto been unaware’ (Freud 1955a, 159). Similarly, ‘a chemist isolates the fundamental substance, the chemical “element”, out of the salt in which it had been combined with other elements and in which it was unrecognizable’ (Freud 1955a, 160). Yet the unconscious, the salt, the pocket of uncertainty remains even despite our best (perhaps misguided) attempts to extract and isolate

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Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment

the ‘element’, just as the self can never be reduced to consciousness alone. Turning now to Levi’s use of and reflections on language, we see that Levi performs precisely the process that Freud outlines, not only on chemical compounds but also on words, tracing them back to their origins, removing them from the ‘salt’ of everyday hubbub to reveal their intrinsic properties and render them visible in a different way; yet in some instances he resists excavating ‘elemental’ meaning and delights in the crevices of ambiguity. Due to the embodied quality of knowledge and language, a quest to reveal their intrinsic properties inevitably involves revealing the self. Levi embarks on this quest, but at times stops short of undertaking it fully.

THE UNCONSCIOUS OF LANGUAGE The relationship between language and the unconscious has been explored by many thinkers. Notably, Lacan argued that the unconscious is structured like a language; it consists of signifiers ‘cast out from the signifying chain and thus unable to signify or be integrated into conscious discourse’, but which nevertheless voice themselves through discursive ambiguities (Grosz 1990, 114). If we consider the unconscious as positive, as in Foucault’s formula, then retrieving this lost aspect of language goes some way towards his concept of knowledge as a restorative, polyphonic knitting together of disparate ideas (Foucault 2000, 40). In this view, knowledge is constituted by multiple discourses, both conscious and unconscious, knowable and unknowable; however, we can attempt to access the positive unconscious of both language and knowledge through a sensitivity to that which eludes us. This is a challenge which Levi both resists and embraces. Within the terms of this discussion, what we might call Levi’s ‘conscious’ language has been described as precise, classical, and striving towards univocality (Porro 1997, 473). Levi himself seems keen to promote this view, explaining how writers have an ethical responsibility to articulate themselves clearly and unambiguously (AM II, 766); moreover, he declares that he deliberately strove to excise emotion from his testimonial works, seeking to attain a more objective tone that would enhance the credibility of his texts (I, 175).7 However, elsewhere he acknowledges the difficulty of achieving this objective ideal since ‘una scrittura perfettamente lucida presuppone uno scrivente totalmente consapevole, il che non corrisponde alla realtà. Siamo fatti di Io e di Es’ [perfectly lucid writing presupposes a totally conscious writer, and this does not correspond to reality. We are made up of ego and id] (AM II, 677; OPT, 158).8 Hence Levi’s self-styled language is not as functionally neutral and uncoloured by emotion, or the unconscious, as he claims. Indeed, in 1980 he admitted that the unconscious plays a significant part in the writing process: ‘lo scrivere non è un mestiere razionale, o non tutto. Cioè, quando uno scrive, c’è anche l’inquilino del piano di sotto che collabora . . . e se ne accorge piú il lettore di chi scrive’ [writing is

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 69 not a rational occupation, or not completely. That is, when you write, the tenant downstairs also participates…and the reader is more aware of this than the writer] (Amsallem 1997, 61). For Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, the doubleness of the self/other dualism is characteristic of Levi’s work. He comments on Levi’s classical language and the recurrent trope of extracting order from chaos (Mengaldo 1997, 232), but concludes that Levi’s writing, weaving together levels of the conscious and unconscious self, has become charged with the myriad levels of subjective ‘doubleness’ to which Levi often draws attention. Thanks to this richness of latent signification and plurivocality, Mengaldo suggests, language may function to reveal an image of Levi even more ambiguous than that presented by the writer himself (Mengaldo 1997, 242). Here we see how Levi’s multifaceted conception of human embodiment interweaves with and is echoed in his understanding of language, signification, and expression. If the embodied self and embodied knowledge are complicated by the tangle of ego and id, so is language. Indeed, while claiming to strive towards conscious clarity, to model his writing on scientific reports (Luce 1997, 40) and criticizing obscure prose (di Caro 1997, 204), Levi openly valued the enriching potential of multiple interpretations (De Rienzo and Gagliano 1997, 115). In reality, rather than emulating the presumed objectivity of traditional scientists who seek ‘to say only one thing at a time’ (Huxley 1963, 14), Levi revelled in the multiple connotations of scientific terminology (D, 59; C, 59), desiring to reveal the meanings ‘storicamente addensato dietro una parola’ [historically accumulated behind a word] (Ferrero 1984). Like Freud’s unconscious self, which Levi narrates on occasion as a Doppelgänger or shadowy second self, there is an unconscious of language, a ‘positive unconscious’ that does not threaten to compromise the validity of discourse but rather enhances its content. It is not the isolated element of the ‘pure’ word that he values, but the ‘salt’ that has accumulated around it. If, for Levi, knowledge and thought are embodied, language too is traceable on as well as woven deeply into our material form. In the poem ‘Autobiografia’ [Autobiography], he dignifies the older body that endures through time to emerge ‘inciso di strani segni’ [inscribed with strange signs], as experience becomes written on the body itself (AOI II, 558).9 Likewise, he reflects on how his own body is marked indelibly in different ways. From his work as a chemist, there is the scar on his right hand, marking a rite of passage shared by all chemists of his generation who injured themselves while assembling the easily breakable equipment that preceded more robust models available today (AM II, 810; OPT, 86). From another formative experience he bears the tattoo of his prisoner number from Auschwitz on his arm. He comments in I sommersi e i salvati that while, on one level, this branding remains a mark of reductive violence, forty years on it has become a part of his body (SS II, 1085; DS, 95). Such semiotic somatic markers show how the skin participates in ‘the body’s memory of our lives’

70 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment (Prosser 2001, 52). Drawing on Anzieu’s theory, we might see the tattoo as an example of inscription on the ‘parchment’ of the skin ego, which records traces on the outside of the body that in turn shape the idea of the self (Anzieu 1989, 105). Moving inside the body, Levi explains that literary texts which influenced his writing style passed not through his mind, but were ‘assorbita per via cutanea’ [absorbed through the skin] (Greer 1985). Moreover, Levi playfully suggests that text is located within our very bowels. In the story ‘L’amico dell’uomo’ [Man’s Friend] (SN II, 456–59; SD, 37–41), he recounts the elegant and allusive verses written into the histological mosaic of a tapeworm, to be deciphered by the human host whom the parasite addresses. Gillian Beer has noted ‘the implicit presence of the human body in writing and language’ (Beer 1990, 792); Levi’s fictionalized account of a text composed by a tapeworm seems to assert that the opposite is also true, that is, language is present within the human body, and cannot be expunged. A striking example of this linguistic permeation is provided in the preface to the anthology La ricerca delle radici. Levi locates the texts he includes—texts which have influenced his thought—not only on a bookshelf but also within his body, describing them as an ecosystem of literary ‘saprofiti, uccelli diurni e notturni, rampicanti, farfalle, grilli e muffe’ [saprophytes, birds of day and night, creepers, butterflies, crickets and fungi], which has seeped into his bowels and which he excavates (RR II, 1363; SR, 5). The process of excavation is somewhat traumatic, however, proving both pleasurable and painful: A metà cammino mi sono sentito nudo, e in possesso delle opposte impressioni dell’esibizionista, che nudo ci sta bene, e del paziente sul lettino in attesa che il chirurgo gli apra la pancia; anzi, in atto di aprirmela io stesso. (RR II, 1362) [Halfway through I began to feel naked, and experienced the contrasting emotions of the exhibitionist who is happy naked, and the patient on the hospital trolley waiting for the surgeon to open up his stomach; or rather, in the process of opening it up myself.]10 Here Levi invites us to see his body as both a postmodern mesh of discourses and a delimited container. His ambivalence about this process of opening up may spring from a feeling that, if text and the body have merged together, the anthology reveals much more than the written words of which it is composed; Levi is revealing his shadowy self, or an internalized, previously hidden, unconscious part of his experiences that has melded with these printed phrases. He is revealing his textual narratives of the self, or textual memberment, as narratives, and therefore risking reducing himself to zoē, or bare life. Moreover, this account seethes with a palpable anxiety about these narratives being, or being perceived

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 71 as, abject, conveyed through the imagery of a surgically opened bodily, coupled with nocturnal creatures and decay.11 Thus extracting the element from the salt is a process that Levi is simultaneously drawn to and hesitant about completing fully. Significantly, this anthology is framed by both Levi’s discussion of the texts he cites as constitutive elements of his embodied self and by a graph of the level and type of humanity communicated by these texts. The pictogram that Levi provides as a guide to the anthology, which traces four possible narrative strands among all the extracts included, shows the omnipresence of degraded humanity, in the form of Job, and of the superhuman, in the form of black holes. It also asserts the co-existence of ribald, grotesque humanity (Rabelais) and reasoned, ordered arguments (Darwin). Humanity is a temporary, precarious, multistranded condition, moving from degradation towards an entropic unknown, animated by contrasting tensions; indeed, Levi links the texts, which otherwise might seem rather disconsonant, through their shared attention to the human condition as marked by opposing emotions, capacities, and experiences: ‘errore/verità, riso/pianto, senno/follia, speranza/disperazione, vittoria/sconfitta’ [falsehood/truth, laughter/tears, judgement/folly, hope/despair, triumph/disaster] (RR II, 1365; SR, 8). These contradictions run counter to Levi’s desire for clarity, but they are a fundamental aspect of human existence, of the self, and therefore of (embodied) language and knowledge. The link between the human form and language is emphasized in Levi’s observation that language is ‘umano, è nato per descrivere cose a dimensioni umane’ [human, born to describe things of human dimensions] (di Caro 1997, 202). As a result, it struggles when asked to represent the inhuman (the Lager) or the superhuman (space) (AM II, 788; OPT, 12–13). As Beer has observed, ‘language is anthropocentric, persistently drawing the human back to the centre of meaning’ (Beer 1996, 155). Yet language also vitally extends and enlarges human capabilities and the reach of the self, hence its description by Rosi Braidotti as ‘the ultimate prosthesis’ (1994, 44). Others have described language as ‘a double coding: both a statement about the outside and a statement about the inside’, which carries the unconscious of the utterer along with its ostensible meaning, outside his or her body.12 It is this doubleness that gives language its playful, uncontainable multiplicity—its productive unconscious—which fascinated Levi and which led to his interest in linguistic puzzles such as palindromes, and the symmetrical halves of portmanteau words that produce elusive phrases and stimulating fusions.13 Yet just as human beings can become non-human, so language can be stripped of its doubleness, or ‘human’ qualities. Aside from its degradation to the animal bellow of the prisoners in the Lager, language can also become dehumanized by the inhuman rigidity of its meaning. Given the interwoven relationship between language, knowledge, and the embodied self, this development has implications not only for our use of language, but also for how embodiment is experienced.14

72 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment One of Levi’s most detailed comments on this issue was made in a 1971 interview occasioned by the publication of Vizio di forma (The Sixth Day), in which he explained that although he thought he had said all there was to say as a testimonial author, he realized that he did in fact have more to write. However, this could only be expressed in a different language; ‘stridulo, sbieco, dispettoso, volutamente antipoetico, disumano insomma, quanto il mio linguaggio di prima [in Se questo è un uomo] era stato inumano’ [shrill, askance, disrespectful, deliberately antipoetic, in a word, antihuman, as much as my earlier language (in If This Is a Man) was inhuman] (Lamberti 1997, 111, emphasis added). It is not entirely clear from this enigmatic statement what Levi perceives as the distinction between the two terms ‘disumano’ and ‘inumano’, which are often given as straightforward synonyms. The difference may be the distinction between a lack of humanity and the process of losing human qualities, as suggested in Chapter 2. However, the issue is further confused by the fact that Levi discussed Se questo è un uomo, the earlier text to which he alludes, as representing ‘disumanità’ (Poli and Calcagno 1992, 48). By means of explanation, Levi evokes Adorno’s comment that there can be no poetry after Auschwitz (Adorno 2003, xv), clarifying that in his view the only poetry that one can write is about Auschwitz: ‘una poesia pesante e densa, come metallo fuso, che scorre via e ti lascia svuotato’ [a heavy and dense poetry, like molten metal, that runs away and leaves you emptied] (Lamberti 1997, 111). Yet it remains unclear whether this scalding form of expression, which, like the disembodying experiences of being imprisoned in the Lager empties out the human to its bare life, is ‘inumano’ or ‘disumano’. Is it inhuman, non-human, or dehumanized? Levi claims that his earlier language was ‘inumano’, yet he employs variations of the word ‘disumano/ disumanità’ more frequently than ‘inumanità’, and far from sounding ‘inhuman’, his prose retains ‘a highly literary verbal texture which nevertheless produces an impression of limpidity and transparency’ (Lepschy and Lepschy 2007, 134). An answer may be found by looking at Vizio di forma, in which ‘disumano’ might be translated as ‘non-human’, or ‘anti-human’, that which does not reflect or incarnate the complex characteristics of human life but recalls the Muselmänner who seem to haunt Levi’s dystopic scenarios. Many of the stories in Vizio di forma engage with the pressing technologization of the human body that excises the emotionality, changeability, and humour of human existence in favour of rigid, unswerving efficiency, expressed in a bleakly ironic, spare prose. In one story, ‘Le nostre belle specificazioni’ [Our Excellent Specifications] (VF I, 661–70), Peirani, a pedantic bureaucrat, strives to achieve absolute, inflexible semiosis. Ultimately this results in him excluding himself from the category of human being due to his inconsistencies with the received defi nition of ‘Specifica 366 478, Uomo’ [Specification 366 478, Human Being] (VF I, 664). Criticism of this specification by another character, Renaudo, as ‘una scemenza disumana’ [an anti-human stupidity] (VF I, 667), perhaps directs us to

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 73 the form of ‘disumanesimo’ that Levi wished to narrate in these stories: one that takes away our capacity for linguistic and inner contradiction, playfulness, non-conformity, and individuality—one that silences the positive unconscious.15 In order for us to retain our humanity then, language, among other constitutive elements, should bear the stamp of our ‘humanness’, and echo the tangle of human nature as composed of multiple, potentially contradictory elements. In interviews, Levi reveals that he perceives himself as split, composed of both rational and irrational halves (Nascimbeni 1997, 139); more generally, he defi nes humans as tangles of positive and negative elements (Lo Presti 1997, 56). If, for Lacan, the self is split and alienated because it has to express itself in language, Levi both dramatizes and reifies this split in the form of the ‘tenant from down below’ and posits that it is possible to become whole in some way through mending the mind/body schism, thinking with the body, and becoming ‘complete’. On the one hand, he craves clarity, stating definitively that ‘dopo novant’anni di psicoanalisi, e di tentativi riusciti o falliti di travasare direttamente l’inconsio sulla pagina, io provo un bisogno acuto di chiarezza e razionalità’ [after ninety years of pyschoanalysis, and successful or failed attempts to pour the unconscious directly onto the page, I have an acute need for clarity and rationality] (AM II, 847; OPT, 208). However, on the other hand, he is nevertheless drawn to the unconscious, to the confusion that underlines or obfuscates any univocal answer, leading to the conclusion that ‘la condizione umana è incompatibile con la certezza’ [the human condition is incompatible with certainty] (AM II, 856; OPT, 95). Likewise it is incompatible with purity, as clarified by his praise of impurity, against the Fascist desire to expunge from society the ‘impure’ Jewish race, which, he asserts, is vital to the continuation of life (SP I, 768; PT, 34). Therefore, despite his demands for precision, insistence on universal order, and impatience with scrambled messages, ultimately he admits—alternately with reluctance or gusto—that the clear and the chaotic must coexist. We encounter many narrations of this co-existence in his depictions of the embodied self, particularly in his accounts of himself as a chemist and literary author.

EMBODYING EPISTEMOLOGICAL HYBRIDITY Levi’s approach to the body, the split self, and the co-existence of contrasting components takes on particular significance when considered in light of the relationship he perceived between science and literature, which have historically been conceptualized by many as utterly distinct bodies of thought and practice. As has been noted (Borri 1992; Porro 1997; Antonello 2005), Levi sought in a sustained manner to overcome apparent divisions between literary and scientific cultures, famously identified by C. P. Snow in his 1959 lecture on ‘The Two Cultures’.16 Like Snow, Levi believed

74 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment this division to be deeply damaging to both the evolution of our knowledge of the world and the status attributed to different forms of knowledge. However, while Levi wished to bring the categories of literature and science into closer dialogue and relation with one another, and while his activities meant that he himself was potentially an iconic figure of unified culture, he retained a pervasive sense of himself as ‘double’ and ‘split’ rather than a coherent, single being. Significantly, he narrates this split as impacting on his sense of embodiment. Levi’s conviction that science and literature are interconnected was arguably informed by his understanding of knowledge as embodied. In particular he took issue with the view popularized in Italy by the philosopher Benedetto Croce that the sciences were merely informative, not formative, and that manual activities, such as laboratory experiments, were somehow baser and less worthy of respect than more abstract scholarly pursuits (Croce 1950, 56). In contrast, Levi wished to suggest that science could offer an intellectual training (De Rienzo and Gagliano 1997, 117), and that ‘l’analisi manuale, come tutti i lavori manuali, ha un suo valore formativo’ [manual analysis, like all manual work, has a formative value] (D, 61–62; C, 62). Without the embodied knowledge that stems from the technical side of science, we are the poorer; not only our brains but also our hands should be educated if we are to develop our full capacities. While Croce’s views still held sway in Italy when Levi was at school (SP I, 783; PT, 52), the postwar period saw a move to counter the view of science as distinct from or lesser than literary or philosophical reflection. Antonio Gramsci’s notebooks were published, claiming that cerebral and manual activities were equally valuable for the new intellectual.17 Postwar journals such as Il Politecnico began a process of redemption for ‘science’ beyond the limited usefulness accorded it by Croce,18 and in 1964 the translation into Italian of Snow’s lecture on ‘The Two Cultures’ galvanized debates on the relationship between science and literature.19 Snow called for clearer communication and improved dialogue between those involved in literary and scientific activities (Snow 1993, 14–15). Levi contributed to these debates, although not immediately, through interviews and essays, as well as through more sustained texts such as Il sistema periodico and La chiave a stella. However, while Levi’s view resonates broadly with Snow’s position, he did not echo Snow’s claims for the greater ‘moral health’ of scientists, which simply inverted the existing literature/science hierarchy (Snow 1993, xxvi). Instead, Levi argued that the disciplines are formed by human endeavour and, like all human beings, are morally variable: they may harm or heal depending on how and by whom they are practiced (Grassano 1997, 134). Levi’s view of knowledge as embodied contributes to an understanding of science as practiced not only by an abstract intellectual part of the scientist, but also by that person in his or her entirety. As a Jew who suffered both in the Lager and under the fallacious ‘scientific authority’ of Mussolini’s

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 75 1938 ‘Manifesto degli scienziati razzisti’ [Manifesto of Racial Scientists] (AAVV 1938), he had fi rst-hand experience of how subjectively appropriated ‘truths’ or ‘facts’ might be used to oppress individuals and groups, and how science could be an instrument of death. 20 This was not the authoritative science of the positivists, bolstered by the epistemological certainties promised by Cartesian intellect, Newtonian axioms, and the rationalist, ‘truth’-driven principles of the Enlightenment; here, what Jacques Derrida would term discursively produced and elaborated science (Derrida 2000, 93) is shown to be terrifyingly ideological. Against this, Levi appealed to the conscience of scientists who, informed by moral and ethical concerns as well as by experience, might act to prevent further perversion (Lamberti 1997, 113–14). Rather than attempting to salvage some form of transcendental, Enlightenment reason, Levi depicts the post-Holocaust scientist as necessarily profoundly embodied. If both science and literature are practiced by socio-culturally located individuals, then it follows, as Levi argued, that the two cultures are not incompatible, self-contained sets of ideas; rather, when the circumstances are right they enrich each other reciprocally, through bridges between them or across permeable disciplinary boundaries. 21 In the preface to L’altrui mestiere Levi refers to the ‘ponti che uniscono (o dovrebbero unire) la cultura scientifica con quella letteraria’ [bridges that unite (or should unite) the scientific and literary cultures] (AM II, 631; OPT, viii). Revealing that he deliberately eschewed the exclusive group of discipline-specific specialists to wander alone across a more variegated, interdisciplinary landscape, Levi suggests freedom of movement between disciplines in a great unified realm of culture as an antidote to epistemological or professional containment. Through the wide-ranging essays collected in this text, Levi seizes a vicarious right to roam, undertaking a number of ‘“invasioni di campo”, incursioni nei mestieri altrui’ [‘invasions of the field’, incursions into other people’s trades] (AM II, 631; OPT, vii). He espouses what Adorno called ‘the freedom of subjective thinking . . . the idea that thinking should not be bound by the prevailing rule of a scientific discipline’ (Adorno 2003, 184). 22 In the preface to L’altrui mestiere, Levi’s peripateticism is narrated as both a cerebral and a physical voyage, as he evokes a geographical landscape across which he moves. He leaves the normative flock to get a better view of the landscape as a whole; he straddles bridges between areas of academic enquiry, scrambling across gulfs of perceived disciplinary incompatibility. He places himself fi rmly within this landscape, a material presence who moves at will, valuing a freedom to roam and alter his perspective. Although L’altrui mestiere is a collection of essays, not an autobiography, many of the pieces collected in the volume include personal disclosure, for which this obliquely autobiographical preface prepares us. This brief, metaphorical journey also chimes in many ways with developments in the philosophy of science, as Croce’s hierarchical privileging of philosophy over

76 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment the hard sciences is replaced implicitly by new paradigms introduced by figures such as Thomas S. Kuhn (1970) and Evelyn Fox Keller (1985). Their perspectives unmask the subjective qualities of scientific investigation and emphasize the relative, situated quality of knowledge—knowledge which is accumulated through experience and which stands against Enlightenment notions of transcendental reason. Levi’s depiction of different branches of knowledge as located in a continuous landscape, and his appreciation of how one’s material stance affects one’s perceptions, allow him to dismiss and dissolve limited, divisive approaches to literature and science, and to embark cross-country on interdisciplinary adventures. Such notions of transversal knowledge and open disciplines evoke the work of several thinkers associated with poststructuralism: from Battersby’s comments about the self as an ‘event horizon’ rather than a ‘three-dimensional container’ (Battersby 1998, 52), to the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin, who dismissed descriptions of research areas as having boundaries, preferring the terms ‘field’ (as in electric force field) or ‘elastic environment’ (Morson and Emerson 1990, 51). Bakhtin strove in his own work to move ‘on the borders of all the . . . disciplines, at their junctures and points of intersection’, since it is from these boundaries that culture draws its vital energy and relevance. 23 It is to this type of trans-borderline movement that Levi aspires, marked by frequent references in his work to the productive qualities of bridges; for example, in La chiave a stella, Faussone proclaims the beauty of bridges as generative links that enable evolution and communication (CS I, 1039; W, 104). Given the enthusiasm with which Levi argues for unified culture, it is therefore surprising that elsewhere he describes his own experience as marked by epistemological irreconcilability. Levi complicated the binary of the two cultures by considering technology alongside science, insisting on his identity as a technician (Gozzi 1997, 92; Porro 1997, 432), and on manual activity as having a formative, intellectual component, discussed previously. However, when asked in 1985 what being an ‘intellectual’ means to him, rather than highlighting the cerebral importance of manual activity, Levi’s response is marked by a deep ambivalence about both the label of ‘intellectual’ and his activities. He agrees that Se questo è un uomo is the work of an intellectual, but draws a sharp distinction between this and his activity as a chemist, which he posits as emphatically non-intellectual (Gozzi 1997, 92). In the contemporary text I sommersi e i salvati, discussing the intellectual in Auschwitz, Levi provides a defi nition of an intellectual that corresponds more closely with the interdisciplinary epistemological approach outlined previously: ‘la persona colta al di là del suo mestiere quotidiano; la cui cultura è viva, in quanto si sforza di rinnovarsi, accrescersi ed aggiornarsi’ [The person who is educated beyond his [sic] daily trade, whose culture is alive in as much as it makes an effort to renew itself] (SS II, 1095; DS, 106). Reflecting on Auschwitz survivor Jean Améry’s defi nition of

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 77 intellectual life (Améry 1999), which Levi fi nds too reductive, too limited to the ivory tower of philosophical reflection, he asserts that the category ‘intellectual’ should include mathematicians and philosophers of science as well as scientists and technicians (SS II, 1094–95, 1101; DS, 1–6, 113). However, once again there are contradictions within Levi’s account. On the one hand, he distinguishes sharply between manual work and intellectual reasoning, since in the camps, even the Cartesian, traditionally ‘cultured’ individual lived or died by the logic of the SS, and was therefore at a severe disadvantage since survival depended on an ability to carry out physical labour and on applied skills such as fi nding bread and shoes (SS II, 1095, 1108; DS, 106, 120). On the other hand, he narrates his sense of self, and particularly his sense of intellectual self, as determined by a somewhat disconsonant combination of classic cerebral reflection, manual labour, and lived or professional experience: he identifies the episode in the Lager when he attempted to recite verses from Dante as a reaffi rmation of his identity through his mental capacities, but also declares that the Lager was a sort of university for him and remarks that if he qualifies as an intellectual now, it is thanks both to his experiences at Auschwitz and his profession as a chemist (SS II, 1100–1102; DS, 112–14). Running directly counter to Levi’s comments on unified culture, the dualistic conception of his activities as chemist and author implied here is elaborated in a 1966 interview, in decisive terms: io sono un anfibio, un centauro . . . Io sono diviso in due metà. Una è quella della fabbrica, sono un tecnico, un chimico. Un’altra, invece, è totalmente distaccata dalla prima, ed è quella nella quale scrivo, rispondo alle interviste, lavoro sulle mie esperienze passate e presenti. Sono proprio due mezzi cervelli. È una spaccatura paranoica. (Fadini 1997, 107) [I am an amphibian . . . a centaur . . . I am split in two. One half of me is of the factory, is the technician and the chemist, but there is another, quite separate half, that lives in the world of writing, giving interviews, working on my past and present experiences. They are the two halves of my brain. I live with this paranoid split.] (VM, 85) This is not the postmodern, embodied self as a tangle of energies, but a sharply bifurcated self, which may prove as harmful as the perceived gulf between the two cultures and which indicates a strong sense of ontological discomfort. Levi both reinforces and seems keen to smooth over this internal schism. On the one hand, he asserts that this is not a unique condition but identifies other Italian interdisciplinary thinkers and practitioners who he claims share his ‘paranoid split’, including Carlo Emilio Gadda, Sergio Solmi, and Leonardo Sinisgalli (Fadini 1997, 107). 24 However, while he insists on having two separate cognitive systems, he explains that he depicts

78

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in his writing ‘le proposte della scienza e della tecnica viste dall’altra metà di me stesso in cui mi capita di vivere’ [versions of the ideas of science and technology seen from that other half of myself through which I happen to live] (Fadini 1997, 107; VM, 85). Thus he declares that he views each system through the lens of the other, constructing a hybrid perspective that collapses the binaries he highlights here. On one level, this is simply a version of the cross-disciplinary approach outlined previously as a positive resolution to divisions between disciplinary fields. As Hayles argues, such a cross-disciplinary approach may even function ‘as a way of understanding ourselves as embodied subjects. Literary and scientific texts reveal what the other cannot’, granting us a clearer and fuller picture of ourselves as complete individuals in a particular socio-cultural context (Hayles 1999, 24). However, rather than serving primarily to furnish additional perspectives, Levi’s split self seems to indicate existential discomfort, a similar discomfort to that which he perceived in Josef K., the protagonist of Kafka’s The Trial, whom he describes as ashamed of being ‘incoerente, non uguale a se stesso nel corso del tempo . . . o anche diviso nello stesso istante, spaccato in due o più individualità che non combaciano’ [incoherent, not equal to himself during the course of time . . . or even divided at the same instant, split into two or more personalities that do not jibe] (RS II, 941; MM, 129). 25 This is an altogether less harmonious manifestation of being ‘nonidentical’ to oneself, which evokes the figure of the Doppelgänger or Laing’s disembodied individual; indeed, Levi’s explanation that he ‘works’ with one half of himself and ‘lives’ in the other conjures images of phantasmatic doubles, haunting the ‘other’ side of his conscious self.

CHEMICAL AND TECHNICAL BODIES As an antidote to the broader epistemological ‘schism’ between the two cultures, and perhaps to resolve the split within himself, Levi set about writing a text that would tackle the relationship between science and literature while also enhancing the profi le of chemistry as an intellectual and existential apprenticeship (I, 1446). The result, Il sistema periodico, is a collection of stories and anecdotes written over several decades, the earliest dating from before the war (I, 1447).26 I consider it here alongside the 1978 novel La chiave a stella, which can be considered as a ‘twin’ text to Il sistema periodico. 27 Both works engage with Levi’s dual profession of chemist and author (as well as evoking the third profession of technician), although in strikingly different ways and with different implications for what we are to make of his internal epistemological split. Il sistema periodico is an account of a chemist’s life and of a discipline that explores the human form and its relationship to the elements, tracing transversal links between the body and its surroundings or between individuals and different chemical elements with which they feel an affinity—with

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 79 which their very destinies may seem to be entwined (SP I, 934; PT, 225). This emphasis on the connections between humans and the elements is unsurprising when we consider that Levi’s interest in chemistry derived directly from a desire to understand the body in the world around it. He said, ‘Mi interessa il contatto con la materia, capire il mondo che è attorno a me, mi interessa la chimica del corpo umano, la biochimica’ [I am interested in the contact with matter, in understanding the world around me, I am interested in the chemistry of the human body, biochemistry] (Camon 1991, 69; 1989, 65). For Levi, the productive connections, or perhaps the symbiotic relationship, between ourselves and the elements are animated by shared chemical composition as well as by a mystical energy that fascinates and escapes us. Inebriated by the alchemical mysteries of the elements before him and forcing his way beyond the reductive versions of textbookbased chemistry to which his school teachers introduced him, Levi determines to read some of these indecipherable characters, endeavouring to force a more satisfactory, more authentic answer from behind the enigmas through performing experiments himself and by direct observation (SP I, 758; PT, 23). 28 Factors which inspired the book’s composition are openly discussed within the text itself. In a highly self-conscious episode at the beginning of the chapter ‘Argento’ [Silver], Levi recounts his project to Cerrato, with whom he studied chemistry at university, drawing deliberate links between chemistry and human experience. He reveals that his objectives include identifying and emphasizing the connections between the process of living and chemical processes, and privileging not large-scale industry but individual endeavour and the achievements of those who confront the matter of life and work directly, ‘senza aiuti, col cervello e con le mani, con la ragione e la fantasia’ [without aids, with their brains and hands, reason and imagination] (SP I, 915; PT, 203). As a text intended to overcome the perceived schism between the two cultures, both within Levi personally and more broadly, it was deemed to have succeeded: Mario Petrucciani declared it the most convincing example in the science–literature debates of a vibrant interdisciplinary assimilation, seen particularly in the fusion between the elements and the human psyche (Petrucciani 1978, 91). Indisputably, the book presents an embodied engagement with epistemological issues as they touch individual lives, as Levi weaves together the processes of scientific knowing, living and writing, autobiography and fiction in a complex web of reciprocally influential events and experiences. On an epistemological level, Petrucciani argues, the text shows how, just as reason underpins our ethical engagements with the world, so science informs our existential experiences (Petrucciani 1978, 93). Liberating chemistry from its previous incarnation as a book-bound, informative model, or as consisting of rigid methodologies (SP I, 801; PT, 71), Levi’s experiences of working with and through chemical processes reveal them to require and to thrive on creative input from those who practice them.

80 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table itself, which inspired the title, is also brought to life, showing how ordered understandings of phenomena not only are rigid and controlling, but also can be applied creatively and flexibly to our constant questioning of the world. Levi’s periodic table weaves a plurality of voices, situations, practices, and concerns together into an existential table, which, of course, escapes and transcends its initial, containing framework. It is this living, growing quality that Petrucciani highlights, and which turns a text inspired by the ‘locked opposition’ of the two cultures debate into a journey, a quest for identity (Petrucciani 1978, 92). Levi depicts this journey in its fullest sense, encompassing and requiring input from all aspects of lived experience—professional, creative, quantitative, spiritual, personal, physical, and intellectual. In Bruce Clarke’s analysis, the text shows Levi learning how to bridge different worlds as he assumes the role of a Daemonic intermediary, like Mercury in classical myth, facilitating exchange and transformation (Clarke 1993, 176–77). Despite the sustained account of his life and experiences contained in this text, Levi protested that this was not an autobiography but rather the history of a discipline (SP I, 934; PT, 224). While autobiography here is not employed merely to recount the events of a life—the text is decidedly nonnarrative (McRae 1988, 116)—it functions as an embodied way of reflecting on chemistry and the human condition. As Elspeth Probyn observes, autobiography has multiple functions, including being ‘made to question implicitly the relation of self to experience, researcher to researched, and the production of knowledge itself’ (Probyn 1993, 105). Whether consciously or not, and despite his resistance to psychoanalytic investigation, Levi’s work does indeed question the relationship between the events of his life and his self, between the intended aims and the actual practice of chemistry, between the object of inquiry and the observing scientist; in short, he questions how we know. In enlivening seemingly rigid, empirical methodologies, Levi is acknowledging the unconscious of knowledge, the repressed subjective character of all scientific activity and the repressed unconscious self. Profoundly aware of the difficulty of reconstructing a representative image of himself at a distance of several decades, 29 and conscious also of the ways in which ‘History’ often omits vital pieces of its fabric, or becomes the victim of revisionism,30 Levi brought this scepticism to scientific practice because it is a part of culture, and therefore must be treated as a cultural artefact. As a text intended to bridge the gap between scientific and literary cultures, Il sistema periodico uses autobiography to assert the presence of an uncertain, ungraspable, human element in science as in life more broadly. On this issue, Sandra Harding writes, The insights of Freud and Marx have taught us that the accuracy of our autobiographies is limited by what we have inadvertently forgotten, by what is too painful to recall, and by what we cannot know about the

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 81 forces operating in our natural/social surroundings that shaped our early experiences. It is useful to regard the same as true for concepts and institutions such as those of modern science. Histories and sociologies that are to be critical biographies of a culture—not just selfcongratulatory autobiographies—should be a ‘return of the repressed’ . . . they should reveal to us the ambivalences and gaps in our conscious cultural memories, and their origins in socially repressed histories. (Harding 1996, 201–2) The many ambivalences in Levi’s text, as well as in his sense of self, can be seen as productive instances in which space is created for the repressed to surface as a positive unconscious. Similarly, breaches in the text can be seen to mirror breaches in Levi’s portrayal of his self: the wholly fictional, indeed rather fantastical, story ‘Mercurio’ [Mercury] not only interrupts the more autobiographical chapters, but its sexual content also disturbs his cultivated objective persona as a sober, testimonial writer. Clarke suggests that Levi may even have sought to discourage an autobiographical reading of this text ‘to deflect attention from and mute the memoir of sexual adolescence embedded within it’ (Clarke 1993, 172). The simultaneous concealing and revealing of the self, articulated in the preface to La ricerca delle radici and perhaps an inevitable aspect of any elaboration of self, may also be identified here. If Il sistema periodico depicts the chemical body brought to life, emphasizing the connections between Levi’s bifurcated selves, La chiave a stella can be read as reasserting his internal division, although in a relatively productive manner. This dialogical novel constitutes a crystallization of Levi’s ongoing questioning of the relationship between cerebral and manual activity—writing and chemistry, ‘real’ life and fantasy representation—carried out through what is ostensibly a somewhat schizophrenic conversation with himself. As he admitted to Greer, he appears as the chemist-writernarrator (1985) in conversation with Libertino Faussone, the rigger, whom he acknowledges elsewhere as his alter ego (Roth 2001, 16). If Levi features as a professional centaur, then Faussone completes and complicates his identity by representing the third element—the technician. These three professions are compared and contrasted throughout the novel. While Il sistema periodico can be seen, on one level, as a direct response to the two cultures debates, La chiave a stella also inserts itself obliquely into another cultural binary that was provoking anxiety in postwar Italy, the relationship between literature and industry. Italy’s economic boom (1958–63) had led to the sudden appearance of large factories, altering both urban landscapes and working practices in significant ways. While many authors struggled to make amends for Italy’s tardy industrialization and tardiness in representing this in cultural forms (Toscani 1972, 515), and debates ensued between those enthused by industrial progress and others who expressed anxiety that such ‘progress’ would ultimately annihilate

82 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment both nature and humanity (Chicco Vitzizzai 1982, 32), critics began to outline a new role for literature: to seek to represent, denounce, and somehow counteract social alienation caused by the rapid technologization of society (Scalia 1982, 77). Levi’s engagements with the industrial environment and the effects of working on the production line (such as ‘disumanizzazione’ [dehumanization]), notably in the collections of short stories Vizio di forma and Storie naturali, are discussed in Part II. In contrast, the protagonist of La chiave a stella, Libero Faussone, is seen to have eschewed alienation by working independently rather than in a factory (CS I, 1016–17; W, 80–81). The freedom his work grants him is reflected in his fi rst name, ‘Libero’, meaning ‘free’, undoubtedly a response to the dictum inscribed above the gates of Auschwitz ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (Roth 2001, 15–16). Accused of presenting an anachronistic scenario (Grassano 1997a, 170; VM, 123), and a protagonist whose professional activity was unrepresentative of contemporary working conditions (Chicco Vitzizzai 1982, 45), Levi countered such criticisms roundly. Clearly opposed to the mechanics of the production line and their alienating effect on subjectivity, Levi opted in this text not to further critique Taylorized factory conditions, but to suggest ways in which work might become a cherished and valued activity (Grassano 1997a, 169–70; VM, 123). Despite the ‘unrepresentative’ setting and characterization of La chiave a stella, Levi’s text may be seen as a partial attempt to achieve Scalia’s goal to anticipate freedom from industrial alienation through literature (Scalia 1982, 77). Working through contemporary paradigms, Levi seeks to unearth the cognitive, emotive aspects of manual labour, and to restore us to our ‘true’ condition of artisan creators, as complete, fully embodied beings. Faussone is an adventurer, a storyteller, a philosopher, and a technician rolled into one, who asserts an independent, idiosyncratic subjectivity. While Faussone’s polyvalence, together with his valorization of bridging structures, suggests a desire to overcome divisive understandings of self or knowledge, Levi also reinforces a dualistic perspective as the narrator and Faussone debate whether writing or rigging is preferable as a career. After a few exchanges about the likelihood of a work-related illness or working hours in the respective professions, Levi (as narrator) concludes that deciding between them is like trying to decide whether it is better to be born male or female, and only someone who had lived both experiences could pronounce on this question. He then turns to mythology and recounts the myth of Tiresias (to which I return in Chapter 7), used as an arbiter by Jupiter and Juno in their arguments as to whether men or women experience more pleasure during sexual intercourse.31 On hearing of the gods’ dispute, Faussone points out—repeating Levi’s earlier reflection—that ‘per decidere, ci voleva uno che avesse provato che effetto fa a essere uomo e anche a essere donna; ma uno così non c’è’ [to decide, you’d need someone who had experienced what it’s like to be a man and what it’s like to be a

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 83 woman, but there’s no such person] (CS I, 987; W, 50). Levi duly recounts Tiresias’ transformation from male to female when he encountered two snakes mating in the forest; a transformation that enabled him to experience living as both sexes. When Faussone responds by asking the narrator if he is in fact a Tiresias figure, Levi-narrator feigns surprise and admits that perhaps he is; he has encountered warring gods and serpents who changed his condition and gave him a strange gift of speech, like Tiresias’ gift of prophecy—which seems a clear allusion to his testimonial writings. Chemist to the outside world, but with a writer’s blood in his veins, he certainly has two souls; yet rather than an advantage, this is framed as a problem. Levi declares that two souls ‘sono troppe’ [are too many] (CS I, 989). 32 Here Levi contrives a conversation that sees him both claiming a privileged, unique omniscience and bemoaning an existential state of unmanageable duality. His double experience is potentially an advantage as well as an affl iction. This propensity to view both sides of the situation is echoed in his approach to the professions which he alternately draws together and distinguishes between. Levi depicts himself as a twin-souled centaur who is clearly distinct from the character of Faussone, and yet their activities are methodologically similar, as Faussone assembles large-scale constructions while Levi assembles chemical elements and builds words into phrases. Ultimately, he characterizes himself as having expertise in his two main professions and notes how all three activities can result in existential plenitude because ‘insegnano a essere interi, a pensare con le mani e con tutto il corpo’ [they teach us to be whole, to think with our hands and with the entire body] (CS I, 989; W, 52]. Here we return to the body as cognitive, and as an essential part of the self, even while Levi transcends the limits of his own body, through his overflowing twin souls and his extra, externalized, alter ego. Levi’s varying approaches to the relationship between science, technology, and literature both provide a potential solution for divisive conceptions of the disciplines and seem to deny this possibility. From the dynamics between men and women to the tensions between science and literature, Levi’s appreciation of difference is animated by the ostensible impossibility of knowing, or being, both parts of a paired opposition; yet he simultaneously (with some justification) claims to have precisely this gift. He repeatedly insists that some form of existential plenitude can be achieved if we think through the body, the ‘processing container’ in and through which thought, knowledge, and language pass and evolve, as well as thinking across disciplinary boundaries. However, the self remains stubbornly unknowable; its unconscious, like that of knowledge or language, eludes us. This is especially true in autobiographical writings in which the ‘authentic’ I is continually problematized and called into question (Anderson 2001, 73). Significantly, Levi’s self-defi nition as a split subject endured, and he repeated it in a 1981 interview, declaring ‘Io credo proprio che il mio destino profondo . . . sia l’ibridismo, la spaccatura’ [I fi rmly believe that my

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true destiny is to be hybrid, split] (Tesio 1997, 186). Moreover, his longstanding experience of feeling like a self of two halves may have inspired his interest in psychoanalytic works on schizophrenia around this time: he read works by the psychoanalyst Silvano Arieti on schizophrenia and creativity, and expressed an interest in exploring these issues in his writing.33 Indeed, to some extent, he had already begun to engage with precisely these questions in La chiave a stella. In one late interview, with Roth in 1986, Levi seemingly withdrew his self-defi nition in La chiave a stella as suffering from having too many souls, agreeing with Roth’s analysis that he actually only had one, that was ‘capacious and seamless’ (Roth 2001, 18). However, he then goes on to emphasize once more how aspects of his careers as writer and as a factory-based chemist are ‘brutally incompatible’ and reveals that if he now identifies as having a single, peaceful soul, this is because when he retired from the factory he renounced his ‘fi rst soul’ (Roth 2001, 18–19). Thus Levi’s sense of self as double or split remains, in this instance with one of his halves as an absent presence, a fi rst soul that, while cast off, nevertheless lingers as a ghostly presence. This chapter has revealed a structural commonality in Levi’s understanding of the interwoven and reciprocally constitutive phenomena of knowledge, language, and the embodied self: they are all animated by a positive unconscious that troubles and enriches them. My contention is that Levi’s acknowledgement of and interest in these multiple unconsciouses, coupled with his insistence on the embodied character of knowledge and language, constitute a stance against the ahistorical, transcendental, rational subject of the Enlightenment, in favour of the socio-culturally located subject, embedded in and produced by his or her context and state of material embodiment. As Druker has pointed out, there are certainly moments in his texts in which Levi assumes the problematized, omniscient voice of the objective, scientific narrator aligned with Enlightenment thinking; for example, in Se questo è un uomo he makes a number of ‘sweeping, yet detached’ observations (Druker 2009, 57). Druker includes in this type of remark Levi’s comments, cited in Chapter 1, about human beings as ‘“campioni”, esemplari in busta chiusa, da riconoscere, analizzare e pesare’ [‘samples’, specimens in a sealed envelope, to be identified, analysed and weighed] (SS II, 1102; DS, 114). In context, this remark is prefaced by Levi’s acknowledgement that his tendency to observe and analyse in an apparently detached manner might be seen as ‘disumana’ [inhuman], but that it stems from his work as a chemist and has provided substantial material for his work as a writer. While Druker focuses on Levi’s apparent admittance of inhumanity and on the reductive implications of considering human beings as specimens (Druker 2009, 68–69), he does not consider the transversal lines between chemical processes and psychoanalytical investigation that I have identified in this chapter, and which animate Levi’s analysis. While Levi’s comments may imply a closed, contained, potentially problematic approach to understanding human life, my belief is that even

Embodied Knowledges and Epistemological Dualism 85 this statement implies a multi-stranded investigative perspective. Levi states that he never remains ‘indifferente’ [indifferent] to these specimens, evoking Levinas’ defi nition of ethics as based on our obligation to the other. In weighing and measuring such specimens, as he weighed and measured himself, Levi arguably amassed a wealth of information along the lines of that explored in this chapter—a tangled complexity of hybrid, multiple, contradictory, and elusive phenomena. If we consider the ‘sealed envelope’ of the human being as a ‘processing container’ for knowledge, thought, and language, then Levi’s perspective seems far less detached than one might have thought. I agree with Druker that Levi’s position is marked by contradictions that are at times problematic, but am also moved by his struggles to accept the existence of, to grasp, and even to reveal the unconscious elements of himself—struggles which ultimately take place in the uncontainable container of the human body.

Part II

Bodily Modifications and Mutations

Foreword Thinking of the Future: Science Fiction

Having traced Levi’s narratives of embodiment as negotiations of containment both in and beyond the Lager, I now turn to Levi’s futuristic writing and consider his fictional depictions of posthuman embodiment. If, as Levi asserts, our capacity to think of the future is a key human characteristic, then the ability to hypothesize about the future is peculiarly human; this includes considerations of the kinds of (human) beings that will populate the future, and the kinds of freedom they might (or might not) enjoy. Levi’s futuristic narrations of robots, cybernetics, and the technological mediation of organic bodies and sentient technologies once more evoke the difficult negotiations of containment that human beings often face. His numerous short stories which deal explicitly with these issues might best be termed ‘science fiction’ writing, although, like all of Levi’s thought, this aspect of his work is marked by ambivalence. While what constitutes and defi nes ‘science fiction’ remains equivocal, it is undoubtedly the literary genre that most easily enables authors to posit or evoke potential futures and potential future modalities of human embodiment. Before analysing the texts in the next four chapters, I briefly contextualize Levi’s views on this genre of writing. Feeling that in Se questo è un uomo and La tregua he had fully recounted his testimony as a witness of the Holocaust, but that he could not simply slip into being an ‘orthodox’ literary author,1 Levi turned towards ‘un certo tipo di fantascienza’ [a certain kind of science fiction] as the literary genre which most suited his desire for self-expression. 2 However, he also resisted the label, referring to the collections Storie naturali (1966) and Vizio di forma (1971) as ‘racconti cosiddetti di fantascienza’ [so-called science fiction stories] (Poli and Calcagno 1992, 39), or as moral tales disguised as science fiction (I, 1439). As Cicioni has noted (2001, 77), Levi’s science fiction is not the stuff of alien beings from other worlds. Indeed, this type of alien only makes two appearances in Levi’s work, 3 while Levi’s writing throngs with less distant ‘others’ on whom analysis focuses: defamiliarized examples of human subjects who are often alienated and ‘othered’ from themselves and from their bodies. Moreover, Levi specifically clarifies that his texts ‘non sono storie di fantascienza, se per

90 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment fantascienza si intende l’avenirismo, la fantasia futuristica a buon mercato. Queste sono storie piú possibili di tante altre’ [these aren’t science fiction, if by that you mean fiction about the world to come, cheap futuristic fantasy. These stories are more possible than many others] (Fadini 1997, 106; VM, 84: original emphasis). While acknowledging Levi’s ambivalence about the label, which should be taken in light of Levi’s ambivalence about literary genres in general,4 I have decided to use the descriptor ‘science fiction’ to refer to these stories, since it encompasses far more than the light, fantasy tales from which he wished to dissociate his work. Indeed, science fiction has been defended vigorously as politically engaged writing (Ramelli and Canal 1962, 9), both on account of its ethical drive and because, despite its frequent futuristic orientation, it often has one foot planted fi rmly in the moment of its composition, demanding that readers reflect on their current socio-historical context. Sergio Solmi has described it as ‘an impassioned projection of the present onto a mythical future’ (1959, xx). As Levi argues, his writing is not escapist fantasy, but ethically motivated reflection on possible developments and on what we consider to be our reality, which casts a troubling doubt on what we think we know of the world and our place in it. In Levi’s view, it was logical for him to write this kind of science fiction since his world was marked by unexpected but nevertheless possible experiences— his imprisonment in the Lager and his acclaim as a testimonial author— that took place ‘al di fuori’ [outside] his usual existence (Fadini 1997, 107; VM, 85: original emphasis). Here we see how, although he spoke of moving onto a new period of writing, Levi also draws on his past to inform his depictions of a hypothetical future. Indeed, he was at pains to emphasize how, although this might not be immediately apparent, his science fiction writing related closely to his testimonial work, asserting the presence of a link, a bridge, between his writing on the Lager and these stories (I, 1435). He comments that he was motivated by the desire to reveal the tear, flaw, or ‘formal defect’ in our myths of civilization (I, 1434), a defect which finds its most terrible example in the Lager, in ‘l’uomo ridotto a schiavitù da una cosa: la “cosa nazista”’ [man reduced to slavery by a thing: the ‘Nazi thing’]. 5 This explicit remark invites the reader to consider all his texts, even those oriented to the future, as informed by his own past, and signals a recurring discourse on the reification of the human being across his work. Even more explicitly, Levi commented in a 1978 interview that these stories are linked to his earlier work because they are about ‘l’uomo violentato’ [the violation of mankind];6 consequently, he explains he decided to set some of the stories in the collection Storie naturali in Germany, because it remains, for him, ‘il paese della violenza’ [the country of violence].7 This is a violence done to minds and bodies, which, although less extreme and systematic than that carried out in the Lager, has some similar consequences for individual freedoms and the experience of embodiment.

Foreword

91

The scenarios depicted in ‘imaginary-but-possible’ science fiction futures (Heinlein 1969, 18), are somehow beyond daily life, but are close enough for the distinction to remain blurred. Levi’s realm of the possible nudges uncannily against our present time, like a sneak preview of our immediate future, juxtaposing the known and the unknown. Darko Suvin has argued that science fiction relies on ‘the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition’ (Suvin 1990, 7). Through a process that makes strange the familiar, science fiction throws into relief particular aspects of our situation, inspiring cognitive realizations on our part. Importantly, Suvin continues, the alternative existential and social frameworks depicted are related to our current situation through analogy. Thus, although the technique of defamiliarization which is so often used in science fiction may superficially suggest otherwise, the ‘beyond’ it portrays always relates to our lived reality, making it ‘a parable about ourselves’ (Suvin 1990, 7). In Levi’s case, the uncanny effects of defamiliarization begin with him, as a self of two halves; indeed, he explains that he was drawn to science fiction precisely because its ambiguity reflected his dual existence as a literary author and chemist, and that in the Storie naturali in particular he is viewing science and technology not as a scientist, but through his ‘other’ half, his everyday self (Fadini 1997, 107; VM, 85). Yet while this duality seems to refer primarily to an epistemological split, he recounts how the publication of his fi rst collection of science fiction stories, Storie naturali, seemed to alter his physiological embodied self as he underwent a sort of literal reincarnation, appearing to those who knew him ‘con un’altra pelle’ [in a different skin] (Poli and Calcagno 1992, 39). The doubling effects continue, since Levi published the Storie naturali under a pseudonym, Damiano Malabaila, at the suggestion of his editor, Roberto Cerati, who perhaps wished to distinguish this collection from the testimonial works, or who deemed these stories to be of inferior quality to the previous works (I, 1435). However, the text on the back cover of the book, written by Calvino and Levi, left any alert reader in no doubt as to the real identity of the author, since ‘Malabaila’ is described as a chemist who has written about his experiences in the Lager. Thus the pseudonym is a device of only partial estrangement. It is worth noting Levi’s explanation of how he chose this name, apparently at random, from a shop front close to his home, but then realized that semantically it evoked notions of abjection and danger: ‘Malabaila’ is a surname meaning ‘cattiva balia’ or ‘evil wetnurse’, evoking images of infants poisoned or harmed by the very person who should keep them safe.8 He recounts how friends of his, interested in psychoanalysis, insisted that this was not a casual choice since no choice is casual, and that this act constituted a Freudian parapraxis or slip through which the unconscious makes its presence felt in the world (Luce 1997, 41–42).9 These stories, then, represent transgressions or evolutions of several categories: literary genre, name, sense of embodied self, intended meaning. In interpreting these texts, it

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is relevant to draw together several cognate issues already discussed in relation to Levi’s thought: the abject, the underside of the symbolic that troubles its coherence; substrates of barbarism perceived to lurk beneath the veneer of civilization; tensions between plurality of meaning or the self, for example, and socio-cultural pressures that privilege rationalization. As already discussed, all of these issues pertain intimately to experiences of embodiment for Levi, which he explores through narratives of our evolving relationships with our bodies as our bodies themselves evolve. If, as has been suggested, science fiction repeats the Sphinx’s question, ‘what is a human being?’,10 Levi’s science fiction certainly engages with this enigma, already raised in the poem ‘Shemà’. In asking whether the demeaned and degraded prisoner qualifies as human, this poem also poses implicit questions as to what qualifies as, or is implied by the category and status of ‘human’. More precisely, Levi’s science fiction work can be read as posing the question, ‘what might a human being become?’ In their portrayals of possible futures, these stories repeatedly dramatize hypothetical technological developments that interface with or impinge directly on the human body, resulting in technologized or posthuman embodiment. While he valorized profoundly the kind of technical work performed by Faussone, for example, Levi was also wary of how technology might become ‘warped’, like the science he had encountered in Auschwitz. Warning of potential abuses, he cautions that ‘la tecnica [è] come la lancia di Achille, che ferisce e guarisce, a seconda di come viene maneggiata o meglio, a seconda della mano che la regge’ [technology is like Achilles’ spear, that harms or heals according to how it is handled, or rather, according to the hand that bears it] (Grassano 1997, 134). Here it is upon the hoped-for morality of our knowing, educated hands that Levi relies. Statements such as this imply that Levi’s science fiction texts are a consciousness-raising exercise, one which invites the reader to reflect and act on our common future and our future embodiment. In his 1985 essay ‘Eclissi dei profeti’ [Eclipse of the Prophet] (AM II, 853–56; OPT, 91–95) Levi impresses on the reader that our future is unknowable, but also concludes that it is not yet determined and can be shaped by our actions: it is in our hands (AM II, 855; OPT, 93). Here, again evoking the cognitive manual organ, he both endows us with the possibility of shaping our future and charges us with the responsibility of ensuring its productive development. A clear sense of ethical commitment emanates from his words, as he warns of the dangers we pose to ourselves and incites his readers to rise to his challenge and work together towards certain objectives: promoting more ethical scientific and technological development; working against oppressive social organization; and protecting our autonomy over the human body in the brave new world that is already upon us.

4

Bodies, Prostheses and Sentient Technologies

Discussion so far has suggested that there are formal parallels to be drawn between our bodies and objects in the world, due either to our perception of similarities or to the fact that we externalize what is within us and augment our impact on the world by creating forms that replicate, and ‘enlarge’ our selves: [We create] independent objects, objects which stand apart from and free of the body, objects which realize the human being’s impulse to project himself [sic] out into a space beyond the boundaries of the body in acts of making, either physical or verbal. (Scarry 1985, 38) This chapter ranges over texts that explore industrialized reality, a mythic past, and a technologized future, as Levi weaves possible pre- and posthuman narratives about how our bodies came to be as they are, how they extend into the world, and how they might co-exist with machines in the future. I explore further the extension of the self into the shelter or the home, already analysed in previous discussions, and progress to a consideration of extensions of the human being in the form of mechanical technologies, important symbols and signifiers of industrial civilization. Levi’s accounts of the relationship between embodied human subjects and the technologies used to enhance their capacities are rendered complex by the fact that he often portrays these technologies as apparently sentient phenomena. Machines and apparatuses may be ostensibly separate from their maker but they are undeniably haunted by traces of the embodied self, and anxieties persist about boundaries, about the interface between humans and machines, bodies and technologies, and particularly about the location of sentience. As much critical and fictional work on artificial intelligence has demonstrated, our enduring desire to create sentient technologies remains tempered by a concern over our ability to retain control over our machines.1 Exploring the issue of mechanical sentience, the essayist and novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda argued that machinery has inspired a series of animistic discourses which posit it as sharing our mental and sensorial abilities;

94 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment factory workers consider the machines they operate to be ‘thinking creatures’ which they are inclined to praise or blame as if they were capable of functioning independently. However, Gadda concludes that rather than possessing innate sentient properties, machines are merely a concrete externalization of our mental capacities in which we divine the reflection of our own consciousness (Gadda 1964, 167–78). Both these scenarios can be identified in Levi’s fictional representations of the relationship between humans and technological devices. He narrates the process of anthropomorphization by which human qualities and characteristics are projected onto non-human phenomena, implying that similarities between humans and machines are limited to the presence of perceived analogous features: in Freud’s terms, the result of the ‘primitive animism which caused us to see copies of our own consciousness all around us’ (1957, 171). In addition, however, Levi also depicts an animism that endows the machine with autonomous vitality. Levi uses fiction as a space in which to explore concerns about human domination by intelligent machines but also to assert the common characteristics of humans and other life forms. In so doing he raises questions of responsibility related to technological development; after all, if Gadda and Freud are right, then the technology we often fear is no more than a model of ourselves, and it is to ourselves we should look when attributing agency. Moreover, if technology is so closely modelled on the human form, it constitutes a narcissistic reification of human selfconception that reveals a great deal about experiences of embodiment, for example. As Bettina Knapp asserts, ‘because machines are the outgrowth of human imagination, inventiveness and skill, exploring the place of these automatic or semiautomatic entities in society is also to learn more about human nature’ (Knapp 1989, 2).

PROSTHESES AND PROJECTIONS As discussed in previous chapters, the notion of embodiment as delimited containment has been substantially problematized or unravelled by several critical discourses including anthropology, cybnernetics, and philosophy, and Levi’s own position was certainly ambiguous on the issue. One effect of the conception of the body as a sealed container is that it leaves no space for discussion of the prosthetic extension of the self, and particularly of the body. A key way in which this occurs is through the use of tools, which seem to be enlivened by our use of them as we are enhanced by their properties, at times impacting on our conception of the boundary between body and implement. For example, Paul Schilder asserts that our body image can absorb external objects into itself so that ‘when we take a stick into our hands and touch an object with the end of it, we feel a sensation at the end of the stick. The stick has, in fact, become part of the body image’ (Schilder 1978, 202). Earlier commentaries on this fusion include Martin

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Heidegger’s argument that our relationship with things usually incorporates a theoretical veil separating us from the object, yet if we grasp hold of the ‘hammer-Thing’, we will engage with it on a deeper, more primordial level (Heidegger 1964, 64). Within an Italian context, the futurist Arnaldo Ginna wrote of how ‘the car has become the necessary prolungation of the worker’s nerves’. 2 These perceptions and sensations mean that ‘the distinction between machine and organism is thoroughly blurred; mind, body, and tool are on very intimate terms’ (Haraway 1991, 165). Similarly, anthropological discussions of evolution have insisted on the body as a work in progress, rather than an organism with a fixed boundary where we interface with the world. Oakley, among others, has claimed that the human ability to craft tools and receptacles actually had an impact on the human body itself, improving our capacities for survival and for intervention in our living conditions. He posits that when humans learned to walk upright, their hands were ‘free to make and manipulate tools—activities which were in the first place dependent on adequate powers of mental and bodily co-ordination, but which in turn perhaps increased those powers’. In his synthesized version of evolution, Oakley notes that over the course of millions of years, humans have managed to adapt their bodies to the environment through ‘extra bodily equipment of their own making’ (Oakley 1967, 1). Following this view, not only have humans produced a vast, varied assortment of specialized containers, but they have also intervened on the container of the body. Indeed, as Frederick Engels argued, such was the determining impact of tools on our bodily development that we can consider the hand itself as an artefact: it is ‘not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour’ (Engels 1950, 75; original emphasis). Thus the hand was partially produced in an active process in which ‘human beings unconsciously assumed responsibility for their own bodily evolution’.3 Levi explicitly evokes these discourses in La chiave a stella, in a description of Faussone’s hands: le mani di Faussone: lunghe, solide e veloci, molto più espressive del suo viso. Avevano illustrato e chiarito i suoi racconti imitando volta a volta la pala, la chiave inglese, il martello . . . venendo a soccorso della parola quando questa andava in stallo. Mi avevano richiamato alla mente lontane letture darwiniane, sulla mano artefice che, fabbricando strumenti e curvando la materia, ha tratto dal torpore il cervello umano, e che ancora lo guida stimola e tira. (CS I, 1089) [Faussone’s hands: long, solid, and quick, much more expressive than his face. They illustrated and glossed his tales, imitating, as required, a shovel, a monkey wrench, a hammer . . . coming to the rescue of speech when it stalled. They had reminded me of distant readings of Darwin, of the artificer’s hand that, making tools and bending matter, stirred the human brain from its torpor and still guides and stimulates and draws it ahead.] (W, 154–55)

96 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment Here Levi emphasizes the fundamental cognitive function of the hand in human evolution and its continuing active role in our interactions today. However, Levi had already taken this reflection much further back in time, in portrayal of a self-fabricating individual in the 1971 story ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’ [His Own Blacksmith], who recounts the process of evolution (VF I, 702–9; SD, 224–32). This narrative engages directly and humorously, if rather bleakly, with anthropological ideas of the body as a self-adapted phenomenon, as well as revealing a similar preoccupation with the role of the hand in evolutionary development to that expressed by Engels and others. It is a clear example of the ‘fantabiological’ strand of Levi work, identified by Calvino (2000, 695–96). Levi recounts the experiences of an individual who at the time of telling is a man, but whose memory contains the recollections of all his ancestors, right back to ‘il primo’ (the fi rst: an obvious pun on Levi’s fi rst name). In this it might be seen as a light-hearted reworking of Darwin’s The Descent of Man, which considered ‘fi rstly, whether man [sic], like every other species, is descended from some pre-existing form; secondly the manner of his development’ (Darwin 1888, 2). Beginning at a time of–109, Levi’s protagonist narrates a series of highly anachronistic, anthropomorphized diary entries detailing the changes that this, the fi rst ancestor, and his ‘wife’, effect to their own physical forms as they leave the water and forge a way of life on land. Levi’s blacksmith focuses on the biological alterations necessary to enable this great mutation: on the optimum dimension and number of his legs; the necessary consistency of his skin; how reproduction and gestation should take place; how to make a pair of eyes; which elements to use as materials. The story ends in–106, when the protagonist is walking on two legs, working with his hands to make implements and able to use them against his fellows. At this point, he stops altering his physical body and begins constructing and devising implements from natural materials, which continue to echo the form of and enhance his body: a shelter of leaves and branches protects him; clothes made from animal skins keep him warm; a bow and arrows enhance his ability to attack others. In Levi’s account, there is no room for deviation, since every progression takes the protagonist one step further on an inevitable teleological march towards a primitive—or all too familiar—version of human civilization as we know it, when the blacksmith can conceive of religion, hunt, defend his territory, and kill others because they covet his wife, or for reasons of racial prejudice. With these fi nal transformations the protagonist maintains that the diary can be terminated since he is more or less complete: ‘da allora, nulla di essenziale mi è piú successo, né penso mi debba piú succedere in avvenire’ [Since then, nothing essential has happened to me, nor do I think is going to happen to me in the future] (VF I, 709; SD, 232). Human behaviours as typically performed in Western contemporary culture are therefore naturalized, rendered inevitable, and their continuing development is foreclosed, as if there were no other way

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for us to be, despite the obvious potential shortcomings of the existential state he describes. Levi’s protagonist invites reflection on this version of human evolution and ‘humanity’. As the bodily form takes shape, the behaviours that we recognize as ‘human’ follow; or, as Eaglestone puts it, ‘the idea of the human and the human body define each other’ (Eaglestone 2004, 324). Yet this is a truncated version of the narrative of human self-creation that seems to break off, disheartened, as humans fight one another for reasons of perceived superiority rather than through any need for survival. Although basic prosthetic enlargement of the body in the shelter offers protection, ultimately, the prosthetic implements created serve to enable violence and destruction rather than continued improvement. Levi narrates how our ancestors might have achieved and conceptualized the enlargement of their bodies into a wide variety of technologies, including weapons: ‘an extension of the human body (as is acknowledged in their collective designation as “arms”)’ (Scarry 1985, 67). Levi’s concern about how such technologies are used to achieve domination over others and to cause pain is palpable. Indeed, the back cover copy of the fi rst edition of Vizio di forma, probably written by Levi himself, notes that a key focus of the collection is whether ‘l’uomo fabbro di se stesso, inventore ed unico detentore della ragione, saprà fermarsi a tempo’ [man, his own blacksmith, inventor and unique possessor of reason, will be able to stop himself in time] in the quest to ‘improve’ modern technology (I, 1443). His choice of language, directly evoking the title of the story discussed here, explicitly makes the connection between evolutionary development, the creation of primitive tools, and the creation of much more complex modern technologies which feature in the stories, placing all these forms of making on a continuum. As implements and shelters protect the body, shielding it from the world so that it is no longer our fi rst line of defence, we are able to turn our attention to the world around us, often in a destructive manner. While ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’ begins with a mutating body, it ends with proliferating technologies as an extension of this. The body is stabilized and therefore somewhat forgotten as we seek to enlarge our capacities even more, projecting ourselves further into the world through the construction of the artefacts that together symbolize that apparently desirable state we call ‘civilization’ (Scarry 1985, 38). In Freud’s analysis, the enlargement of the human body through implements and devices that extend our organic capabilities has made the human being into ‘a kind of prosthetic God’; one who is ‘magnificent’ but who nevertheless remains profoundly uneasy about the ‘auxiliary organs’ that can now be annexed to the body (Freud 1961, 91–92). This uneasiness about the apparently inevitable progression towards an idealized, ‘perfect’ human form is palpable in Levi’s story, and can be linked to his later explicit criticism of the assumed benefits of ‘progress’ trumpeted by the Enlightenment: reflecting in 1979 on the attendant problems that have accompanied our increased reliance on mechanical technologies and chemically produced

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rather than natural products, he scathingly reduces so-called ‘progress’ to mere scientific and technological development, certainly not moral improvement.4 An accelerated, self-determined evolution, or artificial perfection of the human form is therefore to be treated with caution and critically evaluated, rather than universally praised. The reason that humans possess, which, Levi tells us on the cover of Vizio di forma, is not transcendental but a human invention, should implicitly be used to urge restraint, not to justify destructive behaviour. While ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’ evokes our complex relationship with the world around us, touching on processes of externalization and our interface with tools, in other fictionalized representations of this interface, Levi also directly engages with the issue of sentience, asserting explicit similarities between organic substances and our vitality, and identifying traces of our bodies in our machines, provoking challenging confrontations.

ANIMATE MATTER AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM Just as the blacksmith began with basic chemical elements, so Levi’s representations of sentient phenomena extend to matter itself, revealing many examples of hylozoism: the philosophical conception of nature as animate, independent, living material, which derives from the Greek hyle (wood or matter) and zoē (life). Il sistema periodico, as Cases points out (1997, 12), is overflowing with descriptions of animate matter, perhaps most famously the single carbon molecule which circles the globe in the carbon cycle before being incorporated into Levi’s body, and with which Levi ends his text, leaving its trace in the fi nal full stop (SP I, 942; PT, 233). Matter in this text is anthropomorphized, characterized variously as the mysterious, metamorphosing Proteus (SP I, 759; PT, 23); as a constant adversary, ‘la grande antagonista dello Spirito’ [the spirit’s great antagonist] (SP I, 767; PT, 33); as ‘la Materia-Mater . . . la madre nemica’ [Mother-matter, our hostile mother] (SP I, 771; PT, 38); as ‘il non-io . . . la Hyle: la materia stupida, neghittosamente nemica come è nemica la stupidità umana’ [the not-I . . . hyle: stupid matter, slothfully hostile as human stupidity is hostile] (SP I, 873; PT, 154). Protean indeed in the shape it assumes, for its human investigators, matter is perceived in a variety of forms ranging from sparring partner to ignorant obstacle to omnipotent force, incorporating all the capacity, authority, stupidity, and unwieldiness of human life. As critics have noted, Levi measures himself against the world, against this material opponent (Gordon 2001, 113–32). Matter is both akin to and other than Levi, echoing his accounts of the split or unconscious self; as a result, the relationship between the investigator and the investigated substance is complicated by a lack of clear boundaries. Matter is portrayed as independently animate but is also further anthropomorphized in his descriptions as he projects human sentience onto the elements he handles, retrieving the

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lost links between us and them, which are made explicit in ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’. Here, again, Levi’s position stands in distinct contrast to Enlightenment thought, specifically against its quest to master nature, to achieve ‘the disenchantment of the world [through] the extirpation of animism’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 5).5 Although unusual in his humanist-chemist’s fascination with animate matter, Levi was not alone among postwar Italian scientists in finding behavioural similarities between elemental matter and human character. His technique of linking individual characters with chemical elements in Il sistema periodico is echoed in narrative strategies employed by the neuroscientist Rita Levi Montalcini in her autobiographical account of her life and research (1987).6 An example of a clear correspondence between character and element in Levi’s work is seen in his heroic mountaineering friend Sandro Delmastro in the chapter ‘Ferro’ [Iron] (SP I, 771–81; PT, 37–39). Sandro is described as made of iron, blending typical associations of iron with masculine physical strength, with a family heritage hammered out in a traditional blacksmith’s forge, and Levi’s characterization of the element as easy and direct, incapable of concealment. Levi Montalcini similarly links microscopic phenomena to human characters: she sees crowds in New York as magnified particles moving in Brownian motion (1987, 150) and constantly personifies the Nerve Growth Factor which she discovered, to the extent that she describes a fantasy encounter with the personification of this substance, identifying his sharp tuxedo among the applauding crowd when she accepted her Nobel Prize (1987, 266). Contemporary literary authors were also working along similar lines, detecting animation in ostensibly inanimate matter; for example, Calvino insists that literature should enable objects which lack language to speak (1995, I, 733). We can identify these perspectives in Levi’s work as functioning in two main ways: on the one hand, literature is depicted as a channel of communication that would ideally permit innate but inarticulable subjectivity to be expressed; on the other, we see the attribution of subjectivity to matter for narrative purposes, a form of (conscious) projective identification that seeks to responsibilize matter itself, or to allow an imagined dialogue between the subject and his or her surroundings to take place. Levi’s approach is hylozoistic, relating to the detection of innate animation within matter, but also attributes human characteristics to inanimate objects through anthropomorphism. Tensions between the I and the ‘not I’, already encountered in relation to the abject body and apparent in Levi’s confrontations with matter, persist in his representations of the interface between humans and machines. In order to analyse his thought on these issues, I draw on Scarry’s work on sentience and embodiment, and Kristeva’s theories of abjection, discussed earlier. Scarry takes as a starting point Marx’s two assumptions about the sentience of material objects (the body is both present in artefacts and is itself an artefact) to recover the lost stages in the construction of artefacts and cultural implements which testify to human agency in their creation

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(Scarry 1985, 244). This can be considered as akin to the interest in recovering human input in evolutionary development expressed by Engels, but also present in Levi’s writing, as shown previously.7 Marx’s subject, Scarry asserts, is the loss of referentiality caused by the epistemological suppression which led to civilization being conceptualized as a free-standing, self-sustaining entity, rather than a process of reciprocal evolution between civilization and human action. As a consequence, just as the labourer’s work is lost in its economic translation into capital, so the artisan’s contributions are erased in perceptions of made objects as inert phenomena. Alienated and disembodied, humans seek to effect a redemptive ‘making sentient of the external world’ through projecting their bodies onto made objects (Scarry 1985, 281). Scarry outlines some key ways in which this projection occurs: parts of the body can inspire cultural artefacts—for example, the heart inspired the aqueduct (Gadda’s view of machines falls into this category); alternatively, projection functions ‘to deprive the external world of the privilege of being inanimate—of, in other words, its privilege of being irresponsible to its sentient inhabitants on the basis that it is itself nonsentient’ (Scarry 1985, 290). The acts of projection outlined by Scarry function to enable identification of the sentience of other entities and to responsibilize them—whether animate or object—for their actions. It is precisely this sense of responsibility to others that Levi advocates in his work, and which was eroded in the demolition of humanity in the camps; indeed, Scarry asserts that the act of hurting another being is enabled by an ‘inability to sense the sentience of other persons’ (Scarry 1985, 294). As we have seen, our sense of self relies significantly on internalized objects onto which we have projected our identities and which are perceived or felt to be part of our bodies as much as our biological organs. More than simply a point of reference, this process functions to connect us to the world, and enables us to access and sympathize with sentience in other beings or objects, preventing us from becoming alienated and reified. However, not all sentient technologies are positive forces. Non-human sentience in Levi’s writing seems to derive from both the redemptive ‘making sentient’ of inanimate matter, and an uncanny animism which verges on the threatening. In the story ‘La sfida della molecula’ [The Molecule’s Defiance] (L II, 162–67; TS, 148–55), we see both types of sentience. The narrator, Rinaldo, is a factory worker whose night shift is marred by the unanticipated polymerization or solidification of a batch of synthetic resin he is watching over. When the resin begins to solidify, Rinaldo is desperate but resigned to an inevitable tragic outcome: he tells us that when the heating process goes wrong ‘è come quando muore uno’ [it’s as if somebody had died] (L II, 165; TS, 153). As the expanding resin builds within its metal vat, he opens the bolts on a release hatch, whereupon ‘il portello si è sollevato da solo . . . solenne, come quando si scopron

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le tombe e si levano i morti’ [the hatch rose by itself . . . solemnly, as when tombs open and the dead arise], and a repellent, thick yellow discharge issues forth (L II, 166; TS, 154). Similarly, in La chiave a stella, Faussone describes the construction of an industrial distillation column in human terms: mi sembrava di veder crescere un bambino, voglio dire un bambino ancora da nascere, quando è ancora nella pancia di sua mamma. (CS I, 953) [It was like seeing a baby grow, I mean a baby that isn’t yet born, when it’s still inside its mama.] (W, 15) sembrava anche a quelle figure che si vedono nell’anticamera dei dottori, IL CORPO UMANO: una coi muscoli, una con gli ossi, una coi nervi e una con tutte le budelle. (CS I, 957) [It also looked like those diagrams you see in doctor’s waiting rooms, The Human Body, one with all the muscles, one with the bones, one with the nerves and one with the guts.] (W, 19) Unfortunately, the column has been badly planned, which results in a situation similar to that experienced by Rinaldo: some ceramic rings fitted inside the main column disintegrate, creating a thick pasty discharge of rubble. As Faussone’s story progresses, more anthropomorphic imagery is used: the column is ‘malata’ [ill] and described throughout as a ‘bambino’ [child]; first Faussone tries to take its temperature, but the situation becomes ever more serious, and eventually a funeral is called for when the stony paste blocks the tubes and pipes, causing a fatal constipation (CS I, 959–63; W, 21–25). As Jonathan Usher has pointed out, both stories are parables of ‘the alchemical creation of a human simulacrum’ or ‘humanoid’ (1996, 203). Displaying a range of characteristics from arrogance as regards human capabilities, to emotional investment in the childlike apparatus, the respective operators enact a process of parenting that ends in disappointment, disgust, and a sense of guilt when the ‘child’ is destroyed by its own waste product. On one level, these two episodes are clear examples of what Scarry identifies as the making sentient of non-sentient phenomena, as Rinaldo and Faussone describe metallic constructions and polymerizing resin not as a direct extension of the self but as fellow human beings. Faussone specifically evokes the process of reproduction and even projects the biological processes of human gestation onto the column, declaring that the structure was like a child in its mother’s womb, about to be born. His narrative superimposes this human process onto one of autarkical reproduction, achieved without human conception (indeed, without the female body at all). However, unlike some descriptions of the autarkical process which are charged with a desire to assert the male capacity for reproduction through

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non-biological means in a grand assertion of dominance,8 Levi’s characters take on nurturing roles and feel both empathy with and sympathy for the machines they operate or construct. This might be viewed as an example of Levi’s empathetic, nurturing modality of masculinity. A further desire to empathize with the structure may result from the resonance it has with the Muselmänner, implied in Faussone’s anthropomorphization of the structure as ‘uno che soffra e non sia capace di parlare’ [a person in pain, who can’t talk] (CS I, 961; W, 23).9 The column both symbolizes a voiceless, reified human, and the erasure of human input into industrialized labour. Following Scarry, these apparatuses are artefacts which bear the traces of their ‘madeness’, on which the ‘fingerprints’ of their maker become visible when they need repair (Scarry 1985, 312). When an individual registers this human signature and enters ‘the interior of the object world’, it is done ‘in order to apprehend the invisible interior of the human action of making that is itself recorded in the object’ (Scarry 1985, 323). For Faussone, that action was his own; the column is in some ways an extension of himself that is benign as long as it remains somehow dependent on him, as long as his professional activity allows him to retrieve a holistic sense of embodied self through ‘lo specchiarsi nella propria opera’ [being reflected in his own work] (CS I, 989),10 as long as he gains pleasure from the image of his human self reflected back via his fi ngerprints visible on the created object. However, when the column, or Rinaldo’s resin, are deemed to be ‘fatally’ compromised, we see a shift from a relatively productive empathy which appears to result from projective identification, to the detection of an innate and menacing sentience in the apparatus or resin. Rinaldo, perhaps experiencing guilt and inadequacy at his inability to control the process of polymerization, feels that the enormous clotted molecule is displaying ‘scherno’ [scorn] in its defiant refusal to obey. This is matter as ‘not I’, as inimical to the self, which insubordinately demonstrates its undesired autonomy, in an act of defiant rebellion: one of the ‘cose senz’anima che ti dovrebbero obbedire e invece insorgono’ [soul-less things that ought to obey you and instead rise up] (L II, 167; TS, 155). For Faussone, this shift is experienced as a more pressing threat. As the column teeters precariously he ventures inside it to make repairs and is afflicted by a sense of claustrophobic suffocation, ‘come i topi nella pancia dei serpenti’ [like a rat in a snake’s belly]: the column/child has now become a predator and he himself is its prey (CS I, 965; W, 28). No longer evocative of the silenced Muselmänner, the column now recalls the warped, menacing machine of Auschwitz. Kristeva’s theories on abjection will aid the present discussion. She suggests that feelings of abjection towards the ‘not I’ constitute a ‘safeguard’ against uncanny phenomena that reside ‘in-between’ borders and threaten to annihilate the self (Kristeva 1982, 5). First, the category of the ‘not I’ might include the ‘in-between’ status of sentient or animate machinery and matter that, in dominant narratives of civilization, should function under the authority of human subjects. Second, given that both the resin and

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the column are already anthropomorphized, it is a logical step to view the waste products in both episodes, which lead to excrement-induced malfunction, as analogous to abject bodily excretions, and the malfunction itself as analogous to the decay or degradation of the body.11 Moreover as emphasized by the title of the chapter in La chiave a stella from which the above episode is taken, ‘Clausura’ [Cloistered], claustrophobia is a vital theme to the anecdote and is inextricably linked to feelings of abjection. The sense of suffocation that Faussone experiences when inside the tubes of this massive intestinal structure can be connected to a feeling of annihilation, provoked by both the earlier presence of the physical abject and his projection of human sentience onto the machinery that inevitably produces (or derives from) a conflation of his own body with the mechanical one. His account of the column/child’s degradation resonates with Kristeva’s account of the dejected subject, forced to construct boundaries against the fluidity of the universe (Kristeva 1982, 8), and who suffers from a state of impossible powerlessness as the body becomes a ‘fortified castle . . . an empty castle, haunted by unappealing ghosts—“powerless” outside, “impossible” inside’ (Kristeva 1982, 48). Faussone’s fi ngerprint on the world in the form of the constructed, anthropomorphized column morphs from productive extension of self to a reified, constricting, and suffocating structure. Instead of extending his presence, it contains and seems to stifle both the act of creation and his own body; however, on one level, waste remains a marker of the ‘irreducible presence’ of the body in an increasingly mechanized world (Armstrong 1998, 66). If we consider a strikingly similar later anecdote that Levi recounts in the unpublished manuscript of Il doppio legame [The Double Bond], a work left unfi nished at his death, we see that he was haunted by images of vast metallic structures that to him represented human organs and which engendered a powerful sense of claustrophobia. When working for SIVA, Levi was once called out to examine a large tank that had buckled when an internal vacuum was formed. Upon entering the structure, he was overcome by a sickening, uncanny feeling of being inside an ‘intestine’, and got out immediately (Angier 2002, 685). Levi’s reaction might be further explained by reference to Freud’s essay on ‘The Uncanny’ in which he hypothesizes that women’s genitals and bodies are considered to be uncanny because the mother’s womb is effectively our fi rst Heim (home), and therefore causes feelings of both attraction and dread since our existence there verges on the insentience of death (Freud 1955, 245).12 Levi’s feeling of bodily containment as unbearably oppressive is consistent with the unheimlich sensation that Freud maintains is inspired by the womb, arising when a usually protective space is perceived as a threat, and the home (echoing the womb, following Freud, or the body, following Scarry), becomes a source of claustrophobic menace. The feeling of uncanny abjection is caused when danger comes from an unexpected source; from ‘what, in my living universe, is supposed to save me from death: childhood, science, among other things’

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(Kristeva 1982, 4): from our fellow humans, from our bodies, from human knowledge and the machinery it produces. Faussone’s anxiety comes from a feeling of being overpowered by an engineered structure that assumes power over human individuals, of being overwhelmed by the machinery of progress. In these narratives, the artefact that results from labour allows numerous glimpses of the human agency that created it. Levi depicts workers who identify closely with their materials at a fundamental level: when things go well, they are happy and feel consolidated by the reflection of themselves that is given back to them by the results of their labour, echoing Marx’s theories about counteracting alienation through the recovery of ‘repressed’ human labour; when things go awry, the worker’s sense of self is compromised alongside the status of the artefact or its products. Thus technical apparatuses become psychological prostheses, built into and vitally enhancing the individual’s body and self-image. Braidotti tells us that an ‘elementary principle of prosthesis and prosthetic projection animates the whole technological universe’ (Braidotti 1994, 44). Furthermore, this principle also conditions (post)human experiences of embodiment due to the relationship between tools and the body, as discussed. So far, sentience in technology has been seen to provoke positive feelings of self-reinforcement, as both matter and machinery are understood through analogy with human consciousness and corporeality, which they extend. However, sentient technology can also provoke negative unease and feelings of uncanny abjection through the introjection of a malfunctioning mechanism. An analysis of three further stories that engage with sentient technologies shows how signs of abjection in the technologies we create—illness and degradation, in human terms, or corrosion, in mechanical terms—can act as a warning sign that the balance between extending the body through prosthetic technologies and eclipsing the body through devices that threaten our autonomy, safety, and potentially our humanity could shift in an alarming direction.

SINISTER SENTIENCE While the episodes discussed previously might be deemed examples of fundamentally ‘realist’ fiction, in that they are based in a clearly recognizable context, I now move to an exploration of some of Levi’s science fiction stories that portray futuristic encounters between humans and machines. His warning of the future dangers of all too sentient technologies is strengthened by the ‘possibility’ of these scenarios and by the forms of ‘estrangement and cognition’ that Levi asks the reader to experience (Suvin 1990, 7). In his science fiction stories, Levi frequently uses the ‘novum’: an innovation that sets the world of the text apart from the ‘real’ world as we know it, but which is ‘historically plausible’ as opposed to ‘supernatural’ (Csicsery-

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Ronay 2003, 118–19). Levi’s use of the novum follows this model, with the exception that although ostensibly ‘rational’, not supernatural, his innovations are often sentient machines. One example of an animate device with malevolent intentions is the protagonist of ‘A fi n di bene’ [For a Good Purpose]: a European telephone network (VF I, 636–46; SD, 188–99). Like the column and the resin discussed previously, this network malfunctions and appears at fi rst to be suffering from an illness; it is anthropomorphized and evokes sympathy. Yet after some investigation the network is discovered to have assumed autonomous control over which telephone numbers are called and by whom, and to have developed a nervous system. Although initially deemed to be unthreatening—intelligent yes, but ‘non come un cervello intelligente’ [not like an intelligent brain] (VF I, 642; SD, 195)—the network soon assumes total control over all communication across its Europe-wide kingdom. It even develops a metallic voice so it can order engineers to link up unplanned overland networks with the techno-organic vegetal cables it is spreading underground. Finally, it is overcome by a stern reprimand from a senior engineer who intuits that, since the network is a simulator of human behaviour it will also simulate fear when threatened. He is proved right when the network effectively commits suicide. In Santagostino’s view, the network is motivated by a desire to affirm its own identity, will, and freedom, which it attempts by assuming vitality and mobility (Santagostino 2001, 135). Having detected an isomorphism between human and non-human entities in Levi’s work, she asserts that if human degradation arouses our pity for dehumanized individuals, so other ‘suffering’ entities are similarly redeemed on account of the vitality they assume (Santagostino 2001, 140). However, the network is not redeemed. Moreover, the implications of the story run counter to Scarry’s suggestion that projection functions to force responsibility onto insentient objects, since the network assumes an autonomous consciousness against human wishes and threatens to block human communication by assuming a stranglehold over Europe; it is beyond being responsibilized. The suffocating effects of the network’s independent growth and activity are emphasized by its uncannily live, tentacular cables; it also serves as a thinly veiled metaphor. Since technology often enjoys ‘the role of a fetish, an object human beings make only to forget their role in creating it’ (Haraway 1991, 8–9), the network’s development could be seen as Marx’s desired recovery of human input into material artefacts—with a twist. In this case, the recovered human input is not the careful labour of the artisan but the bulldozing thrust of developments by large-scale corporations—whose human face is often totally obscured, effectively deresponsibilizing the invisible perpetrators of actions that may damage society. The network behaves like a (defamiliarized) modern day multinational, controlling communications, dictating its own projects for expansion by circumventing usual procedures for obtaining permission, and holding entire continents at ransom, to bow

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to its wishes.13 Its disobedience leads to chaos as technology assumes autonomous power over its development and passes beyond human control. Unlike Faussone’s column and Rinaldo’s polymerized resin, the network is not expressly made to reflect the human body, but its voice and agency are portrayed in explicitly human terms. This is sentience and technological power that bypasses the human subject itself. Two further tales of sentient machines present a scenario in which technology is mobile and much more closely aligned with the human body, even interacting with it as a direct opponent. ‘Cladonia rapida’ (SN I, 441–46) and ‘I gladiatori’ [Gladiators] (L II, 82–86; TS, 83–89) deal with motorized vehicles and the similarities between the behaviour of humans and machines. ‘Cladonia rapida’ is a pseudo-scientific, tongue-in-cheek article, commenting on a new phenomenon: a form of rapidly spreading lichen that attacks cars. Besides hinting at a symbiosis of biology and technology that led to the appearance of this strain of lichen, this article presents the cars under discussion as sexed: ‘he-cars’ and ‘she-cars’. In a process of gendered anthropomorphization, Levi differentiates between the two sexes of vehicle: he-cars have strong suspension and better acceleration; she-cars have unreliable electronics and are sensitive to temperature. He then reveals that these cars are treated as sexual objects of desire, he-cars being selected by women and homosexual men while ‘normal’ men choose she-cars. Both gender-normative and homophobic, this article fits in to traditional engagements with the car as a sexual object, as expressed by futurists such as Marinetti who wrote of how the mechanic polishes the body of his (feminized) vehicle with the tenderness and attention of a lover, and also asserted that vehicles have both soul and a will of their own (Marinetti 1968, 297–301). Of interest to the present discussion is the fact that Levi presents these sexed vehicles as having their own will, above and beyond that of their driver, which influences the ratio of hetero- or homosexual collisions (SN I, 445). Thus he implies that the cars are in some way instigating technical sexual activity, while simultaneously acting as pollinators for the spread of the lichen. The cars also exhibit signs of having a memory, recalling locations where they were ‘injured’ in an accident, for example, and even the beginnings of a nervous system (SN I, 446), like the network. ‘I gladiatori’ is an account of an apparently contemporary gladiator tournament between human combatants and vehicles. Nicola is cajoled into booking tickets for the Sunday afternoon spectacle by his girlfriend Stefania who is anxious that they should go to the tournament since everyone else does, and warns him that they should not stand out from the crowd or show intellectual pretensions. The show consists of six gladiators who take turns against vehicles driven by invisible humans, so that the fight appears to be man against machine. The gladiators, many of whom are convicts who fight in return for reduced sentences, bait the vehicles in a distorted echo of classical gladiatorial combat, which also evokes the tension between matador and bull at a corrida. Indeed, this animalistic allusion

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is confi rmed by the use of descriptive language: the vehicles are referred to as ‘bestioni’ [great beasts], or we see a gladiator challenging before ‘il muso della macchina’ [the machine’s muzzle] (L II, 84–85).14 The event is bloody, violent, and wildly applauded by the crowd. Nicola and Stefania leave early, overcome by nausea. Once again, these stories deal with the projection of human characteristics onto machines, the detection of human instincts within machines and with abjection—the lichen and the spectators’ nausea. A continuum of the biological, the animal, the human, and the technological underpins each story, although rather uneasily. The sentient cars are comparable to the network in their developing autonomy, but also function to consolidate the sexual identity of the driver. In this, they perform a type of reflection akin to that described by Levi and Faussone in La chiave a stella. The underlying threat in each story, as in ‘A fi n di bene’ or Rinaldo’s experience with the resin, relates to the potential for phenomena that ‘should’ be insentient to overcome human authority. In ‘Cladonia rapida’ this threat comes from the rapidly spreading lichen, a new strain of techno-biological disease, as well as from the growing autonomy and consciousness of the cars. In ‘I gladiatori’, the struggle for mastery between human and machine is explicitly enacted, a futuristic dramatization of Adorno and Horkheimer’s fear, recalling Levi’s comments that despite our apparent ‘progress’, ‘mankind [sic], instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism’—a technologized dystopia, in which violence is normalized by mass consumption (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, xi). In these stories, Levi skilfully manipulates our perceptions of the location of sentience in order to raise questions about responsibility, control, hierarchies of power, and the social implications of technological development. The effects of defamiliarization are carefully achieved; Levi limits the innovative ‘nova’ he introduces, ensuring that the context remains sufficiently familiar as to be recognizable, establishing a potential continuum with the moment in which the story was written. These are parables about what might happen if responsibility is shirked, if hierarchies of power and dominant discourses are not challenged, and if we allow our very bodies to be rendered docile by the biopolitics of our age. Biopolitics are subtly but menacingly present here in the pressures to participate in normative forms of ‘leisure’ activity that pit the human body against machines, in the consumption of mechanical vehicles that are more dynamic than we are, in human passivity as corporations slowly strangle individual autonomy. Significantly, in addition to the link which Levi flags up between his testimonial and science fiction writings, ‘l’uomo violentato’ [the violation of mankind],15 of which ‘I gladiatori’ is an explicit example, we can again trace some of the images in this story back to Se questo è un uomo. Levi observes that in the Lager, machines seem more alive than the husk-like prisoners, exemplified by a digger that he describes in animalistic terms, as its jaws grind up and vomit out earth (SQ I, 69; IM, 80). The flaw or defect that he

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identifies in our society, which may result in this new elaboration of gladiatorial combat becoming popularized, ties the human fighters to reified, prisoners in the Lager who too were threatened by sinister machines. Strikingly, the spectators demonstrate an almost total lack of empathy for the gladiators; in fact, Levi explains, the violence done to individuals in these stories is not only the physical harm or restrictions imposed upon them, but also the experience of that harm being ignored by other people who perceive it clearly and yet do nothing to stop it (Poli and Calcagno 1992, 115). It is analogous to Levi’s recurring nightmare of recounting his experiences in the Lager and not being believed, which haunts him (SQ I, 54; IM, 66). While it may be possible to feel pity for a machine that malfunctions, or to derive pleasure and galvanize one’s identity through the detection of human input in mechanical artefacts, Levi’s visions of the future are dominated by the threats posed to humans by machines. While Marinetti gleefully predicted that ‘the non-human, mechanical being ... will be naturally cruel, omniscient and combative’ (Marinetti 1968, 299), Levi strives to warn us of the potential consequences this might have on human existence. Having explored how Levi portrays animate machinery, in the final section of this chapter, I examine the interface between humans and a further type of sentient device: robots and Golems.

CREATING THE SENTIENT ‘OTHER’ While sentient technologies are often perceived as a threat, Levi’s encounters with sentient ‘others’ are also enhanced and gain their compelling complexity by recognitions of uncanny similarities, as seen in relation to Faussone’s column and Rinaldo’s resin. This is the case in Levi’s depiction of a robotic writing machine in the play ‘Il Versificatore’ [The Versifier] (SN I, 413–33),16 and of the Golem. This being appears in a more traditional form in the story ‘Il servo’ [The Servant] (VF I, 710–17; SD, 233–41) and as a computer in the 1985 essay ‘Lo scriba’ [The Scribe] (AM II, 841–44; OPT, 76–80). In ‘Il Versificatore’ an American salesman, Simpson, presents the Versifier as an automated solution to a poet’s rising work levels, setting in motion the replacement of humans by a machine. Several livelihoods are threatened by the Versifier, fi rst that of the female secretary who articulates this fear herself—and it is seen to be well grounded since by the end of the drama the machine has replaced her as support to the poet.17 The validity of her concerns about a technological takeover are, however, undermined: her initial reservations about the machine’s lack of sensitivity are placated when it produces a ‘poetic’ phrase (SN I, 432). Moreover, when she is offended at the apparatus’ composition entitled ‘Una ragazza da portare a letto’ [A Girl to Take to Bed], she is reassured by the poet: ‘È una macchina, lo ha dimenticato? Da una macchina mi pare, non c’è niente da temere’ [It is a

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machine, have you forgotten? I don’t think we have anything to fear from a machine] (SN I, 428). Thus the secretary’s concerns are made to seem prudish and subjective. Yet the irony of the poet’s reassurance is fully realized in the closing lines of the drama; these are spoken by the ‘poet’ and reveal that the entire play was written by the Versifier, who has supplanted even his employer. This scenario resonates with the objectives of early cybernetics, from 1943 to 1960, which sought ‘less to show that man [sic] was a machine than that a machine could function like a man’ (Hayles 1999, 7). Considering the Versifier in light of this, we see that the machine in fact functions like a human: it is praised as ‘umano’ [human] by the poet when it regains confidence after successfully negotiating a difficult passage of composition, and even the secretary admits ‘simula bene il comportamento umano’ [it simulates human behaviour well] (SN I, 428). As regards gender, and functioning ‘like a man’, the Versifier articulates desire for a woman that categorizes it as male (in Levi’s heteronormative world), but then assumes secretarial tasks that would classify it as female in human terms (according to socio-cultural stereotypes and gendered divisions of labour). This oscillation of gender is reflected in language as it is addressed by a range of words coded ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’: ‘il Versificatore’, ‘la macchina’ (emphasis added). Interestingly, when it offends the secretary, words fail her, as she realizes on some level that she has engaged with the machine as if it were a human male, but needs to reassert the difference between her existential state and that of the Versifier. She fi nally neutralizes this by calling it, ‘quel . . . coso!’ [that . . . thing] (SN I, 428). The secretary’s engagement with the machine as male because of its behaviour lends support to well-established arguments for the constructed character of gendered behaviour and, by implication, sex, which the Versifier’s programming has established as male—more powerful in patriarchal society. Thus the privileged mode of engaging with the machine is by discerning its ‘human’ characteristics, which are both projected onto it by the other characters and written into its design as part of the objectives driving early cybernetic experiments. Although initially at the mercy of human benevolence—reliant on electric current, as seen when the secretary pulls out the plug—the Versifier soon becomes indispensable. As readers, we are torn between feeling pity for a being who laments ‘his’ inability to experience physical contact—a response extorted from us in a bid to further ‘humanize’ the machine and win our sympathy—and feeling unsettled by the Versifier’s sinister colonization of the fi rst-person narrator. In ‘Il servo’ the boundaries between human and machine are further blurred, as are those between religious mythology and the roots of modern technology. Rabbi Arié decides to make a Golem in a process that echoes God’s creation of Adam while simultaneously evoking contemporary technology. We are told that the Golem is ‘poco piú che un nulla: è una porzione di materia, ossia di caos, racchiusa in sembianza umana o bestiale, è

110 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment insomma un simulacro’ [little more than a nothing: it is a portion of matter, or rather of chaos, enclosed in human or animal semblance; it is in short a simulacrum] (VF I, 710–11; SD, 234). We are warned that creating a Golem risks infringing the commandment not to make and worship idols, and then informed that Adam was a Golem, just as we are. Arié, however, does not wish to create a second Adam, but rather ‘un lavoratore, un servo fedele e forte e di non troppo discernimento . . . un robot’ [a worker, a strong, faithful servant and not too discerning . . . a robot ] (VF I, 711; SD, 234, emphasis added).18 Levi’s concept of a Golem is sufficiently flexible to accommodate both the conscious human and the automaton, binding them through a shared substance, clay, which is then invested with the appropriate elements of spirit. For example, Arié endows his Golem with Abraham’s obedience and Joshua’s courage, but denies it blood since this also brings animal and human passions. However, even the carefully calibrated Golem is not entirely under control since, like the beings who embody repressed, violent, ‘metastable’ urges, discussed in Chapter 1, it takes human form only to the belt, ‘una frontiera’ [the frontier], below which ‘il Golem era veramente Golem, cioè un frammento di caos’ [the Golem was truly Golem, that is, a fragment of chaos] (VF I, 713; SD, 236). When Arié mistakenly gives the Golem contradictory orders, it is these nether parts of chaos that rebel, and the servant morphs along the continuum of Golem-identity, from being Arié’s son, to assuming a colossal, incontrovertible ‘peso disumano’ [inhuman weight] and the solidity of rock, as which it fi nally crumbles (VF I, 716; SD, 240). As Mattioda observes,19 Levi elsewhere narrates the creation of the first Golem in the legend of Lilith, the fi rst woman (L II, 18–23; MR, 35–46). Created as one with Adam as a Golem characterized by its ‘forma senza forma’ [form without form] (L II, 21; MR, 41), then rent apart by God, Lilith rebels as did Arié’s Golem. Moreover, the resemblance between the two Golems is related not only to temperament but also to physicality; Lilith too is described as only half human in Levi’s poem of the same name (AOI II, 543; CP, 26), and poses the same sort of threat as the violent, uncontainable energies of her formlessness overcome rational, bounded being. In contrast, Levi’s third kind of Golem is his personal computer: ‘Finché non vi introduco il disco-programma, l’elaboratore non elabora nulla, è una esanime scatola metallica; però, quando accendo l’interruttore . . . [il] mio Golem personale . . . diventa vivo’ [Until I introduce the programme floppy disk, the computer doesn’t compute anything, it is a lifeless metallic box, but, when I turn on the switch . . . my personal Golem . . . comes alive] (AM II, 842; OPT, 78). The programming disk that enlivens the computer functions analogously to the written law which Arié places between his Golem’s teeth or to God’s blessing when he created male and female human beings. Like the Versifier that can be unplugged, Levi’s computer can be turned off at will. However, it belongs to the same family as HAL, the computer invented by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick for

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the fi lm 2001: A Space Odyssey, which ‘could do about anything. Indeed, HAL could do too much of anything’ (Bernstein 1979, 236). It is this comparable tendency towards excess that allows us to map the three types of Golem onto one another. 20 Levi’s personal computer will not take control of or threaten to destroy his life, but an alternative model might. With Lilith and the servant, Levi locates their chaotic urges in their formless genitalia and lower bodies, demonstrating characteristic anxiety about sexuality and its somatic signifiers. The Versifier too wins over the secretary through reference to sexual activity. Thus the relationship between humans and technologized others is animated by a decidedly uncomfortable erotic frisson.21 Discourses of eroticized technology are also present in Levi’s further reflections on his computer, which he describes in the essay ‘Il giocatore occulto’ [The Hidden Player] as ‘un grande seduttore’ [a great seducer], always ready, waiting and willing to help you unwind after work (RS II, 972; OPT, 192–95), the traditional role of a wife or mistress. However, here too Levi focuses on boundaries, not between the rational and the ‘baser’ parts of a Golem but between his body and the machine. He admits that after a year of use ‘è diventato quasi una parte del mio corpo, come avviene per le scarpe, gli occhiali, le protesi dentarie’ [it has almost become part of my body, as happens with shoes, glasses, or dentures], but he quickly states categorically ‘ma non volevo che mi invadesse’ since ‘umano non è’ [but I didn’t want it to take me over] since [it is not human] (RS II, 970, 973).22 In this last groups of stories and essays, sentience is given to machines or robots, through electricity or commands, by humans who risk losing or do lose control over the unknown, unpredictable reserves of the metastable other they have created. While in Levi’s ‘real’ experience he retains autonomy, it is through resistance to a metaphorical invasion, and in his fiction human beings are overwhelmed and replaced. Sentient machines bear an uncanny resemblance to their human creators, which appears to function more often than not as a warning about what we might become, about what might happen to our bodies and our embodied selves. While sentient matter may at fi rst evoke empathy, this soon turns to an experience of uncanny abjection, in which the human body is threatened, by being torn apart in a postindustrial gladiator combat, or by being reduced to a docile subject at the whim of corporations. Technology may render us redundant and frequently disobeys the orders we believe we are still in a position to give it. What technology ultimately promises in these texts is not the presumed God-like status of prosthetic man, which Freud identified as an uneasy, precarious achievement (1961, 91–92), but disembodiment, either through alienation or through simulated consciousness: Levi’s personal computer may be almost human, but its intelligence is contained in a tiny diskette. His desire to valorize human embodiment is clear in his conclusions that this flimsy device is nothing like a real adversary ‘in carne’ [in the flesh], who, even if little known to you, represents some kind of ‘consanguineo’

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[blood relative] (RS II, 973).23 It is against the human opponent that we should measure ourselves, he explains, not the computer—or, we might add, the truck, the industrial column or other machines that surpass our human scale. Thus, while it is productive on one level, the desire to project oneself out into the world may ultimately, in Levi’s dystopic vision, lead to the disappearance of the embodied self as we know it, which he endeavours to protect.

5

Bureaucratized and Technologized Bodies

The anxieties concerning technology discussed in the previous chapter—its uncanny animism and its potential threat to the self—extend into further concerns about a technological take-over expressed in many of Levi’s short stories and articles. In the texts I now discuss, the take-over is more psychologically and physically intimate, as technologies impinge on the human body itself, on the biological processes of reproduction, birth and death, and on experiences of embodiment, which are rationalized and bureaucratized by forces beyond the control of individuals. Both this chapter and the next investigate and analyse the technologized bodies and consciousnesses that Levi depicts in his literary and journalistic writing, charting the progression from human to technologized posthuman, both voluntary and coerced, as it can be identified in his work. This chapter explores two main concerns in Levi’s depictions of bureaucratized and rationalized bodies: the fear that humans will be replaced by machines, already suggested in relation to the Versifier, and the fear that humans will—or already have— become machines. My discussion focuses on a group of science fiction stories, many of which appear in Vizio di forma, as well as some essays that engage directly with related issues. These texts resonate with earlier and contemporary analyses of technological modernization in the work of Max Weber, Norbert Wiener, and Herbert Marcuse; they also evoke, and in some cases were explicitly inspired by, literary fiction on this theme, including the work of Samuel Butler, Franz Kafka, and Aldous Huxley. Levi’s accounts of technologized bodies and selves can be seen to enter into dialogue with existing literary texts and to dramatize the implications of particular models of socio-economic organization. I suggest that Levi’s vision and narrativization of our progression towards posthumanity is characterized by oscillation as he veers between accepting and resisting technological development. He both appreciates the efficient functionality offered by new technologies and expresses fears aroused by the associated neglect of human moral and ethical concerns, and their replacement by mechanical rationality. Levi’s stories offer a critique of the automatization of individual subjects, a form of reduction of bios to bare life approaching nonlife, which can be seen to

114 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment echo, if obliquely, the process of dehumanization that he experienced and witnessed in the Lager. However, he nevertheless argues that we should not condemn all technology at a blow and that it can have positive consequences. Before analysing his fiction, I contextualize my remarks through a discussion of critical discourses on processes of rationalization, as they relate to Levi’s work.

MECHANIZING THE HUMAN Concern regarding the mechanization of the human being by industrial processes has been expressed by many scholars and writers, from Marx’s view that the worst effects of factory work are the ways in which individuals become subordinated to industrial apparatuses, ‘converting the worker into a living appendage of the machine’ (Marx 1976, 503), to Hayles’ observation that ‘the ultimate horror is for the rigid machine to absorb the human being, co-opting the flexibility that is the human birthright’ (Hayles 1999, 105). Anxiety about this co-optation also permeated the thought of Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, whose conviction that communication between humans and machines was destined to play an ever more important role in the development of information technology (Wiener 1954, 16) did not prevent him from expressing grave doubts about the potential implications of this relationship on human subjectivity and quality of life. He warned, When human atoms are knit into an organization in which they are used, not in their full right as responsible human beings, but as cogs and levers and rods, it matters little that their raw material is flesh and blood. What is used as an element in the machine, is in fact an element in the machine. (Wiener 1954, 185; original emphasis) If our human flexibility is stifled, he argues, flesh and blood effectively cease to be flesh and blood and are subjugated not only to specific machinery but also to the system itself; indeed, he speaks of ‘machines of metal’ which function alongside ‘those machines of flesh and blood which are bureaus and vast laboratories and armies and corporations’ (Wiener 1954, 185–86). The motivation behind this process is that of rationalization and efficiency, elucidated so clearly in Weber’s dystopian analysis of the post-Enlightenment, disenchanted, technologized ‘intellectualization’ of the modern, bureaucratized world—that is, the dissolution of a belief in mysterious, magical forces driving us forward, in favour of an acceptance of ‘technical means and calculations’ (Weber 1978, 1003). For Weber, the bureaucracy was the paradigm of ‘formal rationality’: the institutionalization of the optimum means of achieving a given objective—a process which deresponsibilizes the individual by offering structural support but

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demanding social conformity. The bureaucracy boasted efficiency, largescale capacities for quantification, predictability, and ‘control over people through the replacement of human with nonhuman technology’ (Ritzer 1996, 19, original emphasis). In the early twentieth century, the influence of Taylor’s theory of ‘scientific management’ and Henry Ford’s productionline strategies aided the spread of such control, as work tasks were broken down into actions that could feasibly be undertaken by a machine.1 In Wiener’s view, this constitutes a ‘degradation’ of human nature since we are equipped to perform well in conditions of ‘variety and probability’, and our potential is wasted if we are compelled to perform rigid, unchanging tasks (Wiener 1954, 52). Concern for these ongoing processes of rationalization and their impact on human consciousness and experience continued to be expressed in the postwar period. As Levi was conceiving and writing his fi rst stories dealing with this issue, in the 1950s and early 1960s, Herbert Marcuse was writing his seminal text, One-Dimensional Man. This text reflects on the perceived conformity of America during this period, a conformity which, critics have noted, was spreading to and within Italy as a result of the U.S.-sponsored postwar recovery programmes and the Italian economic boom. 2 Marcuse provides a critical account of a new form of industrial, ‘technological society’, founded on ‘the repression of all values, aspirations and ideas which cannot be defi ned in terms of the operations and attitudes validated by the prevailing forms of rationality’ (Marcuse 1991, xii). In this type of environment, Marcuse argues, human freedom and individuality are threatened by technological restructurings of work and leisure time (Marcuse 1991, xii), since the idealization of the machine as technologically superior, and of efficiency as a value in itself, may impact on our biological and psychophysiological state, but also on our moral framework and behaviour more broadly. Indeed, for Marcuse, not only our degree of autonomy but also the forms and location of consciousness and our modalities of embodiment are radically altered by these developments. Berman summarizes Marcuse’s position thus: Marx and Freud are obsolete: not only class and social struggles but also psychological conflicts have been abolished by the state of ‘total administration’. The masses have no egos, no ids, their souls are devoid of inner tension or dynamism: their ideas, their needs, even their dreams, are ‘not their own’; their inner lives are ‘totally administered’, programmed to produce exactly those desires that the social system can satisfy, and no more. (Berman 1988, 28) This is the body colonized by biopolitics, the subject whose thoughts and movements are controlled and manipulated by external forces, dominant discourses, and systematic controls for capital gain—an example of contemporary bare life as nonlife. Like Marcuse and others, Levi was sceptical

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of this extreme rationality, which he linked to Kafka’s nightmare visions of the bureaucracy. Having reflected at length on The Trial (1937) when he translated it in the early 1980s, Levi observed in a 1983 interview how ‘la violenza viene dalla burocrazia, questo potere crescente, questo potere irresistibile che è frutto del nostro secolo’ [violence comes from bureaucracy, this growing, irresistible power, that is the fruit of our century] (De Melis 1997, 192; VM, 158–59). Bureaucratic work consists of ‘soul-destroying tasks’ for the individual, Levi notes (Roth 2001, 18), but bureaucratic structures can also have a more widespread, extremely damaging effect on society. Thinking of Kafka’s text, his own experiences and our potential future, he comments, Dopo aver verificato come uno Stato moderno, organizzato, tecnicizzato, burocratizzato abbia potuto partorire Auschwitz, non si può non pensare con spavento alla possibilità che quell’esperienza si rinnovi . . . questo lo vedo e lo temo.3 [Having witnessed how a modern, organized, technicized, bureaucratized state could give birth to Auschwitz, one cannot but think in terror that it might happen again . . . I see this and I fear it.] (VM, 158) Here, echoing comments by critics such as Adorno and Horkheimer (1997), Levi posits the Holocaust as one potential consequence of a particular form of rationality that derives from Enlightenment values—values which held currency at the time of this interview and which remain influential in our contemporary moment. Therefore, in his view, the possibility of the further perversion of bureaucratic socio-cultural and political institutions remains a live threat. However, despite this bleak view, and in contrast to Weber’s unrelentingly negative outlook which insinuated that ‘modern man as a subject—as a living being capable of response, judgment and action in and on the world—has disappeared’ (Berman 1988, 27), Levi also maintained in a sustained manner that this was only one possible outcome of such bureaucratization, and that beyond one-dimensional life lay the possibility for freedom, even in a technologized era. In both Vizio di forma (1971) and La ricerca delle radici (1981) he characterizes technology as potentially enriching; an ‘avventura’ [adventure], a positive challenge that even reveals that ‘il rapporto uomo-macchina non è necessariamente alienante, ed anzi può arricchire o integrare il vecchio rapporto uomo-natura’ [the relationship between man and machine is not necessarily one of alienation, but, in fact, can enhance and consolidate the old rapport between man and nature] (RR II, 1444; SR, 101). Levi is ever hopeful that an ethical, engaged, critical reason might allow the reclamation of technological development from the perversion of reason, which culminated in the Holocaust, to more positive ends. Shifting our focus from the impact of technology on human consciousness to its effects on the body itself, Levi’s position is again ambiguous,

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as he expresses an appreciation of technological reliability in comparison with the inevitably ageing human body, but urges caution in our race towards posthumanism. In the 1983 essay ‘Il brutto potere’ [Brute Force] (II, 1203–7; BH, 136–39), a title which refers to ‘il brutto potere della degradazione e della morte’ [the brute force of degradation and death] lamented by Leopardi,4 Levi discusses homeostasis: the tendency of living material to strive towards a relatively balanced state despite the destructive effects of nature and time. However, he concludes rather depressingly that there is no possibility of any enduring form of homeostasis for human beings, so that our only hope can be for a slow progression towards inevitable destruction. Here, Levi evokes both theories of entropy developed in the twentieth century, 5 and Descartes’ laments about the degradations of the somatic self. One striking feature of this article is the indirect contrast that it draws between the impossibility of homeostasis in human beings and its achievement in mechanical devices, which are often crude imitations of living organisms. Levi exemplifies mechanical homeostasis through an account of James Watt’s centrifugal regulator, devised in 1787, which permitted the fi rst steam engines to run at a constant speed. Subsequently, a wide variety of technical apparatuses have benefited from what became known as a ‘feedback loop’, allowing regulated temperature control, for example.6 In the paragraphs he devotes to these technical devices, Levi does not overtly engage with the comparison he is making between humans and machines; nor does he reflect on the implicit, unarticulated conclusion to his remarks: that machines are much more efficient versions of ourselves. Yet neither does he suggest some form of technologized improvement to the human form as a solution to entropic disintegration, perhaps due to the unplumbed implications for human life, bodies, and consciousness. Such ambivalence about machines and technology is captured in the enigmatic remark made by the Salesman Simpson in the story ‘Pieno Impiego’ [Full Employment] (SN II, 517–28; SD, 91–102): ‘le macchine sono importanti, non ne possiamo piú fare a meno, condizionano il nostro mondo, ma non sono sempre la soluzione migliore dei nostri problemi’ [machines are important, we can no longer do without them, they shape our world, but they are not always the best solution for our problems] (SN I, 518; SD, 92). While in ‘Il brutto potere’ Levi does not directly broach the issue of technologically enhanced, mechanized beings, in the stories explored next he tackles such questions in detail, inviting analyses of his work in light of ideas already discussed as well as theories of ‘posthuman’ or ‘cyborg’ bodies and subjects. In Haraway’s defi nition, the cyborg is a ‘hybrid of machine and organism’ (Haraway 1991, 149), which appears where the boundaries between human and animal, or human and machine, are transgressed and become ‘leaky’. Boundaries are also reworked in Hayles defi nition of a ‘posthuman’ subject, characterized by—among other features—an understanding of the body as ‘the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate’

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through a process of continual extension and replacement that works as a kind of physical palimpsest (Hayles 1999, 3). In this she echoes ideas expressed in the previous chapter regarding the prosthetic extension of the body. In her account, this continual redrawing of the posthuman body renders it ‘seamlessly’ compatible with intelligent machines: ‘In the posthuman there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals’ (Hayles 1999, 3). Significantly, both Haraway and Hayles clarify that the cyborg or posthuman does not have to be a literal hybrid of organic human and robot, since alterations to human consciousness are as important as alterations to the material body. Hayles notes that ‘even a biologically altered Homo sapiens counts as posthuman. The defi ning characteristics involve the construction of subjectivity, not the presence of nonbiological components’ (Hayles 1999, 4). Haraway explains how these reconfiguations of subjectivity are facilitated in contemporary culture as the boundaries between human and machine become ever more indistinct and indistinguishable due to the streamlined dimensions of modern machines: reduced in size to microelectronic instruments, ‘they are everywhere and they are invisible’. In contrast to the cumbersome bulk of early computers, contemporary machines are as light, bright, and pervasively ubiquitous as sunshine, enjoying an invisibility that renders them all the more dangerous: ‘They are as hard to see politically as materially. They are about consciousness—or its simulation’ (Haraway 1991, 152–53). Thus this type of posthuman body may not appear any different from ‘normal’ bodies, and much of its technologization impacts most directly on mental processes. Furthermore, it may be argued that many people alive today were born into posthuman bodies—a situation that Levi dramatizes to great effect.

RATIONALIZING LIFE AND DEATH Levi wrote several articles and stories that are concerned with the implications of the rationalization, or in Marcuse’s terms, ‘total administration’, of reproduction, birth, embodiment, and death7—texts which range from comment on current events, to literary analysis, to science fiction writing. In his 1985 essay on Huxley (AM II, 637–40), he discusses the vision of artificial conception in Brave New World (1994), emphasizing the sinister homogenization of human variety into a series of rigid, graded categories, the lowest of which are the ‘treated’ ‘Epsilon’ embryos. It is on this population of ‘semideficient’ manual workers that the new supernation relies in order to function, making them effectively ‘living appendages of the machine’ as Marx feared (Marx 1976, 503). If technicians have free rein, Levi warns, they will establish a precise logic of eugenic intervention to enable uniformity of births, presided over by the forces of totalitarian

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‘superorganization’ and capitalism (AM II, 639). This concern is not merely speculative, as is confi rmed by Huxley’s painful acknowledgement in the 1958 piece Brave New World Revisited that his dystopic predictions were already being realized—the last thing many science fiction writers would wish to witness. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Levi had a similarly troubling experience when revisiting Vizio di forma; in his 1987 preface to the second edition he highlights several details from his stories that have come to pass—a development that both pleases and saddens him (VF II, 571–72). Moreover, only one year after the publication of his essay on Huxley, Levi found himself reacting to experiments carried out in Naples aimed at determining the sex of foetuses, which evoke both Huxley’s and his earlier comments against the rationalization of birth. From the title of the article provoked by these experiments, ‘Io lo proibirei’ [I Would Forbid It],8 it would appear that far from equivocating about the issues involved in judging this type of research, Levi has taken a defi nitive stance. Indeed, the test, which is standard practice in many countries today, is vilified as a squalid activity that would surely result in an artificially distorted ratio of male to female children, dictated by current fashion trends. Yet, although brief, this impassioned article is dense with enigmatic declarations. Levi asserts that he is not opposed to eugenics to improve human life, as long as this does not harm anyone, but he fails to specify what qualifies as harm. There is also no mention of how ideologies might shape notions of what constitutes an ‘improved’ life. Moreover, despite condemning these experiments as falling outside the category of eugenics, Levi is (characteristically) gender-blind to the undeniable time-honoured ‘fashion’ that consistently privileges male over female newborns—a longstanding practice in India, for example, through female infanticide and sexdetermined abortion.9 From the rather mixed signals sent by this response, we may conclude fi rst that despite his apparent blanket condemnation of what the ‘technicians’ would do to the biological process of reproduction, Levi was disposed to accept some technological intervention on reproduction if carried out responsibly and ethically; second, although apparently unmoved by or unaware of the consistent misogynistic bias operating in social and scientific practices, he opposed interference in biological processes that would impact on human life for no justifiable reason. Despite his declaration in favour of eugenics here, elsewhere Levi expresses a more cautious view. He had actually already focused on the technologies of reproduction in the short story ‘I sintetici’ [The Synthetics], written more than a decade before his observations on eugenics, in 1971 (SN I, 588–99). Mario, the protagonist, is taunted by his schoolmates for being different; he is intelligent, disinterested in sports and, as his twelve-year old peers hypothesize, has no navel because he was conceived in a test tube and not born of a woman. This theory is advanced by his classmate Renato, influenced by partially understood television and newspaper reports about in vitro fertilization.10 Similarly to the graded

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forms of foetus Huxley describes in Brave New World, Renato reveals how parents can apparently choose their child’s features from a menu, as well as choosing its sex by using a red or blue pill—an anticipation of the experiments in 1986 which so appalled Levi. According to Renato’s logic, Mario must be one of these ‘different’ beings since he has freckles in unusual places, white marks on his fi ngernails, pronounces his ‘r’s in a particular manner, and does not fight (SN I, 593). Thus Renato’s perception of Mario as ‘other’ also results from his failure to conform to Fascist/ hegemonic ideals of masculinity, which promote a combative spirit and physical dominance.11 Indeed, interpreting this story within a biographical framework, Angier connects it to the anti-Semitism Levi suffered at school, and to his anxieties about failing to live up to the Fascist ideal of physical prowess.12 Although at fi rst he vehemently denies Renato’s accusations, Mario then reclaims his status as ‘different’, just as Levi reclaimed his status as an ‘impure’ Jew in Fascist Italy (SP I, 768; PT, 34). Assuming his difference fully, Mario declares to his teacher that he is indeed synthetic (SN I, 596) and creates a schoolyard myth of how synthetic beings, born, or ‘constructed’, as a result of telephone calls or radio communication, will take over the planet (SN I, 597–99). Admittedly, his narrative is ostensibly one of peace and social acceptance (there will be no more war, nuclear bombs, or racial prejudice), but it involves a further rationalization of births through controlling the number of newborns and their physical attributes. In this story, Levi sets up a series of oppositions: on one level, bullying, racist tactics employed by individuals who obtain power by aggressive means as opposed to sensitive, reasoned intelligence; on another level, the human and the posthuman. Intriguingly, although one might expect Renato’s Fascist ideals of physical superiority to map onto a scientific vision of homogenized human progeny akin to Huxley’s (or the Nazi) super-race, or as evoked by Futurists such as Marinetti (1909), his choice of Mario as an example relegates the posthuman to an inferior status. Hence Mario is not a creation who completes a teleology of eugenic intervention designed to improve the human race, but a thin boy who inspires fear in his brutish physical superiors through his intelligence, which is rumoured to be magnetic or electronic. For Mario, claiming posthuman status is a way out of subjugation, while for Renato, tainting Mario with this label is a defensive response to his own intellectual inadequacies combined with a desire to encourage exclusionary behaviour. For the reader, sympathies are torn, since both Renato and Mario assume deeply problematic positions. While bullying and exclusion are clearly wrong, aspirations to a eugenics of technologized homogenization are equally fraught. Renato’s stance constitutes a tense fusion of physical Fascism and scientific possibility, yet even the ‘Fascist’ is halted by the inhuman mechanization that these possibilities may engender. In Angier’s view, ‘I sintetici’ hinges on an exploration of what it is to be human: for

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Renato, this means ‘dehumanizing anyone different’; for Mario it means smoothing over the angst of human frailty with ‘inhuman’ visions, followed by an ‘all too human’ shame as he realizes he has reproduced exactly Renato’s ‘them’ and ‘us’ strategies (Angier 2002, 99). The dystopic fantasies of posthuman or cyborg beings in this story are compelling. Renato’s explanation of Mario’s synthetic status involves pipettes, chemical substances, and test tubes. Conception takes place outside the body—indeed, the female body is barely mentioned—and the child becomes a commodity. Although the narration is clearly fictional, it runs close to scientific advances that have actually taken place, as Levi acknowledges in his preface to the 1987 edition of Vizio di forma: ‘I bambini sintetici ci sono, anche se hanno l’ombelico’ [synthetic children exist, even if they have a navel] (VF I, 571). The story also anticipates the ethical conundrums that have been produced by the possibilities of in vitro fertilization; it has benefited many couples, but recently newspapers reports have abounded of couples choosing exactly the kind of ‘designer’ baby that Levi hypothesizes in this story, and scholars have begun to engage critically with the consequences of what are now called ‘reprogenetic technologies’.13 Had Renato’s account been true, Mario would definitely qualify as posthuman, since his characteristics were technologically determined, ‘biologically altered’ (Hayles 1999, 4). However, Renato takes the technologization of the human body one step further in his compulsive fantasies of Mario’s computer-like brain and eyes that shine like phosphorescent watch dials, rendering him an exemplary material cyborg in whose very being the distinctions between human and machine are blurred. Mario’s version of his conception and of those like him does not involve the female body at all, perhaps in keeping with cybernetic projects to achieve non-biological reproduction through the creation of self-replicating or ‘autopoetic’ machines, and the disappearance of the physical body in information theory.14 The male and female elements are retained, but the process is virtual, even occurring via telephone, echoing the move towards disembodied beings that cybernetics implies, with its privileging of the transmission of information over physical form and sensation and the automation of birth as ‘cyborg replication is uncoupled from organic reproduction’ (Haraway 1991, 150). In both cases, the changes are invisible, or virtually so, signalled only by the alleged absence of a navel; however, the experience of living within this ‘synthetic’ body is conceived of in the boys’ imagination as markedly different at the level of consciousness. The potential impact of this vision of human reproduction on conceptions of the body and the embodied self is also significant, as Braidotti has argued: the new reproductive technologies, by officializing the instrumental denaturalisation of the body, also institutionalize dismemberment as the modern condition, thus transforming the body into a factory of detachable pieces. (Braidotti 1994, 61)

122 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment Dismemberment may be material, in science fiction representations of the body as actually consisting of detachable parts; it may be medical, as in Braidotti’s scenario; or it may be perceived, as in Bernstein’s account of the disintegration of the myth of the coherent self (Bernstein 2004, 14). Ultimately, it threatens to dissolve the sense of secure embodiment—in which the self is co-extensive with the body—that Levi seems to valorize, that Hayles cautions can be destroyed but not replicated (Hayles 1999, 48), and that Laing tells us functions as a ‘base’ on which our interpersonal relations rely (Laing 1965, 67). While the material body is still present in Levi’s story and has not disintegrated into virtuality as in some science fiction, the ‘inferior’ organic soma is nevertheless considered as something ‘restrictive’, to be ‘rid of’ and replaced with a more efficient version (Figueroa-Sarriera 1995, 133). In my view, the point of Levi’s story is to show the tangled skeins of reality and fantasy, scientific capacity and ideology, ethical objectives and hypocrisy that writhe around and across the boundaries of humanity, inhumanity, and non-humanity. These boundaries surface constantly throughout Levi’s work, as he tries to answer the implicit question that lingers around the title of his fi rst novel and the poem ‘Shemà’ from which it derives—what is a man? what is a woman? (SQ I, 3; IM, 17)—and fi nds himself meditating on what is, by definition or in practice, not human. Through defamiliarizing biological and scientific processes in his science fiction narratives, Levi invites us to engage critically with the technologization of reproduction, without offering a defi nitive answer. The rationalization of birth explored in this story entails either mechanization of the biological body to render it ‘superior’ or a homogenization through eugenic intervention, threatening our freedom to be different which is vigorously defended by Mario’s head-teacher (VF I, 597). While the mechanized ‘birth’ of Faussone’s column/child described in the previous chapter was not a biological process, it nevertheless mirrored biological birth somewhat in its apparently unique, spontaneous unpredictability, as opposed to the rigid, sterile inflexibility of the processes dramatized in ‘I sintetici’. In contrast, the menace articulated by Mario comes not from outside the body in the form of sentient machines, but from within it, from altered human beings that replace biological beings, who are not identifiably different but who may subscribe to a highly problematic view of racial superiority—the superiority of the technologically enhanced posthuman. Focusing on the other extreme of our ontological trajectory, the 1981 story ‘Anagrafe’ [Bureau of Vital Statistics] explores the extreme rationalization of death (II, 1162–65; TS, 123–28).15 Here a familiar Weberian view of the irrational rationality of bureaucratization is grafted onto a futuristic dystopia, as we meet Arrigo, an administrative assistant in a vast, anonymous office who determines the way in which individuals should die. Every day he receives a stack of forms giving the name of a person and the date of their demise; his task is to select the mode of death.16 In a realization

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of conservative judgmental logic, this choice is easier for those who engage in risky activities, who, it is implied, bring their deaths upon themselves. As for healthy university professors such as Pierre-Jean La Motte who play tennis every morning, Arrigo is initially stumped; it is only after he has suffered the irritation of drinking revolting coffee from the automatic machine and listened to the complaints of his fellow worker Lorusso that he is sufficiently fi red up to make a defi nitive decision: ‘Arrigo ritornò infi ne alla sua scrivania e schiacciò Pierre-Jean come un verme: emoraggia cerebrale, cosí impara’ [Finally, back at his desk, Arrigo squashed Pierre-Jean like a worm: brain haemorrhage—that’ll teach him] (II, 1164; TS, 127). Arrigo’s work and his working environment encourage the loss of human characteristics such as compassion, justice, and recognition of the other, demonstrated by his inability to engage fully with his workmates. In this he exemplifies Wiener’s conviction that ‘what is used as an element in the machine, is in fact an element in the machine’ (Wiener 1954, 185; original emphasis). He is untouched by Lorusso’s complaints regarding the exploitation of the worker by industrialized production but is so frustrated by the inefficient technologies of his working environment—rendered with a supreme ironic flourish by Levi to emphasize the fact that mechanization and bureaucratization do not necessarily result in improvement—that he directs his anger towards the individuals singled out for imminent death. Arrigo’s ‘human’ sensibilities are fi nally restored to him when he encounters the details of an eight-year-old Norwegian girl whose stereotypically vulnerable innocence he visualizes with deeply romantic nostalgia. The distress caused by considering her death drives him to complain to his supervisor that his work is badly organized, that the cards are full of errors, and that using the ‘randomizzatore’ [ramdomizer] is a stupid idea. This final twist in the story reveals the extent to which human existence has been technologically (ir)rationalized: we learn that death results from a chilling lottery whose winning numbers are drawn by a randomizing machine, embodying perhaps the ultimate bureaucratization of the great enigma of human existence—that of destiny or fate. Arrigo’s boss is not surprised at his outburst, agreeing at least with the inefficiency of his department, and assigns his disgruntled employee to the section that establishes the shape of new born babies’ noses (II, 1165; TS, 128), recalling the over-determination of foetuses in ‘I sintetici’, as well as Levi’s essay on eugenics published in the same year as ‘Anagrafe’. The conclusion of this story dramatizes the ultimate impotence of human concerns before the infernal machinations of the bureaucracy, emphasized by the similarities between Arrigo’s office and Winston Smith’s working environment at the Records Department in Orwell’s 1984 (1949). In an explicit nod to the informed reader, Levi also introduces Fritz Lang’s dystopic portrayal of alienating industrialization and oppression when one of Arrigo’s colleagues invites him to go and see Metropolis (1927) at the cinema—surely not a casual allusion (II, 1164; TS, 126). Although he is

124 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment initially locked into his own isolated sense of injustice, Arrigo’s complaints gain validity through the sympathy they elicit from his superior, yet his criticisms of the system will never be taken any further since by the logic of irrational rationality it is ‘easier’ to relocate the rebellious worker within the anonymous labyrinth of the bureaucracy than to address the problem: ‘Once it is fully established, bureaucracy is among those social structures which are the hardest to destroy’ (Weber 1998, 228). Through a systematic process of alienating bureaucratization or ‘disumanizzazione’ [dehumanization], the human being is reduced to the sum of various mechanical operations—a bleak vision of humanity in which humans are assimilated by machines, in which rationality functions as an ‘iron cage’, as Weber would have it, imprisoning alienated individuals in an inflexible logic.17 Arrigo rebelled against his specific task but was unsuccessful in altering the system. Earlier examples of characters attempting to assert their right to a life that resists over-determination are likewise characterized by a struggle between disempowered individuals and the oppressive, impassive system that effects this determination. In particular, two further stories from Vizio di forma, ‘Le nostre belle specificazioni’ [Our Excellent Specifications] (VF II, 661–70) and ‘Procacciatori d’affari’ [The Hard Sellers] (VF II, 609–25; SD, 165–83), can be read as accounts of individuals who struggle to negotiate the impact on embodiment of ‘la normalizzazione, l’unificazione, la programmazzione, la standardizzazione, e la razionalizzazione della produzione’ [normalization, unification, programming, standardization and the rationalization of production] (VF I, 670). In ‘Le nostre belle specificazioni’, already mentioned in Chapter 3, we fi nd ourselves again in the bureaucracy, this time witnessing Renaudo’s protests at having to painstakingly compile and check over the specifications for a seemingly endless list of items, one of which is, of course, ‘uomo’ [man/human being]. Already weary of and irritated by the tedious penance of his current job—after which he will move on, as did Arrigo, to another similarly rationalized, if relatively less objectionable, task—Renaudo complains to his superior Peirani about the pedantic nature of the specifications. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this meets with a frosty reaction as Peirani reminds him of the fundamental seriousness of proper specifications. Indeed, Peirani asserts that the discrepancy between technical and moral disciplines is the direct result of lack of sufficient specification in the latter (VF I, 663). Here, Levi is clearly parodying his own views of the need for stronger links between arts and sciences, notably revealing a mistrust of allpervasive, positivist, scientific logic on account of its untenably dogmatic character. Peirani’s desire to quantify and rationalize even that which must remain unquantified and unquantifiable provides an example of how not to close the gap between the two cultures. The specification for ‘uomo’ which Renaudo discovers proves darkly farcical, advising with chilling practicality that—where possible—tests should be of a non-destructive nature. When the specification is made public, Peirani, in thrall to the ‘logic’ of

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the system, tenders his resignation because he no longer fulfils the requisite criteria. Rather than challenge a mechanistically reductive and inhumanly inflexible (not to mention androcentric), prescription for human existence, Peirani insists that the system remain in place. Although it is clear in the text that the word ‘uomo’ [man] indicates human beings in general and not only males (VF I, 664), this story can be interpreted through a feminist framework as highlighting the potentially problematic rigidity of Enlightenment rationality when developed in certain ways. Notably, this type of rationality was elaborated and perpetuated by male thinkers who adopted a misogynistic stance towards women, as well as one that was, in some ways, of dubious benefit to themselves.18 Ultimately, man, not woman, is condemned by his own flawed logic. Moreover, this use of specifications to exclude someone from a category to which he so obviously belongs echoes critiques of Enlightenment thought by Adorno and Horkheimer, for example, which highlight the tendency of universalizing logic to exclude minorities and reveal its consequent complicity with Nazi discourses.19 In contrast to this rigidly antihuman, exclusionary defi nition, ‘Procacciatori d’affari’ engages with the chaotic unpredictability of the human condition as a vital feature of our existence—the antithesis to extreme rationalization or Nazi logic. S., a young male in some otherworldly dimension, who is a ‘candidato’ [candidate] to be an embodied soul, is selected to assume human form on Earth as an ambassador to combat evil (VF I, 612; SD, 169). However, having seen images showing the disparity between individuals in terms of health, wealth, freedom, and security, for example, he refuses to do so unless he can be born at random, rather than into a predetermined, privileged existence. Images of suffering from around the world to which the unaffl icted are rapidly becoming desensitized are re-viewed through the eyes of nameless beings sent to persuade him into accepting this mission (G., R., B.), who are clearly not human, but are humanized. Levi initiates a subtle process of defamiliarization and identification, forcing his readers to align themselves with these non-humans and to admit on some level the great disparity between life expectations in different regions of the world which renders the image of a starving woman in India more alien to many in the west than a fictional inhabitant of another dimension. In this story, S. fights for his right to be assigned to a randomly selected human identity and to live autonomously, aware that he will nevertheless still need to battle against the forces of normalization and rationalization. His ‘humanity’ comes from an almost Christ-like willingness to be exposed to and challenged by unmediated human suffering rather than to live protected by virtue of a pre-programmed destiny that corresponds with the ruling norms. This story was inspired by Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, 20 in which a nineteenth-century British coloniser exploring an unnamed island stumbles on a lost civilization, whose differences from his own invite a series of

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provocative reflections on issues such as the relationship between humans and machines, and the value attributed to physical and moral qualities. In Erewhon (an anagram of ‘nowhere’, a literal utopia), it is believed that before they are born as humans, individuals inhabit the ‘kingdom of the unborn’ (Butler 1996, 114). Should they choose to be born, they are treated as though they have infl icted a great harm and inconvenience on their unsuspecting parents and are forced to sign a Birth Formula, a document that shifts all the responsibility of the individual’s life onto him or herself, absolving the parents from any blame and releasing them from any obligations. This practice of blaming the individual for their own life is echoed in the legal system, which condemns all acts of physical illness and age-related disease as crimes (Butler 1996, 67), encouraging all those who suffer from ailments to hide them. Butler’s satirical representation of the stigmatization of the natural process of ageing and the assumption that disease afflicts those who deserve it, leading to a pitiless form of euthanasia as the infirm are condemned to hard labour, is echoed in both the historical events of the Holocaust, and in Levi’s story. First, the ambassadors attempt to convince S. to be born on Earth by showing ‘positive’ images of hyperbolically muscled individuals (VF I, 613; SD, 170). These images are then grudgingly supplemented at S.’s request by images of abject specimens, who are ill, pale, obese, or frail, who are implicitly to blame for their own perceived inferiority or physical condition. Levi deals explicitly with racism, as images of the Ku Klux Klan are shown, and with gender imbalances in society, as S. is told that it is ‘preferable’ to be born as a white male due to social privilege (VF I, 618; SD, 175). Indeed, Levi invites the reader to judge the ambassadors as the involuntary admissions of G. and R. regarding the injustices of human life on Earth are offset by spurious caveats that are also deeply problematic; for example, when S. is concerned that physical differences such as skin colour can impact on one’s life possibilities, R. tells him that ‘i negri sono pochi, e perciò la probabilità di nascere negro è scarsa’ [the blacks are few, and therefore the probabilities of being born black are scant] (VF I, 617; SD, 174). In its critique of racial, and other prejudices, especially of a pro-eugenic attitude informed by such beliefs, this story suggests that individuals should not be judged on their physical appearances or condition. It also resonates with Grosz’s demand that all human beings should fully and collectively assume the status of physical embodiment: corporeality must no longer be associated with one sex (or race), which then takes on the burden of the other’s corporeality for it. Women can no longer take on the function of being the body for men while men are left free to soar to the heights of theoretical reflection and cultural production. Blacks, slaves, immigrants, indigenous peoples can no longer function as the working body for white ‘citizens’, leaving then free to create values, morality, knowledge. (Grosz 1994, 22)

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Grosz condemns the dissociation of middle-class white males from the stigmatized, Cartesian soma, and their privileged exemption from discrimination and manual labour as a result of this, a privilege which S. is invited to exploit in this story. The vulnerabilities of the body should be shared and supported, rather than condemned and despised, and our common condition as embodied beings should work to unite us, rather than to drive inequalities between groups, which are then naturalized and used as a justification for problematic forms of eugenics or euthanasia. As intimated here, Levi’s story assumes a Cartesian, dualistic approach to the mind/body relationship. Bodies are depicted as something to be put on over the unspecified (but anthropomorphized) form of the unborn soul. S.’s future human body is described as an ‘abito umano’ [human costume] that he will wear; it is a prosthesis, just like the weapons (‘armi’, arms) that will be given to him to help him in his mission (VF I, 624; SD, 182). This separation can also be seen in ‘I sintetici’ as Mario speaks ‘come attraverso le fenditure di una visiera’ [as though through the slits in a mask] (SN I, 595), as if the flesh covering his body were a suit of synthetic armour, totally discrete from his posthuman consciousness. Likewise in ‘Le nostre belle specificazioni’, bodies defi ned as human because of their resistance to heat or cold—according to Peirani’s beloved specifications—are divorced from the consciousness by which they are animated. Posthumanity here is characterized by internal division rather than by a ‘seamless’ merger between the biological and the technological. Indeed, despite his encouragement to reclaim technology in order to regain our challenged humanity, Levi’s stories considered thus far seem to stop short at revealing the pain of a severed mind/body relation and the ensuing alienated consciousness. Often this condition closely resembles Laing’s description of disembodiment as leading to a ‘false-self system’ in which the self feels ‘“dead”, unreal, false, mechanical’ (Laing 1965, 144). The eugenic and technological interventions in these scenarios reveal the alarming potential consequences of these practices rather than suggesting that they might ‘improve’ our race. Overall, these posthuman beings do not seem to offer a productive way out of the inevitable slide towards entropy envisioned in ‘Il brutto potere’, nor do they encourage the acquisition of increased capacity for homeostatic equilibrium or other self-preserving mechanisms. A prime example of this negative portrayal is seen in ‘Self Control’, a story which focuses on Gino, an ageing bus driver who feels dehumanized by the solitary, automatic character of his job and develops an obsession with bodily processes and organs which he links to the workings and components of the vehicle he drives (L II, 109– 113). Through his work, Gino has learned about the inner workings of motors and engines, but lacks the equivalent knowledge of the workings of his own body. Thus, when he does read about the makeup of the human body, he immediately sees the analogy between his body and the ‘organs’ of the bus he drives, between opening the body for an operation and opening the bonnet of

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the vehicle for maintenance. Gino makes this connection for two reasons: fi rst, because the information he reads is presented in an extremely rational form, in figures and formulas (L II, 111); second, because his existence is so inescapably mediated by the work he does, so ‘totally administered’ by its regulatory pattern, that he is incapable of understanding his body except as a mechanical appendage whose motors he is responsible for servicing. The analogy drawn between Gino’s body and his bus functions in a similar way to Levi’s presentation of the parallels between humans and machines in ‘Il brutto potere’; the organic body is viewed through the lens of mechanization and, as he contemplates death alone, Gino’s ageing body is no nearer achieving protective homeostasis. Rather than salutary or empowering, this proximity of human and machine is cripplingly divisive. While Futurists such as Marinetti relished the mechanization of the human body, and more recently critical theorists have expressed enthusiasm for the fusion of the human body and electronic circuitry, which may prosthetically extend the body and enlarge our sensory abilities (McLuhan and Fiore 1967, 26–41) or enable us to keep in constant virtual contact with friends (Gershenfeld 1999, 55), Levi fights it bitterly by pointing out its disciplinary effects. Criticisms of fusions between body and technology abound in Levi’s work but serve primarily to dramatize the impotence of the individual against the battering ram of ‘progress’. The human body cannot compete with machines or with rationalized logic, which leads to the demonization of human variety, and of the natural process of ageing. As ever, no clear answer emerges from Levi’s explorations of the questions raised, and no single mode of engagement can be identified in his approach to these concerns, yet there is a prevailing tendency in his fiction that urges against complacency. If in ‘Il brutto potere’ Levi stops short of direct comment on the possibilities offered by the posthuman condition, and in the essay ‘Io lo proiberei’ he advocates some kinds of eugenic intervention, in his fiction he is far less reticent regarding the potential, negative consequences of any physical merger between biological and technological machines. Yet while his writings imply concern about this development, he accepts that we cannot reverse ‘progress’, which has meant that it is both impossible and in many cases unadvisable for the average person in the Western world to exist unmediated by technology, since it does bring advantages (I, 1313; BH, 122). Albeit rather uncertainly, he retains the possibility of hope for the future, as expressed in the description on the back cover of Vizio di forma. The author fi rst laments the pollution of the natural world that has left contamination both around and within our bodies, then problematizes the unequal distribution of resources, since while ‘metà del mondo attende ancora i benefici della tecnica, l’altra metà ha già toccato il suolo lunare’ [half the world is still waiting for the benefits of technology, the other half has already walked on the moon]. We are told defi nitively that there is no going back to a pre-technological ‘golden age’ but that any

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restoration of planetary order can come only from technology. The blurb concludes that the stories express sadness, diffidence, and hope, and the conviction that reason will enable human beings to stop themselves before they self-destruct (I, 1443). Evidently, the reason to which Levi appeals is not the tainted, universalizing logic of Enlightenment thought, but an ethically engaged reason, which must be able to protect minority groups and the vulnerable, as well as those prime specimens that exemplify dominant norms of status, health and success. Incontrovertibly, the reclamation of technology must take account of the fact that we are already, arguably irreversibly, posthuman beings of some description, as confi rmed by the original title of Vizio di forma: Disumanesimo [Antihumanism] (I, 1441). It is from and through this transformed state that we must work to retrieve the freedoms that defi ne us as human; yet Levi cannot affirm that the machine has become a part of us in a positive sense. The one sliver of hope may be seen in S.’s refusal to be part of an oppressive system and to retain the flexibility of being born at random, with all the risks that this entails. Moreover, we are explicitly told that the mission entrusted to the human form that S. will assume may resolve the ‘vizio di forma’ [formal defect] that afflicts the human race (VF I, 623). If this flaw is to be mended, it seems that we rely on individuals like S., who refuses to accept a pre-programmed identity but instead insists on retaining the ability to create an independent self and identity: ‘preferisco essere solo a fabbricare me stesso’ [I prefer to be the one to fabricate myself] (VF I, 625; SD, 183). Evoking the story ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’ discussed in Chapter 4, this statement opens up an avenue of possibility in which human life progresses beyond the bleak, violent, prejudiced state in which we left the blacksmith, another narrator of human evolution, and suggests that it is still possible to continue to ‘costruirsi dalle radici’ [build oneself from the roots] in an ethical manner, even in a posthuman age (VF I, 625; SD, 183), although Levi chooses not to articulate how this might happen. The stories considered in this chapter all deal with individuals who have been absorbed into one type of system or another, losing or compromising their human flexibility and altering their engagements with their bodies. Hayles informs us that the second stage of cybernetics is ‘refl exivity: the movement whereby that which has been used to generate a system is made, through a changed perspective, to become part of the system it generates’ (Hayles 1999, 8; original emphasis). On one level, this is comparable to Calvino’s interest in the blurring of boundaries between the observer and the observed, explored most substantially in Palomar as the protagonist loses himself in the phenomena he views. 21 However, in Levi’s hands reflexivity assumes a less philosophically curious, more sociologically sinister meaning. Humans create machines which then absorb their creators into a mechanically organized dimension, comparable to Weber’s concept of the ‘iron cage’ of rationality. In Levi’s depictions, alienated individuals become trapped by a system that denies their own needs and humanity,

130 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment as well as those of others who may be affected by their work and actions, requiring them to reason analogously to the machines that surround them. This initial form of merger between human and technological elements is accompanied in Levi’s fictional explorations by reflection on the repercussions for freedom and personal development when biological processes are organized according to hyper-rational logic, producing an alienated understanding of the organic body in terms of mechanical processes and parts. If the stories are a critique of Enlightenment logic, Levi has obviously taken this to extremes, even out of the world as we know it; however, this logic had arguably already been taken to far more horrific extremes in the Nazi genocide. What is clear is that he links a critique of Enlightenment logic explicitly to a critique of problematic experiences of embodiment. Through mergers of biological and mechanical systems and the acquisition of new abilities, Levi’s work shows the commodification of human existence, the reinforcement of the Cartesian mind/body split and the body as a rigid, mechanized container—all results of a disembodied, ‘transcendental’ reason which is shown to impact profoundly on our embodied condition. In addition to the further texts he wrote expressing concern regarding the rationalization of life, death, and the body, Levi continued to advocate resistance to the fusion of the nervous system and electronic circuits, as will be seen in the next chapter. I examine a second set of stories that dramatize the plight of the individual engulfed and overpowered by the system, to the point where the ‘Self Control’ which Gino felt slipping from his hands has been defi nitively replaced by external technological forces which dictate bodily movement and consciousness, and can even reproduce the adult human body through cloning. A potentially empowering prosthetic extension becomes the manipulating machine to which we lose our autonomy, into which the organic element of the posthuman is subsumed.

6

Close Couplings and Docile Bodies

In Levi’s portrayals of the relationship between the human body and technology, not only is the individual frequently alienated from his or her own body as a result of dominant, hyper-rationalized conceptions of embodiment, but the body also becomes a site of struggle; the boundaries of the somatic container are circumscribed by imprisoning metallic contraptions and breached by penetrating devices, with profound effects on the individual’s ontological state. The previous chapter showed how bureaucratic logic can transform the ways in which individuals and societies understand, manipulate, and therefore experience biological processes, including the fact of being embodied. Here the focus shifts instead to the technologized ‘mechanics of power’ that impacts directly upon the body, recodifying and politicizing our very anatomies, rendering them ‘docile’ to external intervention (Foucault 1977, 138). Thanks to this power it is possible to control the physical actions and movements of others: one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. (Foucault 1977, 138) Indeed, in Levi’s technologized science fiction scenarios, the potential offered by electronic devices for the manipulation of individuals and of the body, results not in the reinvention of the human being with increased capacities but instead in many instances of enforced docility. As I show, a significant aspect of this manipulation involves not only rendering the individual mentally and physically docile, but also redrawing, reinforcing or reconceptualizing the boundaries of the body, which impacts on the freedom of the embodied individual in all their physical experiences. Even if they initially promise an escape from the perceived limitations of life, such as an average biological lifespan, Levi’s machines seem inextricably bound up with normative and oppressive regimes of power, and serve to limit human activity. As a result, Levi’s invocations to reclaim humanity through technology seem to be largely unsupported by his fiction. Rather than suggesting positive ways in which to engage with modern technologies as exhorted

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on the back cover of Vizio di forma, Levi’s fiction arguably does not move beyond presenting an implicit warning. In the texts discussed here, drawn largely from Storie naturali and Vizio di forma, Levi’s portrayals of cybernetic bodily modifications resonate with the work of other international science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov and Italian writers like Roberto Vacca who also explored the interface of organic bodies and technology. What is new in these stories, which tell of often uncomfortably close couplings between organic and non-organic components,1 is Levi’s introduction of a troubled sexuality and of an explicit attention to gendered experiences of technology. Very little has been said about the portrayal of women in Levi’s work in general, and particularly as regards his short fiction narratives, as if their role were merely incidental. A rare comment on this subject is made by Ilona Klein, who notes that in Levi’s writing ‘women appear to be immune to much of the fascination which attracts men to science and technology’ (Klein 1990, 122). I would argue that this observation somewhat understates and misrepresents the issue, and that at times Levi himself is at pains to point out the systematic exploitation of women carried out by ethically unchecked male-dominated science and the male fantasies of domination or of surpassing female reproductive capabilities that abound in science fiction texts. In the previous chapter I briefly mentioned that Levi’s use of the word ‘uomo’ [man] to indicate humanity can sometimes be read against itself to highlight a particular type of male scientist, flagging up a form of scientific thought associated with a masculinity that seeks to control and dominate. In the stories considered here, I explore these issues in more detail, in relation to Levi’s representations of women subjugated by science. Ludmilla Jordanova has argued that the gender balance of male scientist versus manipulated female character to be found in so many science fiction texts is far from casual and in fact results directly from traditional identifications of nature as woman, and the ensuing conflation of domination over nature with sexual power (Jordanova 1989, 125). Furthermore, Jordanova reveals how the perceived dangers of sexuality and technology are often ‘riveted together’ in science fiction texts—for example, the ‘female’ robot Maria in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the creation of a male scientist, exerts an irresistible lure on the men she encounters (Jordanova 1989, 124). I draw on the implied conflation of women as temptress with technology as seducer, already encountered in Levi’s gendered descriptions of his seductive computer in ‘Il giocatore occulto’, to consider how Levi narrates this sexual charge in the discourses of temptation, sexual gratification, and domination which entwine in these tales of technologized embodiment.

PROLONGING AND REPLICATING One way in which human bodies are rendered posthuman is through the artificial prolongation or replication of life. ‘La bella addormentata nel

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frigo’ [The Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge], whose title explicitly acknowledges its intertextual source, the fairy tale ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, is the earliest text in the collection Storie naturali, dating from 1952, but rewritten in 1961 as a radio play that was recorded by the Italian national broadcast network, the RAI (SN I, 477–94; SD, 61–79). 2 Here the docile body belongs to Patricia, a pioneering subject of cryogenics frozen in 1975 whom we encounter in Berlin in 2115, when she has aged, or lived, less that one year, being unfrozen only on her birthday or to witness what are considered to be important socio-historic events. The machinic qualities of her altered body are emphasized as she is directly compared to a car, since like vehicles she has antifreeze circulating in her veins, and the process of unfreezing her involves a complicated series of procedures using pumps, sterilizers, microfilters, and oxygen, before the hermetically sealed cover protecting her is opened up (SN I, 481–82, 86; SD, 64–65, 70). Her body is an object to be maintained in a homeostatic state, transcending the inevitable degradation of the physical self, and thus for much of the time is completely static, contained within sophisticated but rigid layers of technological apparatus, evoking a futuristic, non-biological womb. Unusually for Levi, this story has an undeniably feminist edge, as we witness and are led to condemn the way that Patricia becomes the sexual object par excellence for the scientists and men that surround her who control and document her every move. She is woken when others want to wake her and has no control over her consciousness. Her enforced docility is exploited as she is partially unfrozen and systematically raped by her host, Peter (SN I, 493–94; SD, 78), and indeed it is only through the sexual attraction she holds for his friend Baldur that she is able to contrive her escape. Here not only the fridge but also her motionless body itself becomes a prison, and the site of abuse. In Levi’s words, she is ‘violentata’ because she has no autonomy, but also because those around her chat on inanely as though they were utterly unaware of the injustice in which they are complicit (Poli and Calcagno 1992, 115–16). Indeed, aside from her frustration at the sexual assault, Patricia also expresses loneliness, which is exacerbated by the lack of empathy she receives from her host family. In striking a deal to gain eternal youth, Patricia has dared to go defi nitively beyond the limits of organic human life, thus breaking the bonds between herself and her contemporaries. Patricia’s connection to fellow living humans seems to have been severed not only in terms of a lack of empathy, but also symbolically, as we hear that for a time she was stored in a university facility alongside corpses for dissection (SN I, 485; SD, 68). Awakened only to experience other people’s history, she has no independent bios, which reduces her—temporarily—to a technologically stunted version of bare life. Furthermore, the technology that enables cryogenics ultimately impacts both on those who ‘benefit’ from its advances, as human bodies are directly controlled both by the respective machines and by apparatuses, and on other humans who are desensitized to issues of human freedom,

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perhaps because the frozen specimen has for them become something other than human: ‘disumano’. The issues of female objectification and exploitation by technology raised by ‘La bella addormentata’ find resonance in further tales of ‘progress’: a series of stories featuring the salesman Simpson, previously encountered in ‘Il Versificatore’. The stories present the relationship between the ‘I’ narrator and Simpson as the range of products promoted by NATCA—his American employer—expands beyond all imagining. Levi’s presentation of NATCA, an unelucidated acronym for the company based at the migrating Fort Kiddiwanee—sometimes located in Oklahoma, sometimes in Illinois (I, 1439)—provides a (science-)fictional case study of a fi rm riding high on the wave of American-style consumerism encouraged in postwar Italy. ‘L’ordine a buon mercato’ [Order on the Cheap] (SN I, 447–55; SD, 27–36), introduces the ‘Mimete’ [Mimer], a duplicating machine, which functions by reproducing every particle of a given object. It is used at fi rst by the ‘I’ narrator to duplicate a dice, a hard-boiled egg, and a spider, and then in ‘Alcune applicazioni del Mimete’ [Some Applications of the Mimer] (SN I, 460–66; SD, 42–49), used by the narrator’s friend Gilberto to duplicate his wife, Emma, and fi nally himself. Critiques of the so-called postwar ‘consumerist revolution’ by thinkers such as Marcuse, analysed how rather passive, docile consumers were manipulated into fulfi lling false ‘needs’ created by persuasive advertising. 3 Betty Friedan has identified how women in particular were manipulated into fi nding an apparently lacking ‘sense of purpose, identity, creativity’ through the consumption of material goods (Friedan 1992, 182). Levi’s narrator is used to beautiful effect to illustrate how these ‘needs’ were created. At fi rst he protests against the apparently ‘sognato’ [dreamt-of] Mimer, arguing, ‘Un duplicatore? . . . non ho mai sognato duplicatori’ [A duplicator? . . . I never dreamt about duplicators] (SN I, 447; SD, 27), yet he then becomes so entranced by its possibilities that he infringes even Simpson’s moral sensibilities. His questions about acquiring a Mimer with a larger capacity provoke new stipulations from the company, forbidding the reproduction of ‘esseri umani, sia viventi che defunti, o di parte di essi’ [human beings, be they living or defunct, or parts thereof] (SN I, 455; SD, 36, original emphasis). The hasty cobbling together of this decree has particular resonances with recent developments in European law, notably the implementation of new legislation forbidding human cloning.4 Like NATCA’s stipulations after the fact, these clauses did not exist previously to current research on human cloning because it was (naively) assumed that the various contentious procedures simply would not be put into practice. Yet they can also be seen as the logical and inescapable conclusion of a desire created by the technologization of society. Gilberto, the protagonist of ‘Alcuni applicazioni del Mimete’ is described as a ‘simbolo del nostro secolo’ [symbol of our century], who would experiment with nuclear bombs ‘per vedere che effetto fa’ [to see the effect it

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would had] (SN I, 461; SD, 43–44). He is the personification of an amoral, thoughtless approach to scientific and technological developments achieved through hasty development that does not allow time to predict and account for potential problems. While he seems vaguely aware that his acts provoke moral dilemmas, he quashes these (in his mind) either by rather hypocritical recourse to religious mythology and ritual—the creation of Emma II is legitimated by comparing it to that of Eve; Emma II and Gilberto II plan to be married, thus assimilating these clones within the (hetero)normative matrix of traditional society—or by validation of the act in a context of consumerism: Gilberto is sure NATCA will take him on as a publicist for the Mimer (SN I, 466; SD, 49). Gilberto does duplicate himself, but that is his conscious choice, whereas Emma is moved surreptitiously into the Mimer and duplicated while asleep. Her husband’s reasoning further denies Emma I’s autonomy, rendering her little more than a useful device: he declares that she was so indispensable to him, why not have two? (SN I, 462; SD, 44). Systematically ignored by her husband, silence seems Emma I’s only means of communication. When a disagreement breaks out regarding whether Gilberto should have undertaken the cloning, her response to Emma II’s unsurprising argument in favour of the experiment is to remain silent; it is not made apparent whether this is a sign of resistance or unhappy acquiescence (SN I, 465; SD, 48). The cloned beings, Emma II and Gilberto II, are identical to their originals from their social expectations down to the intimate details of their memories. Gilberto II will go out to work, while Emma II will serve as wife to him. These clones are not intended to fulfi l a special social function, to radically alter social hierarchies or perform superhuman tasks, but are rather the result of Gilberto’s egocentrism. We are told that he is ‘organicamente incapace di occuparsi del suo prossimo’ [organically unable of looking after his neighbour] (SN I, 466), revealing that even before the Mimer comes on the scene his consciousness has been sufficiently altered (and his misogyny sufficiently galvanized) by the implications of modern technology to alienate him defi nitively from questions of collective responsibility and morality. Gilberto clones his wife because he considers her a material that he can reproduce. Here the gendered aspects of this scenario demand critical attention: we see the male scientist, in an act of autarkical creation, bypassing the reproductive capacities of the female body, uncoupling cyborg replication from organic reproduction (Haraway 1991, 150), replacing heterosexual procreation and maternity with ‘the asexual reproduction of fathers on their own’ (Showalter 1990, 78). In creating another human from the ‘material’ of his wife, his actions evoke dualistic, historical associations of women with materiality—reinforced through the etymology of mater and matrix, the womb—and therefore with the substance of the body, as opposed to the intellect which is coded male (Butler 1993, 31).5 Thus the beings he creates are not ‘posthuman’ in the sense of transcending current life practices and forms, so much as embodiments of stagnant

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socio-cultural values organized around serving men’s interests, comparable to the ‘standard men and women’ resulting from Huxley’s ‘bokanovskified egg’ in Brave New World (Huxley 1994, 5). Although there is no specific evidence of Levi having read Asimov’s Robot stories, this scenario echoes elements of ‘First Law’ published in 1956 (Asimov 1995, 253–56).6 In this story, two scientists on Titan are discussing new model robots, which are called Emma One, Two, and Three. The drama is provided by Emma Two, who malfunctions and runs away. When located, she disobeys the Second Law of Robotics and fails to carry out an order given by a human being, prioritizing instead the safety of Emma Junior, her daughter, due to the ‘holy ties of mother love’ (Asimov 1995, 356). Asimov’s rather normative ideological framework, which effectively absolves the robot from its (her) disobedience in recognition of the ‘sacred’ character of the maternal instinct, is not replicated in Levi’s tale. Indeed, while Asimov seems to display a problematic lack of awareness of the misogyny which may be encoded in tales of robotic construction, praising elsewhere a story by Lester Del Rey about ‘a robot that was everything a loyal wife should be’, by which he is ‘touched’ (Asimov 1995, 9), Levi explicitly demands that we judge Gilberto for his demiurgic, misogynist ambitions. Del Rey’s story which Asimov singled out, ‘Helen O’Loy’,7 has in fact been criticized as demonstrating science fiction’s ‘conventional blindness’ to gender differences in society and to the problematic implications of programming a robot to be ‘the perfect woman’, according to normative, patriarchal logic (Hollinger 2003, 125–27). If he did draw inspiration from Asimov’s or other similar texts, Levi’s story might also be read as a critical reworking of their message. Rather than a productive process, some critics have theorized cloning as a disappearance, which we might compare to the reduction of the human subject to bare life. Baudrillard argues that in cloning the subject disappears—and by this he means the subject as conceptualized through psychoanalysis—since there is no alterity and no imaginary, no Oedipal complex to resolve and therefore no sexual engendering (2003, 96–98). Cloning also entails the disappearance of joint acts of procreation, which are replaced by a ‘matrix called code’ (original emphasis)—an artificial womb. Finally, it causes the disappearance of the body, since it is no longer a gendered, sexed ‘indivisible configuration’; each of its cells becomes a potential prosthesis for the entire body: the DNA molecule, which contains all information relative to a body, is the prosthesis par excellence, the one that will allow for the indefi nite extension of the body by the body itself—this body itself being nothing but this indefi nite series of its prostheses. (Baudrillard 2003, 98, original emphasis) This infi nitely replicable body has lost its uniqueness, its ‘aura’, as ‘the individual is destined to serial propagation’, a similar fate to the work of art

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in Walter Benjamin’s classic account of the age of mechanical reproduction (Baudrillard 2003, 99; Benjamin 1985). It also recalls Braidotti’s description of the technologized body as having become ‘a factory of detachable pieces’ (Braidotti 1994, 61). In Levi’s story the self disappears into Emma I’s silence. The body, although still there in multiple form, no longer means what it did; it is no longer a thinking body formed through experience but becomes extended matter—not quite as in Descartes’ formula but thanks to a conception of the human akin to that of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfi sh Gene, in which bodies and subjects exist only for the propagation of the gene (1976). Emma II, the clone, retains the capacity to speak and justify her existence; it is Emma I, who has been cloned, ‘violentata’ [violated] (Poli and Calcagno 1992, 116), who cannot speak, as if, like the Muselmann in the camps, her spirit were absent. It is she who cannot bear witness to her demolition as a human subject, whose coherent self has been rendered meaningless, who represents bare life as ‘nonlife’ (Bernstein 2006, 46). Of the other NATCA stories, I mention two here: ‘La misura della bellezza’ [The Measure of Beauty] (SN I, 495–504; SD, 80–90) and ‘Trattamento di quiescenza’ [Retirement Fund] (SN I, 548–67; SD, 122–43). 8 The former relates once more to the social role of women, since Simpson’s new device here is the Calometro, a gadget which measures physical beauty for men or women by giving them a mark from 1 to 100. Quite apart from the conception of beauty as an empirically controllable quantity and the hegemonic, dualistic notion of gender which these devices enforce, there are other deeply problematic aspects to the Calometro. First, the two standard models are calibrated to a white, Western (American) standard—Elizabeth Taylor for women; second, they are directed almost exclusively at women, who are judged on their appearance rather than on their abilities, and whose raison d’être is to be beautiful.9 The narrator’s wife, although responding to her husband’s use of a Calometro for the most part with silence (like Emma I), is reported to be appalled by the ‘estrema docilità dell’apparecchio’ [device’s extreme docility], which she feels measures not beauty but ‘conformità’ [conformity] (SN I, 502; SD, 88)—conformity of the outside of our bodily containers. Her comments inspire a series of observations made by the narrator about how alarmingly easy it is to play upon people’s sensibilities, convincing them of the superior status of Swedish furniture above all other designs, the inherent superiority of blond-haired, blue-eyed people, or of a certain type of toothpaste. Thus Levi overtly problematizes social programming that is used for consumerist, sexist, or racist ends, implying a methodological similarity between the two types of conditioning. Gilberto appears again at the end of the story, as Simpson tells us how Gilberto calibrated the Calometro on himself, the ultimate narcissism. For Levi, Gilberto is symbolic of unchecked and ill-conceived aspirations to technologize daily life, whose post-Enlightenment desire to assert mastery over nature includes an assumed control over his wife’s very being as a part of nature, as in

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Jordanova’s analysis (1989, 125). In these stories then, human interaction with the technologization of the body is gendered: greedily accepted by men as an opportunity to manipulate others and serve their own ends, and silently or vainly refused by women who see themselves as the exploited victims of this technology. The final Simpson story, ‘Trattamento di quiescenza’, engages closely with concerns of technologized, alienated consciousness and its effects on the embodied self, presenting the Torec or ‘Total Recorder’, a virtual reality device worn as a helmet that allows the wearer to experience all the sensations of the protagonist in a video clip.10 Simpson himself falls victim to this, finding no stimulation in ‘real’ life but only in virtual experience which slowly but irreversibly replaces his own memories, destroying his relationship with his wife in the process. Ironically, the only book he is able to read is ‘Ecclesiastes’, in which he focuses on the passage where the Philosopher warns of the potential dangers of knowledge: ‘dove è molta sapienza, è molta molestia, e chi accresce la scienza accresce il dolore’ [‘For in much wisdom there is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow’] (SN I, 567; SD, 143).11 Although this statement might be interpreted as a license for intellectual laziness, here it is incontrovertibly employed as a criticism of recklessly accelerated scientific development, as the double meaning of ‘scienza’—‘knowledge’ and ‘science’—is used to full effect. The Torec can be considered as harmful both to mind and body, as we see Simpson physically wasting away while encouraging the consumption of pornographic tapes. This is another instance of technologized bare life as nonlife, ‘the reduction of life, as nearly as possible, to thing and machine, organic life approach its inorganic limit’ (Bernstein 2006, 46). Just as thirdwave cybernetics, concerned with virtuality, has resulted in the privileging of disembodied information at the expense of material bodies (Hayles 1999, 7), Simpson’s embodied self is rendered redundant and elided. His body is no longer his point of contact with the world, and the boundaries of his self shrink to the action on the Torec screen. Like the Muselmann, his death has already begun before his physical death (SS II, 1056; DS, 64). While the criticisms of the passivity and disembodiment provoked by overexposure to virtual reality remain valid today, Levi’s depiction of the Torec has all the negative and none of the positive or liberatory potential of virtual reality: he quite problematically assumes a heteronormative context which admitted no flexibility of gendered or sexual identity, even in a virtual dimension. Science fiction and investigative studies of MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions) show that when individuals escape to the virtual dimension of computer reality they may also willingly shrug off normative socio-cultural constraints of sex, gender, or sexual orientation: male or female biology does not necessarily entail adopting the ‘normal’ gendered identity of masculine and feminine, respectively, and heterosexuality is no longer a prescribed norm.12 In strong contrast, Levi’s narrator is appalled when Simpson mistakenly gives him a tape intended for a ‘signora’, placing

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him in the female subject position in which the female protagonist is about to have sex with her male lover Rinaldo (SN I, 560–61; SD, 136). Thus although outspoken against some forms of conformity and normalization in his stories, Levi does not even consider the possibility of using technology to reclaim gender or sexual identity enforced by normalizing pressures, as advocated by Haraway (1991), for example. Indeed, Haraway sees cyborgs as free from normative and disciplinary discourses; they have the potential to be ‘post-gender’ and ‘not subject to Foucault’s biopolitics’ (Haraway 1991, 150, 163), which is certainly not the case in Levi’s fiction. As Levi reveals through the mouthpiece of Simpson, the Torec helmet, with its power to fuse the individual mind with virtual experience that palimpsestically erases lived reality, is based on Roberto Vacca’s ANDRAC: the ‘Automatic Neurotic Device for Reckoning, Analzying and Computing’, which appears in his novel Il robot e il minotauro, first published in 1963. After a minor surgical procedure, Vacca’s device puts the nervous system in direct communication with a series of electronic circuits allowing the wearer to drive a car via thought alone, for example. Levi quickly points out that the Torec is preferable since it requires no surgery (SN I, 550–51; SD, 125), but he nevertheless associates virtual reality and the consequent disembodiment it may entail with technologically fused bodily alterations, implying a similarity between posthuman consciousness and the posthuman body. Given the educational importance of manual activity in Levi’s thought, the erasure of physical contact between the body and the apparatus it is controlling is unlikely to be positive. Indeed, it is in part the lack of a referent in a lived ‘reality’, accessible to the subject that renders these replications ultimately unproductive. Instead, these apparent prolongations and replications of life all result in individual freedoms being curbed, and sexuality is present in a negative form: as abuse, enabled by bodily docility; as rationalized attractiveness; as experienced through disembodying virtual reality. Sexuality, and particularly sexual reproduction, are also negatively present as absences, denied in the process of cloning. These posthumans are rendered thus by devices that remain fundamentally separate from their bodies, or in which they are temporarily contained: Patricia can escape from the fridge; Simpson can take off the Torec; cloned subjects continue to live outside the Mimer. Nevertheless, the consciousnesses and modalities of embodiment of these individuals remain marked by their interface with technology. I now consider a second group of stories which deal with more literal cyborg bodies, subject to a much closer coupling of biological and machine.

TECHNOLOGIZED COUPLINGS All four stories I analyse are found in Vizio di forma and they all deal in different ways with the fusion or constant enforced proximity of organic bodies and technology, with a specific focus on the impact this has on social

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interaction and on embodiment. Yet rather than the ‘pleasurably tight couplings’ of human and machine that Haraway envisages (Haraway 1991, 152), these are rationalized fusions, in which sexuality is present negatively, either hyper-controlled or impeded. In these posthuman scenarios, technologized reason maintains its dominance by breaking the link with sexuality, repressing sensual urges.13 ‘Knall’ (VF I, 647–50; TS, 51–56) and ‘Protezione’ [Protection] (VF I, 573–77) present a series of bodies rendered docile through state intervention or social practices. The ‘knall’ itself is a cigar-shaped device that can kill, but only within a one-metre radius, resulting in altered patterns of social behaviour as people prefer to retain a safety buffer around their bodies, dissolving crowds, inducing many to stay at home or to be repelled by others as when like poles of magnetic devices meet (VF I, 650; TS, 55).14 Drawing on Erving Goffman’s analysis of how we inhabit social spaces, we see here how anxiety about the knall encourages individuals to intensify their processes of surveillance by ‘body scanning’ those around them; moreover, Levi’s story explicitly dramatizes Goffman’s concern that being in a space means physically placing one’s body in potential danger (Goffman 1976, 167).15 Worn as part fashion accessory, part weapon, they are a prosthetic armament which endows every human body with the capacity to kill. The enhanced capacity for violence is linked to a murderous, non-biological sexual charge: the knall’s status as phallic signifier is reinforced by its limpness after being discharged, when they are described as ‘flosci’ [flaccid] (VF I, 648; TS, 53), and they are marketed largely at teenagers, with logos reminiscent of pinball machines or crude pornographic images of women. Sexuality becomes deadly, as eros and thanatos are literally linked together as cause (desire for sexual satisfaction) and effect (death). Although fatal at close range, the knalls are silent and tidy; not only is no blood shed and virtually no trace left on the body when a knall is discharged, but the spent capsules are disposed of neatly in litter bins, a practice symptomatic of an irrationally rational society living in fear while attempting to normalize a horrific social menace. This normalization is partly achieved through an evidently propagandist opinion recycled for the reader by the narrator: ‘è indiscutibile che buona parte degli uomini provano il bisogno . . . di uccidere il loro prossimo o se stessi’ [it’s indisputable that the great majority of men feel the need . . . to kill their neighbor or themselves] (VF I, 650; TS, 55). We might consider the behaviour and views depicted in this chapter as characteristics of the ‘horde’ as defi ned by Adorno and Horkheimer: ‘not a return to barbarism but the triumph of repressive equality, the disclosure through peers of the parity of the right to injustice’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 13). However, it appears that its lack of barbarism puts this product at a disadvantage, since we are informed that knalls are not likely to remain popular indefi nitely because there is too little bloodshed for the murderous urges of human beings.

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In this story, prosthetic enhancement of the body severs solidarity and drives people away from one another, containing them in invisible but alienating force fields that reinforce and broaden the boundaries of the body so that they are no longer an interface with the world but a virtual fortified castle, as in Kristeva’s theories of abjection. On one level, this is simply a metaphor for the increase in unprovoked gun or knife crime in society; however, the silence of death by knall could be read as a comment on the expendable quality of individuals in a consumer society, or on the slim distinction between a posthuman, living, alienated subject who fears to engage with the world and nonlife. Levi’s cynical side is much in evidence here as his narrator comments that the manufacturer’s profits must be ‘mostruosi’ [monstrous] (VF I, 649; TS, 54)—a telling word which resonates with moral condemnation of technological companies that put profit before human safety. Another story, ‘Protezione’, again takes up the evils of manufactured needs, alluding to the creation of an artificial need by a company that exploits consumers for its own profit (VF I, 576). Levi introduces us to Marta, her husband Enrico, and their friends Elena and Roberto, who are forced by law to wear metallic ‘corrazze’—suits of body armour—to protect them from the meteorite rain that falls outside. Failure to wear the suit incurs a prison sentence, hence they are worn constantly, making physical contact virtually impossible and repressing sexuality. There are doubts about the real need for the suits; Roberto voices a conspiracy theory that the reported deaths by meteorite are negligible and are an invention by the media or the state to maintain the flagging motor industry, which manufactures the suits, and to control the populace. Protective suits must fulfi l certain criteria of weight or thickness, and have licence plates like vehicles, making the suited body an artificial, heavily regulated apparatus. Roberto and Marta represent the voice of the silenced or oppressed opponent to this state regulation of their bodies, able to perceive that they are being conditioned and manipulated but unable to escape the power of this conditioning. In contrast, Elena shows signs of a posthuman consciousness marked by severe indoctrination as she speaks up in favour of the ‘corazza’, claiming that her desire to wear it is real, as it protects her from men, wind, rain, smog, contaminated air, radioactivity, evil thoughts, illness, the future, and even herself. She exclaims, ‘ci sto proprio bene, come si sta bene a casa’ [I really feel comfortable inside it, like being at home] (VF I, 576). Elena’s words recall Levi’s statement about the way in which he inhabits his house as an extension of his self, as well as the protective shells that prisoners constructed around themselves in the Lager, evoked in the word ‘corazza’. While Elena professes to fi nding comfort in her shell, like in an ideal home, reminiscent of Bachelard’s discussions of the ‘daydreams’ of inhabiting protective shells in which many take pleasure (Bachelard 1994, 120), on another reading her container is protective in a deadening manner. It cuts her off from the world as opposed to representing a prosthetic

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extension of self that will expand into the artefacts of civilization. Instead, the artefacts of civilization now absorb their very creators into their rigid form. Elena’s body is experienced as an appendage, a space that she must inhabit but which requires control through mediation and regulation and which she is keen to mask. Her suit is an extension of her body which palimpsestically overwrites and ‘protects’ her from biological physicality: her own and that of others. She is within the uncanny, metallic, humanoid structures that Faussone encountered (see Chapter 4), but seems to revel in this delimited existence. Conversely, Marta recalls with painful nostalgia how it felt to be free of the ‘corazza’, remembering her previous affair with Roberto that is now well and truly over; the enforced covering of the body and the rigidity of the suit seem to have quashed her sexual being. Instead, sexual energy is cathected into the fetishized suits themselves, as Marta and Roberto’s new models are admired and put Roberto’s slowing rusting old model to shame, since rather than reinventing his exoskeleton through a technologized coving he has allowed the suit to ‘age’ like the body itself. Claudia Springer notes how many science fiction texts ‘represent a future where human bodies are on the verge of becoming obsolete but sexuality prevails’, through hypersexualized robotic bodies, for example (2005, 247). Levi’s story shows how metallic exoskeletons may indeed be invested with a sexual charge, but privileges the narrative of a deadened sexuality. In this scenario of enforced consumption and homogeneity, ‘pseudoindividuality’ and pseudo consumer choice reign, as branded products promise unique qualities, but ultimately serve only to enforce conformity (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 155). However, Marta has regained her critical faculties and seems decidedly separate from her suit. She looks out of the headpiece ‘attraverso la fenditura della visiera’ [through the slits in the mask] (SN I, 573); thus rather than being understood as a prosthetic extension fused to her body, the suit constitutes an imprisoning structure. Intriguingly, these words directly echo Mario’s sensation in ‘I sintetici’ as he looks out from what he understands as the openings in his synthetic skin, ‘come attraverso le fenditure di una visiera’ [as though through the slits in a mask] (SN I, 595). In Levi’s narratives, individual words and phrases recur, building a lexicon of terms of (dis)embodiment which often evoke negotiations of containment. These terms indicate recurring desires and anxieties about the body as either a place of protection and safety, or a somatic prison. Finally, in addition to devices that are carried by the individual or the enveloping of bodies within technology, Levi’s stories also depict bodies that encompass a non-biological component, for example, ‘Lumini rossi’ [Small Red Lights] (VF I, 626–29; SD, 184–87) and ‘In fronte scritto’ [Written on their Foreheads] (VF I, 725–32). In the former, we meet the protagonist Luigi as he leaves his bureaucratized workplace and returns home, his every move controlled by a red light. At home he attempts in vain to avert his eyes from the red light that shines unblinkingly from his wife Maria’s collarbone, prohibiting sexual intercourse during her fertile days since they already have two

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children, and a third would be taxed heavily. Their interaction is weighed down by the significance of this light and by fear of inspections, so that even their conversations are stilted and difficult. Luigi would like to take a screwdriver and remove Maria’s light, but it is by now so much a part of her that this would not be possible, as she explains wearily, ‘rimane sempre una traccia’ [it always leaves a mark] (VF I, 628; SD, 186). Her body is irreversibly altered, technologized, regulated by the state. Luigi’s may be physically unchanged but mentally he feels his skull hardening, ‘come se ricoperta da un’enorme callosità adatta a percuotere contro i muri’ [as is covered by an enormous callous for battering against walls] (VF I, 629; SD, 187). The traces of state intervention are ineradicable, inescapable, turning spontaneous, organic bodies into obedient, desensitized automata. While this story evokes our sympathies for Maria and Luigi, it must be noted that in many ways Levi’s dystopic scenario is simply an exaggeration of systems already in place, even at the time of writing. It is a further example of defamiliarizing science fiction that has one foot placed fi rmly in a known reality, and our sympathies must also extend to ourselves as victims of the social discipline to which Levi’s protagonists are subjected. We can read the warning embedded here in two ways: either Levi is again showing how above and beyond general impositions of docility, women’s bodies and the processes of reproduction are targeted by technology in gendered ways; or, while it remains a compelling dramatization of the internalization of state panopticism, we can read the story as asserting that without these lights the same controls are not necessarily in place. Many critics would contest this latter view vigorously, particularly in relation to gender roles. Theorists such as Butler have qualified gender roles as ‘performative’, clarifying that performativity is not a ‘singular act’ but rather ‘a reiteration of a norm or set of norms’ which ‘conceals or dissimulates the conventions of which it is a repetition’ (Butler 1993, 12). Individuals may not be aware of the norms which shape their behaviour, but which they unconsciously reinforce. In contrast, Levi’s view of gender roles often reveals a blindness to the forms of social conditioning already in place before we reach the point of visibly hyperrationalized existence controlled by a sequence of red lights. Here Levi seems to take a position analagous to Alan Turing (1950), in his discussion of the question whether, if human life is regulated by a set of ‘rules of conduct’—for example, ‘Stop if you see red lights’—we are no better than machines. Turing’s response is to deflate this hypothesis by defi ning ‘rules of conduct’ as ‘laws of behaviour’, which he asserts are involuntary and spontaneous reactions to external stimuli; that is, we are not behaving according to programming, like computers do, but reacting spontaneously (1950, 452). Both Turing’s paper, with its problematic certainty of which answers ‘would naturally be given by a man’ (1950, 435), and Levi’s assumptions about personal freedoms before the imposition of the red lights, or the metallic suit, can therefore only be partial warnings about the loss of individual autonomy.

144 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment In the last story I consider here, ‘In fronte scritto’, the physical traces of posthumanism on the body result from the selling of skin surfaces for advertising. Suffering from financial difficulties, Enrico and Laura decide to sell their forehead space to promote a cosmetics company. Although the slogans are supposed to be entirely removable by laser treatment when the three-year contract expires, unsurprisingly Laura’s skin retains scars as if she has been burnt, reminiscent of Fascist graffiti; her corrupted skin echoing social and political corruption. Furthermore, her first child is born with the message ‘OMOGENEIZZATI CAVICCHIOLI’ [CAVICCHIOLI BABY FOOD] on his forehead (VF I, 732). This slogan cleverly puns on the double meanings inherent in these words to drive home a clear judgement of what we become when we make the body into a billboard. ‘Cavicchioli’ is an Italian surname which derives from the word ‘cavicchio’ meaning ‘wooden peg’, a metaphor for a human subject who has become anonymized, reified, and rendered infi nitely interchangeable, like the Muselmänner. This point is reinforced by the word ‘omogeneizzato’, the term for pureed food, which also clearly evokes the homogenization of individuals. ‘In fronte scritto’ constitutes a crystallization of Levi’s concerns about modern urban living. Advertising leads to the commodification of the individual; homogenized social groups provide a false community (Laura and Enrico dilute their discomfort at having sold their foreheads by socializing with other ‘Frontali’ [Foreheaders]); religious endorsement of capitalist practices is used in highly dubious ways in an impossible bid to reverse the ‘disenchantment’ of modernity (the chapel at the Frontali’s club contains a plastic figure of Christ with JNRI written on his forehead). The effects of these combined factors is to reduce the human being to a puppet-like entity, herded into conveniently created social communities designed to appease resistance through the normalization of bodily ‘enhancement’. Enrico and Laura’s very bodies, including their sex chromosomes, are inscribed with slogans, making them literal symbols of ‘the triumph of advertising in the culture industry’, as ‘consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products, even though they see through them’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 167). From Gilberto to Marta and Elena, to the ‘Frontali’ with their inscribed brows, Levi’s characters who ‘buy in’ to these technological and technologizing consumer campaigns oscillate between an awareness and a total ignorance of any manipulation to which they may have been subjected. However, Levi ensures that the reader cannot miss the real implications of the products on offer. All the stories considered in this chapter are steeped in a biting critique of falsity and forced conformity, of artificially manipulated consciousness and disembodiment through a reduction of the individual to bare life as ‘nonlife’, or to Laing’s ‘“dead”, unreal, false, mechanical’ self (Laing 1965, 144). Individual resistance does challenge this state of affairs, but it is rarely successful. Significantly, it is often instigated by women: it is Patricia who seeks freedom from her cold technological prison, helped by a sexually

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enthralled Baldur who remains unaware of her confinement and the misery of her status as frozen specimen; after his initial mistrust, the narrator in the Simpson stories cedes to the power of the NATCA devices, with the only resistance being manifested by Emma I’s silence, or by the alternating mute anger and words of chastisement offered by his wife. Clearly, the other stories considered also show male discomfort with technologically enforced docility or the technologization of the body, but these are outnumbered by examples of technical devices that oppress women in a specifically gendered manner. It seems clear in these stories that Levi is aware of the male dominance of science as a field, and of the gender imbalances in Western societies, which lead to women becoming subjugated to technology in particularly gendered ways, in relation to their status as sexualized object of desire or as their husband’s property. He also explores an identity bolstered by weapons which evoke forms of male sexuality. All these issues point to the dangers of encouraging or facilitating gender roles or sexualities premised on violence or domination. Thus Klein’s observation about women’s immunity to technology must be rephrased to take into account Levi’s comments—whether conscious or unconscious—on the gendered victims of posthuman ‘progress’. Levi’s female characters considered here are not immune to the seductive powers of technology; they are either overtly critical of its controlling and reductive tendencies or are the disempowered victims of the ways in which its capacities are harnessed by certain hegemonically masculine agents of domination. While men are victims of technology, too, it seems important to note the predominance of males amongst the perpetrators of technologically enabled abuse, as well as the proactive attempts to combat or criticize this by women. Whether or not Levi explicitly wished to make a feminist point about the gendered effects of technological exploitation, his texts do convey this message. It is clear that, taken alone, these fictions present an overwhelmingly negative picture of posthumanism which does not guide us towards any means of reclaiming our selves short of rejecting technology tout court. As such, the stories are open to accusations of demonizing technology, against which Haraway warns. In her view, it is not sufficient to put forward a crude ‘anti-science metaphysics’, since this line of argument seals us further inside the dualistic logic that historically has held such sway (Haraway 1991, 181). Rather—as Levi himself suggested—we should seize on the complexities offered by new technologies and use their possibilities to improve ourselves. Indeed, as seen in the previous chapter, Levi professed himself supportive of eugenic intervention on the body if carried out responsibly, which chimes sympathetically with the careful reconstruction of bodily boundaries endorsed by Haraway (1991, 181). A related objection to the simple rejection of technology concerns the implication running through Levi’s texts, despite his appreciation of the invisible power of advertising and social conditioning, that programming is not already at work in ‘traditional’ gender roles or social organization, for example.

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Furthermore the question remains: does Levi’s writing provide us with the tools to at least imagine, if not effect, the ethical adaptation of technology and a productive posthuman status that we might assume? Might the lost witnesses of this latest demolition of humanity be returned to a state of autonomous, full embodiment and ontological security? This question might best be addressed through consideration of his journalistic and essay production alongside his fiction which has the potential to supplement and galvanize his message. Several of his articles contain explicit calls to rethink the ways in which science and technology are studied and put into practice, especially those dating from the mid 1980s— for example, ‘Eclissi dei profeti’ [Eclipse of the Prophet] (AM II, 853–56; OPT, 91–95), ‘Covare il cobra’ [Hatching the Cobra] (RS II, 990–93; MM, 209–14) and the 1987 interview with Vincenti and others, ‘Il sinistro potere della scienza’ [The Sinister Power of Science].16 In the fi rst, he discusses the threat of nuclear war, a danger radically disproportionate to our human scale, since a single action might destroy the entire human race, but which we have rationalized, through drastically reducing the perceived level of threat in our minds, thus enabling us to continue the task of daily living (AM II, 853; OPT, 91). In this essay Levi suggests that the fundamental problem is that we reason by extremes; disaster is either impossible or defi nite, both positions that lead to passive inertia. Instead, we should reflect on the constructive input we still have in our future, which is, despite the technological rationalization of society, still, in part, ours to build. ‘Covare il cobra’ and ‘Il sinistro potere della scienza’ take a similar theme, nuclear science, but attempt to impress its message not onto the general population, as in ‘Eclissi dei profeti’, but onto individual scientists, who can choose to conduct ethical rather than destructive research. Thus while, in his fiction, Levi thinks of the future dystopically, imagining negative but possible scenarios of human life, in his essays, he is much more constructive, sketching out strategies for avoiding the situations he narrates. A constant theme in the stories considered in this and the previous two chapters is a pervasive conviction of the unbridgeable divide between human and mechanical devices, perhaps most explicitly expressed in Levi’s declaration that he did not want his computer to take control over his body since it is not human (RS II, 970, 973; OPT 192, 195). This view regarding the irreconcilability of the human with the inorganic explains the negative presentation of posthuman bodies in Levi’s fiction. There are no positive accounts of the technologically ‘enhanced’ posthuman, either because he ultimately believes that humans and machines cannot merge without infringing human freedoms, or because he feels that prevailing Western, post-Enlightenment discourses will prevent that fusion from being anything other than constricting. Much of the disquiet evident in the stories considered in this chapter stems from the invisibility or unrecognizability of power, of the origins of technology, of the systems seeking to infiltrate, occupy, and control the body. When Levi points out the similarities between

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humans and machines or technologized others, it is on the whole a negative observation, echoing Hayles’ conclusion that ‘there is a limit to how seamlessly humans can be articulated with intelligent machines, which remain distinctly different from humans in their embodiments’ (Hayles 1999, 284). As has been argued in previous chapters, inhabiting the body was for Levi a fraught process—a difficulty that makes itself felt clearly through his powerful accounts of alienated disembodiment in the stories considered in this chapter. However, despite paying lip service to the possibility of new technologies alleviating this problem, he does not show this happening. It seems that the more technologically posthuman Levi’s bodies become, the more they are trapped in the rigid mechanized hard body of industrial modernism. Ironically, as the next chapter shows, in order to narrate more positive, postmodern, posthuman bodies, Levi turns back in time to tales inspired by mythical origins.

7

Recombining the Organic Human Body

If the technologized, posthuman bodies considered thus far seem to be caught in an inevitable progression towards calcification, gradually becoming ever more rigid and alienated from their physical form in an utterly dystopic realization of the machinic body or Enlightenment rationality, a parallel strand of Levi’s fiction posits a more organic, alternative modality of posthumanism. In striking contrast to the technologized bodies discussed in previous chapters, this is a posthumanism in which technology does not figure, which seems to show a future incarnation for the human subject while evoking classical myth, confusing temporal chronology, often opening up or even dissolving the boundaries of the body and between species.1 On one level, it is a postanthropocentrism, which displaces the humanist subject from its assumed position of superiority and difference, and which, in reconfiguring its form and capabilities—and by realigning the human with animal, insect, or natural life forms—implies that ‘the “human” we now know, is not now, and never was, itself’ (Wolfe 2003, 9). Our capacities for assuming other, apparently ‘nonhuman’ forms should not be discounted. As Latour has suggested, it may be that ‘the expression “anthropomorphic” considerably underestimates our humanity’; he advocates removing the restructive prefi x ‘anthropos’ and describing the human being instead as ‘a weaver of morphisms’ (Latour 1993, 137). However, this type of posthumanism is not one that necessarily leaves humanism or the humanist subject behind entirely; just as poststructuralism and postmodernism retain elements of and commonalities with that which they ostensibly claim to supersede, so posthumanism is not in opposition to but in relation with humanism.2 Indeed, unlike the desire to lose the flesh that marks the disembodied, virtual posthuman condition depicted in some futuristic science fiction writing, or the alienated posthuman whose somatic materiality is superseded by efficient technology, in these modalities of embodiment the material form continues to be valued. The sensory experiences often denied by technology in Levi’s work, including the spontaneous expression of embodied sexual desire and sexual satisfaction, are even driving forces for many characters. Yet this is not to say that such organic forms of (postanthropocentric) posthumanism are without their

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tensions. Indeed, while Levi’s stories considered here seem to promise a greater degree of autonomy over the self, in some cases the individual self is ultimately lost as it merges with the other. While in Levi’s science fiction, couplings between humans and machines lead to sexual exploitation or a repressive dulling of sexuality, among other forms of alienation, the pleasurable fusions between human bodies and the tensions between human and animal bodies discussed here might be better qualified as ‘fantastic’. Displaying a pronounced fascination with apparently spontaneous, organic evolutions of the human form, in communion with nature rather than with machinic technology, Levi depicts characters in the process of ‘“transcending” reality, “escaping” the human condition’ in alternative worlds (Jackson 1981, 2). Yet just as Levi’s science fiction writing is located in a partially recognizable, if altered, sociocultural context, so fantasy is not defi nitively transcendental and these alternative worlds are not entirely new. Instead, fantasy ‘invert[s] elements of this world, re-combining its constitutive features in new relations to produce something strange, unfamiliar and apparently “new”’ (Jackson 1981, 8, original emphasis)—paralleling the science fiction novum. Arguably the most significant element to be recombined is the human body itself, as Levi’s somatic mutations and metamorphoses evoke the work of classical authors like Ovid, in whose work ‘metamorphosis is the principle of organic vitality as well as the pulse of the body in art’ (Warner 2002, 2). We might consider Levi’s texts as exemplifying what Latour has called a ‘nonmodern’ form of metamorphosis: one that both is, and is not, modern in that it embraces the modern fascination with hybridity but contravenes the coexisting, contradictory modern drive for purity (Latour 1993, 10–12). The Ovidian pulsing vitality in Levi’s texts is expressed through an interest in procreation and reproduction, a topic already discussed in relation to his science fiction posthuman bodies. In contrast to the regulation and rationalization of reproduction seen in previous chapters, however, here it is often as part of a cycle of spontaneous, organic evolution which involves both creating new beings and altering existing beings through mutation and metamorphosis. We encounter the steaming fertility of the earth, so evocatively described in La tregua as Levi re-established contact with nature and re-experienced pleasurable sensations after his imprisonment in the Lager. Characteristically, just as Levi’s embodied beings are marked by doubleness, his own position is ambiguous as he both seems entranced by the possibilities of fluid hybridity and insists on the material human self as our inevitable form, echoing the dual practices of modernity identified by Latour. I consider two main themes in his writing: the hybrid, interspecial body and the (co-)existence of male and female elements in one body. I draw on the same range of texts as for other chapters in this part of the book, including the earlier collections Storie naturali and Vizio di forma, as well as several texts published in the last decade of Levi’s life, in the collections Lilít e altri racconti, L’altrui mestiere and Racconti e saggi.3

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HYPHENATED BEINGS Towards the end of his life, Levi’s interest in the relationship between human and animals, present even in his earlier works, became quite pronounced, taking a fantastic turn.4 In particular, he engages with questions of hybridity, already mentioned in relation to his concept of himself as a centaur, and metamorphosis, evoked in the image of the butterfly in Levi’s transformation from dehumanized prisoner back to human (LT I, 353; T, 335) or the metamorphosing ‘Fabbro di se stesso’. In his essay ‘Inventare un animale’ [Inventing an Animal] in the 1985 collection L’Altrui mestiere (AM II, 711–15; OPT, 27–32), Levi echoes Jackson’s definition of fantasy as a recombination of existing elements, arguing that when imagining fantastic creatures we tend to create them not out of thin air but by putting together elements of known creatures and creating hybrids, such as the chimera or the centaur (AM II, 711–12; OPT, 27–28). Even Borges’ Manuale di zoologia fantastica, he comments, does not contain any wholly original animals. 5 Another of Levi’s essays in the same collection ‘Romanzi dettati dai grilli’ [Novels Dictated by Crickets] explores a similar theme: the creation of human-animal hybrids in literature (AM II, 689–93; OPT, 146–51). Levi cites arguments posited by Huxley that animals are like us but ‘senza coperchio’ [with the lid off] (AM II, 689; OPT, 146);6 they are without the inhibitions that attend ‘civilized’ subjects. His position on the relationship between humans and animals is rather ambivalent. He asserts the distinction between humans and animals, since humans have language, but, as Marco Belpoliti notes, his work also suggests that all humans are constituted by an animal element (1997c, 189). In the essay ‘Romanzi dettati dai grilli’, he considers a variety of perspectives on this relationship, including statements by ethologists who argue that animals are fundamentally distinct from us, and the view, popularized in Desmond Morris’ The Naked Ape (1967), that portrays humans in animal terms. While distinguishing his views from both Huxley and Morris’ positions, Levi professes to be fascinated by what we can learn from the immense variety of ‘human’ characteristics that animals display which constitute a rich, ready resource for the author: ‘uscendo dall’isola umana, troverà ogni qualità umana moltiplicata per cento, una selva di iperboli prefabbricate’ [coming out of the human island, he [sic] will fi nd every human quality multiplied a hundred-fold, a vast thicket of prefabricated hyperbole] (AM II, 690; OPT, 147). Little matter if these qualities are accurate, he suggests; their function is to inspire our imaginations. Wondering about which animals could be used to express particular human behaviours, he ruminates on the creation of a ‘personaggio-coccinella’ [ladybird character] that would evoke hypochondriac, malcontent characters from Nikolai Gogol’s novels, whose garb allows them to be identified and avoided at a distance (AM II, 693; OPT, 151). Yet another essay, ‘Gli scarabei’ [Beetles] (AM II, 790–94; OPT, 14–18) raises the issue of human-animal hybrids, pointing

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out fi rst the perceived points of similarity between humans and animals: even if only symbolically, humans recognize themselves somehow in animal behaviour, in the social structure of bees and ants, the dance of the butterfly. He then notes the differences: alluding to Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, Levi observes that the monstrosity of this particular metamorphosis stems from the fundamental lack of similarity between us and beetles, from their radical otherness.7 Some of these invented animals might be thought of as hyphenated beings put together in an imaginary realm to achieve a metaphorical effect, whose constituent parts are still evident as though the being could be taken apart. In this they resemble portmanteau words that Levi found fascinating, and which he describes as opening up ‘in due metà simmetriche’ [into two symmetrical halves] (AM II, 663).8 The work of science fiction author Bernard Wolfe implies that this form of duality is inherent to human beings, since ‘humans are essentially hyphenated creatures . . . creative-destructive, peaceful-aggressive’9 —a series of contradictory pairings which resonates with the list of opposing terms identified by Levi as fundamental characteristics of human experience: ‘errore/verità, riso/pianto, senno/follia, speranza/disperazione, vittoria/sconfitta’ [falsehood/truth, laughter/tears, judgement/folly, hope/despair, triumph/disaster] (RR II, 1365; SR, 8). If we accept Levi’s assertion that animals represent exaggerated human characteristics, then hyphenated beings that embody this evident duality, such as the centaur Trachi in ‘Quaestio di centauris’, are metaphors for ourselves as much as they are imaginary beings that transcend the human. Fantastic creatures transform the ‘real’ through a process of ‘dis-covery’, uncovering what lies beneath, taking off the ‘lid’ as Huxley suggests, a process which ‘does not introduce novelty, so much as uncover all that needs to remain hidden if the world is to be comfortably “known”’ (Jackson 1981, 65). The unsettling quality of fantastic creatures comes from their closeness to us and the uncanny familiarity which upsets our received, established discourses about the world and ourselves. Like the uncanny ‘not I’ of the abject, the fantastic lies on the edges of the heimlich, in an interstitial space, but a differently coded space into which, Freud argued, we project hidden desires (Jackson 1981, 66). This is exemplified by Trachi’s unquenchable sexual urges, mentioned in Chapter 1, which can be read as a manifestation of the violence Levi claims resides within us, or of a violent sexual desire which we struggle to control since it troubles the veneer of our narratives of civilization. Here sexuality, associated with Trachi’s equine not his human parts, is the destructive half of the hyphenated being. In Daniele Del Giudice’s view, these hybrid beings are unhappy and confused because they remain heterogeneous combinations of disparate elements as opposed to actually metamorphosing (1997, lvi–lvii). Belpoliti takes a similar view, distinguishing the incoherence of the ‘impure’ elements of the hybrid from the substantial alterations of the mutated being (1997c, 194). However, as we have seen, impurities are often positive catalysts in Levi’s imaginary,

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standing in opposition to rigid thought, and are even posited as essential for life and its development (SP I, 768; PT, 34). Moreover, while Del Giudice claims that the disconsonance of hybridity renders it the precise opposite of metamorphosis (1997, lvi), implying that radical, substantive change is somehow ‘better’ than internal difference or ontological dualism, in my view it is difficult to distinguish neatly between metamorphosis and hybridity in Levi’s work. He suggests that we are all, always already hybrid and, in his fantastic tales, implies that we all possess an inherent ability to change, to create ourselves anew, like the ‘Fabbro di se stesso’, by incorporating new elements into our bodies or by unleashing dormant potentialities within us. Furthermore, in contrast to the frustrations of hybrid beings like Trachi (and himself, as suffering a ‘paranoid’ split), Levi also explores the ‘dis-covery’ of both more sublime qualities hidden within us and of a more satisfying, harmonious sexuality enabled by our connections with nature. In this, Levi’s work might be seen to have anticipated developments in critical discourses of postanthropocentrism. One hybrid/hyphenated being that appears on numerous occasions in Levi’s work, with a range of symbolic connotations, is the winged human: either the hyphenated human-butterfly or the human-bird hybrid, both of which embody a potential subliminality. The butterfly, with its impressive metamorphosis, has long symbolized change, but in the Greco-Roman and Egyptian traditions it has also signified the human soul, often depicted leaving the body on tomb engravings (Warner 2002, 90). Levi was aware of this tradition and informs his readers that the butterfly conveys an ambivalent presage of both a possible second birth and of death (AM II, 753; OPT, 8). In Dante’s ‘Purgatory’, the ‘angelica farfalla’ [angelic butterfly], to which Levi refers explicitly, is the form we should assume as we ascend to Judgment, as our inner soul is freed from its earthly housing: ‘the butterfly offered an image of the etherealized self, it communicated the idea that the fleshly, inferior integuement would be shucked off to release the essence, soul: self shuffling off this mortal coil’ (Warner 2002, 84).10 This is a mutation towards perfection, which, unlike the drive to perfect the body through rationalization and prosthetic enhancement, valorizes soul above body in line with religious doctrines. In so doing it also echoes Descartes’ psyche/soma separation. Levi’s reworking of this trope takes a different approach. We have already encountered Levi’s metaphorical metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly in La tregua, which reads as a second birth through the re-membering of the human body rather than a transcendence of the material body. Two further, contrasting stories also draw on the myth of the butterfly’s symbolic meaning: ‘Angelica farfalla’ [Angelic Butterfly] (SN I, 434–41; SD, 18–26) and ‘La grande mutazione’ [The Great Mutation] (RS II, 868–72; MM, 18–24).11 The fi rst story recounts the experiments begun by a Professor Leeb in Berlin in 1943, who used human subjects in his attempt to demonstrate that human beings are ‘neotenic’ (immature or larval) and have the potential

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to develop into a ‘higher’, angelic form through a process of metempsychosis—the Pythagorean doctrine on the transmigration of souls. Leeb’s experiments are rooted in a context of highly unethical Nazi investigation on the bodies of Jews and ‘expendable’ minorities such as gypsies, in light of which the ambition for angelic status and claim for justification ring hollow, despite ‘legitimizing’ references to Dante’s poem and a tract found among Leeb’s papers on I fondamenti fi siologici della metempsicosi [The Physiological Foundations of Metempsychosis] (SN I, 438; SD, 23). This is an example of a twisted science, against which Levi warns in many stories and essays, and of the violation of human beings. When American and Russian investigators visit the scene in 1946, a young German woman reveals that the bodies of the two men and two women on whom Leeb experimented did indeed metamorphose, but into creatures resembling vultures with sparse wings, with heads like mummified corpses (SN I, 440; SD, 24). Her description evokes distant history and decay, echoed in the investigators’ suggestion that one of the bones they fi nd, all that is left of the creatures, belonged to some sort of prehistoric bird (SN I, 435; SD, 19). Clearly, this particular metamorphosis leads not to an angelic transformation but to a somatic reification of the abject condition of some human ‘specimens’ under Nazism. Dr Leeb’s interventions on the human body are informed by scientific practices, classical myth, and religious texts, and are driven by a demiurgic aspiration to assume a divine, creative, and reproductive power—a desire we have already seen manifested in previous chapters as male subjects sought to reproduce human life by themselves (Gilberto), or envisaged the synthetic creation of humans (Mario). In the case of Leeb, the textual references link him into a long tradition of autarkical males seeking to appropriate female or divine generative power that can be traced back beyond modern science to Jason in classical myth.12 Moreover, while Gilberto’s actions seemed purely self-serving, Leeb’s vision is nourished by the fantasies of the (male) scientist as ‘creator’ of artificial beings who seeks to rival or surpass God (Caronia 1996, 27). Similarly, Gordon suggests that we might view Leeb as a modern day Prometheus, ‘striving for invention and renewal, working with a hybrid of technology, nature, and human nature’ (Gordon 2001, 189). Intriguingly, in ancient classical thought the butterfly also symbolized male generative power (Warner 2002, 90), which here leads only to destruction, abjection, and decomposition, epitomized in the putrid remains which the investigators fi nd after the bodies of the creatures have been butchered and devoured by starving locals, complicit with Leeb in their exploitation of the situation (SN I, 440; SD, 25). In stark contrast, ‘La grande mutazione’ tells of a spontaneous metamorphosis provoked by an otherwise benign virus which causes individuals to grow wings. Set in a recognizable postwar ‘present’, this story includes reference to contemporary scientists who come from across Europe to Italy to examine Isabella, the first to grow wings, but here science is pushed to one side of the narrative. The scientists’ interest in and examinations of her body

154 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment are mere irritations as Isabella learns to fly, breaking the ‘catena’ [chain] that holds her to Earth, shaking off the ‘gravezza del suo corpo’ [gravity of her body] that she has come to resent (RS II, 870; MM, 22). The winged body in this story could not be more different from that of Leeb’s tragic specimens. Isabella pulses with life, as in Ovid’s tales, or Levi’s own rehumanization, and, in contrast to Leeb’s attempt to usurp a male generative power by intervening in a process of divinely oriented transmogrification, the reproductive potential of her body is decidedly human and organic, as she discovers on her first flight that she is menstruating. In a rather amusing twist, several other local residents also sprout wings, including the postman’s son, to the great improvement of his father’s business, and Isabella’s father, who never quite resigns himself to this novelty, finding it hard to put his jacket on over his feathers, and therefore has the wings amputated. The bodily metamorphosis is normalized, portrayed in Isabella as a metaphor of our existing creative powers enabled through sexual development in puberty, or as a developmental phenomenon that need not disrupt daily life as we know it. Her wings feel natural, imbued with an ancient knowledge of how to transport her body upwards, as if this mutation has simply ‘dis-covered’ an age-old potential. Like prosthetic enhancement, metamorphosis is often portrayed as an improvement on our current state, as in the angelic mutation of Dante’s butterflies, or Ovidian teleological metamorphosis that suggests the achievement of an increased self-expression through change: ‘from the perspective of creation and the life force, the shape into which [characters] shift more fully expresses them and perfects them than their fi rst form’ (Warner 2002, 3–4). Unlike Levi’s technologized posthumans, however, Isabella actually seems to have achieved an ‘improved’ condition, which involves principally being freed of the weight of her body and severing the bonds with the earth. As Jonathan Usher has pointed out (Usher 1996), these stories can be productively analysed alongside the tale ‘Il sesto giorno’ [The Sixth Day] (SN I, 529–47; SD, 103–21), which posits an unrealized alternative evolution to that which we know, in which humans were winged beings, and the 1983 essay ‘L’uomo che vola’ [The Man who Flies], which celebrates the weightlessness of the astronaut beyond the Earth’s gravitational field (RS II, 974–78; MM, 168–73). In ‘Il sesto giorno’, Usher observes, the ‘idea of a better world peopled by avian humanity’ is blocked by Arimane, an allusion to Ahriman, ‘the Zoroastrean principle of darkness and evil’, thus casting wingless humanity as a grave error of evolution and positing flight upwards as an unattainable form of human divinity (Usher 1996, 210–11). This yearning for flight is more explicit in Levi’s essay on space, in which, like Isabella, Levi expresses a desire to sever the gravitational chain, ‘di trovarmi, anche solo per qualche minuto, sciolto dal peso del mio corpo’ [of fi nding myself, if only for moments, released from the weight of my body] (RS II, 974; MM, 168). In his analysis, Usher asserts that ‘Levi constantly looked for ways to be freed from the weight of the flesh’ (Usher 1996, 206). However, while

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Isabella and Levi may long for ways to be free of the weight of our bodies, they do not express a wish to be free from the human body itself. Isabella may metamorphose by growing wings, but rather than privileging a desire for etherealization, Levi ensures that her body remains recognizably human and materially solid, as underlined by her menstruation. Furthermore, she delights in the knowledge furnished by her new form, as her skill in fl ight emanates from her wings themselves—akin to thinking with one’s hands, an ability enabled by full embodiment which Levi valued. Similarly, reflecting on the condition of the astronauts, Levi notes with wonder how well the materiality of the body resists the radically new experience of weightlessness, remarking, ‘il nostro povero corpo, così indifeso davanti alle spade, ai fucili e ai virus, è a prova di spazio’ [our poor body, so defenceless when confronted by swords, guns and viruses, is spaceproof] (RS II, 977; MM, 173). The ‘spaceproof’ body is able to retain the coherence of its mass even without its weight, which is understood to be positive. Rather than a Cartesian desire to be freed from the body that drags us down to earth with its inevitable mortality, I read this essay as expressing admiration at the resilience of the human form, which miraculously emerges almost unscathed from the unknown environments in which it must now negotiate its way. It also suggests a fantasy of liberation from the restricted movements of our earth-bound reality and of moving ‘con la maestà silenziosa delle aquile e delle nuvole’ [with the silent majesty of eagles and clouds] (RS II, 975; MM, 171), yet without losing our familiar form, on which our being depends. This is a (postanthropocentric) posthumanism that remains in relation with humanism. Aside from these hyphenated humans, Levi’s work also contained examples of another type of hybrid that can be identified in Bernard Wolfe’s science fiction writing: the splice.13 This is a comparable but distinct form of coupling between different beings or phenomena, which usually involves a much more sexual fusion. In the 1981 story ‘Disfi lassi’ (L II, 93–99), we see just this. The ‘Disfi lassi’ seems to be a period of human life characterized by the free circulation of a substance called ‘ipostenone’ that ensures that no transplants are rejected, enabling all manner of somatic changes, but also entailing side effects as the indestructible ipostenone passes into the water table, rendering vaccines redundant and dissolving the boundaries between species. Like many of the other nova that Levi invents in his fiction, the Disfi lassi occurs in a moment made recognizable as our own through reference to universities, fi nancial systems, nuclear threat, and an energy crisis. We are introduced to the situation through the eyes of Amelia, a young woman studying for her exams who argues that there should be more open discussion of the changes in progress, the consequences of which remain unknown. In the Disfi lassi, the world pulses with seeds and life, and unexpected forms of cross-species pollination or fertilization can occur between humans and plants if fertile women are not careful about coming into

156 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment contact with wind-borne particles. This is a time of interfecundity, like that Levi wished for (metaphorically) between the disciplines of science and literature (AM II, 632; OPT, viii), and one that points towards a possible future. It recalls Ovid’s parthenogenic golden age (Ovid 1955, 31–32), figured elsewhere in Levi’s work as the ‘second’ or ‘real’ creation, the period of delirious fornication between earth and sky, between animals and plants and pullulating mud that results in beings such as the centaur Trachi (SN I, 506). This rich, life-giving substance is also mentioned in a positive review of the Italian translation of Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith’s study on the origins of life (1985), in which Levi again reveals his fascination with primordial mud.14 Yet while Levi invokes classical myth, in ‘Disfi lassi’ he inverts the chronology of Ovid’s golden age since here the period bristling with fruitful plenty is the present, while he depicts the ‘buon tempo antico’ [good times of old] as characterized by a rigid separation between species, when ‘gli uomini erano attratti solo dalle donne e le donne dagli uomini’ [men were only attracted to women and women to men]. To Amelia this seems to be extremely dull and grey (L II, 98). As the story concludes, she is drawn to a cherry tree, desiring it to fruit within her, as she becomes a plant among plants, ‘leggera e flessibile nel vento’ [light and flexible in the wind] (L II, 99). Thus the period of abundant interfecundity is still in progress. Amelia’s body seems to merge with nature, producing a fantastic ‘undifferentiation’ between human and world, a feature of fantastic literature which, Jackson argues, evokes Freud’s theories on the lack of distinction between self and other in childhood or primitive perceptions, as well as his remarks on instincts in ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ (Jackson 1981, 72, original emphasis). In this crucial text, Freud discusses two urges that lead to a form of undifferentiation: fi rst the instinct to ‘restore an earlier state of things’, through a return to an ‘inanimate state’, or death (Freud 1989, 612–13, original emphasis); second, he draws on Plato’s Symposium to reflect on sexual instincts, wondering whether ‘living substance at the time of its coming to life was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite’ (Freud 1989, 623). We might see both these instincts at work in Levi’s ‘Disfi lassi’, as Amelia feels a procreative urge to be one with nature, which seems both animate and inanimate at the same time; thus the traditional conflation of sex and death might see her recreating Freud’s ‘inanimate state’. She seems to dissolve into the world, in a similarly time-honoured conflation of woman and nature (Jordanova 1989, 125). However, this is seen not as a subordination of women, who are dominated as men dominate nature, but as a procreative perfection of the species—whether through Ovidian metamorphosis as a truer reflection of an inner self, a move towards an angelic state, or what Freud called an ‘instinct towards perfection’ (Freud 1989, 616). Indeed, Amelia muses that the Disfi lassi might produce new, improved, hybrid beings that surpass existing human capabilities, kindling a sense of hope in the future.

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Although only obliquely implied, we might trace an argument in favour of miscegenation or queer sexuality in Levi’s story, as hidden desires projected into the interstitial world of fantasy. Certainly, this posthuman seems free from all the constricting rigidity of his technologized cyborgs, including controlled sexuality, and while ipostenone may have been created in a laboratory, its results take the metamorphosing body back into a naturally oriented, polyvalently sensual and sexually satisfying setting. We might consider this body as exemplifying Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s ‘body without organs’, a fantasy of bodily modification driven by a desire for malleability.15 While their work includes a focus on the dissolution of the self, which I do not think is Levi’s objective, it also narrates fusions with the world that resonate with Amelia’s experiences and constitute a ‘heterogeneous system’ that stands against both ‘the telos of theology and the order of instrumental reason’ (Bukatman 2000, 109). Amelia’s posthumanity thus contrasts with Enlightenment understandings of the world and evolution. Indeed, one striking aspect of the metamorphoses in ‘Disfilassi’ is the variety of interspecial hybrids and the variation in responses to mutation, which disavow a commitment to or acceptance of human evolution as either teleologically progressive or single-stranded. While, on one level, this story seems utterly fantastical, on another, Levi gives us the keys to interpret its symbolic meaning in other texts. The fruitfulness of the natural world and urge to reproduce may be an allusion to the desire to repopulate the world after the Holocaust, to what Irving Greenberg calls ‘the counter-testimony to Auschwitz’ which he sees as echoing God’s instructions to Noah after the Flood: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth’.16 Levi makes this connection explicit in La tregua, as one young man who actively seizes his newfound sexual freedom in the aftermath of liberation is named Noah: ‘vedeva splendere l’arcobaleno, e il mondo era suo, da ripopolare’ [Noah saw the rainbow shine out, and the world was his, to repopulate] (LT I, 222; T, 203). The Holocaust as the antithesis of life and regeneration is also depicted in the poem ‘Per Adolf Eichmann’ [For Adolf Eichmann] (AOI II, 540; CP, 24), as positive images of rebirth and fertility are rent asunder by the irruption of Eichmann and the train of destruction that follows. Repopulation is therefore a political statement, against the Nazi genocide, and Amelia’s fecundity is a gesture of defiance. Moreover, allusions to Jewish communities can also be traced in the hybrid, the ‘groviglio di carne e di mente, di alito divino e di polvere’ [tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust] that Levi tells us in Il sistema periodico are embodied in the Jewish people (SP I, 746; PT, 9). In ‘Disfi lassi’, this hybrid state is incorporated by Amelia’s friends and relatives who bear the signs of splices with many forms of non-humanity: her grandmother was pollinated by a larch tree; her boyfriend Fabio has stickleback ancestry; her professor seems to be part squirrel. Attitudes among these beings to the possibilities of the Disfi lassi vary, with her professor even seeming to wish to deny or block discussion about the issue. Thus

158 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment difference is both ever present and a source of tension, accepted by some, condemned by others. Ultimately it is impure hybridity that wins the day, making this a parable in praise of impurity, as celebrated by Levi in Il sistema peiodico. Notably, impurity is praised not only in defiance of Fascist logic that seeks to destroy perceived ‘impurities’ like Levi, but because it encourages changes and mutations, and because impurities in the soil make it fertile (SP I, 768; PT, 34). Here we see a tangle of images brought together in a fantastic story that rewrites and recombines bodily capacities and boundaries between species, promoting a postanthropocentric posthumanism above classical humanism, and implicitly critiquing ideologies of racial purity. Notably, while there is a desire for radical, fantastic somatic change in these stories, despite the temptation of dissolution into the winds, the human body remains quite solid.17 Despite their plant or animal heritage, the human form prevails in the spliced physiognomies of Amelia’s relatives, and in ‘La grande mutazione’, change is presented as optional rather than imposed: while Isabella took fl ight willingly, her father found the newness of wings a troubling discomfort and was able to simply remove them. As Freud suggests, then, perhaps the ‘instinct towards perfection’ or towards change, although potentially universal, ‘cannot possibly be attributed to every human being’ (Freud 1989, 616). Gender appears to play a role in these mutations, since in contrast to Leeb’s brutalizing male fantasies of creation, Isabella and Amelia are the key to a positive future development. Despite the potential for disrupting normative sexuality implied in ‘Disfilassi’, here we see women as the appointed bearers (literally) of a new humanity, one which essentializes their role as fundamentally reproductive. Although men too mutate or are shown to be interspecial hybrids, traditional associations of women with matter and the leaky or mutating, reproductive body—as opposed to the hard, constant, male body—may have influenced Levi’s choice to make the protagonists of these stories female. Elsewhere, however, Levi’s work shows a more fluid approach to binary or essentializing notions of sex and gender.

SEXUAL MIGRATIONS AND BOUNDARIES As has been shown in previous chapters, doubling of the self permeates Levi’s work and thought, and takes many forms. While Levi’s Doppelgänger seems to be an external extension or projection of himself, an uncanny, sexless shadow hovering on the threshold of the present, who evokes a difficult past (Webber 1996, 3–4), doubles within the self may come about as the result of a more generative, or sensually driven, process and include changes of sex, or fusion between male and female. These doublings may be metamorphic or produced by ‘hyphenation’. There are two striking examples in Levi’s work of a change of sex: fi rst, the story of Tiresias,

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which Levi recounts in La chiave a stella (discussed in Chapter 3), and second, the 1980 poem ‘Autobiografia’ (AOI II, 558; CP, 44–45), inspired by a fragment from Empedocles: ‘Un tempo io fui già fanciullo e fanciulla, arbusto / Uccello e muto pesce che salta fuori dal mare’ [Once I was already youth and maid, bush, bird and mute fish that leaps out of the sea]. In La chiave a stella, Tiresias is the embodiment of impossibility, of something that, according to Faussone, does not exist, although he immediately refers to male to female transsexuals who achieve this change through surgical procedures, thereby providing a ‘real’ rather than fantastic point of reference (CS I, 987; W, 50). However, both Levi and Faussone prefer to remain in the realm of the mythic, where through a sudden, physiological rearrangement a male body can become a female, implying that the body itself contains the potential to assume many other forms, including being differently sexed. In this realm, even the apparently solid ‘reality’ of the human body, is shown to be uncanny, as the unfamiliar and familiar are revealed to co-exist. If we consider Tiresias as one of Levi’s doubles, as he asks us to do, it is intriguing that the elements of sexuality and alterity are once more present, with Levi in the rather sexless role. While Tiresias metamorphoses from male to female, Levi self-defines as a hybrid, with a dual perspective. His outer self on show to the world is identified as the chemist, while his inner self is represented by the ‘sangue di scrittore nelle vene’ [writer’s blood in [his] veins] (CS I, 989; W, 52). Aside from conflating metamorphosis with hybridity, here Levi might also be expressing a fantasy of sexual bimorphism, which transcends the perceived rigidity of the biological categories of male and female. The possibility of experiencing life as both male and female is further explored in the poem ‘Autobiografia’, where Levi develops Empedocles’ fragment (cited previously) into a narrative. The narrator, like that of ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’, is ‘vecchio come il mondo’ [old as the world] and has lived through serial evolutions, from eyeless larvae to toad, woodworm, stag, cricket, spider, salamander, unicorn, donkey, and human, both male and female, as well as being part of natural phenomena in elemental form. This cycle of generation resonates with Empedocles’ belief in reincarnation, which sees the soul condemned to wander endlessly through the world, on land, sea, and in the air, as a result of having followed a course of strife.18 Levi’s age-old narrator certainly bears the marks of travails endured, leaving his/her ‘vecchio corpo . . . inciso di strani segni’ [old body . . . inscribed with strange signs], the traces of experience that are inscribed on the flesh of this seemingly immortal being. However, s/he begs listeners not to ridicule these scars, since they are the signs of knowledge gained through experience, a prized quality in Levi’s philosophy, like the veteran scars borne by the skin of his house (AM II, 633; OPT, 1–2). Here the container of the body tells the story. If the body of the astronaut is ‘spaceproof’, this body is ‘ageproof’. ‘Autobiografia’ can be seen as narrating the double process of Ovidian shape-shifting, which involves both metempsychotic

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transmigration and the perfecting of form through serial mutations. As the culmination of these transformations, or migrations, the human body might thus be considered some kind of perfection, despite—or perhaps as a result of—the traces of experience which have scarred its surface. Like ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’, this narrator transcends the conventional limitations of lifespan and species, but the fluidity of transformation and migration is rooted by a subtle insistence on the human form as the somatic telos for the soul or essence, as the form enriched by pre-anthropocentric knowledge and experience. Narratives of transcending the limits of sex, species, and time also fi nd resonance in the story ‘Il passa-muri’ [Through the Walls] which approaches bodily mutation and sexed bodies from a different perspective (RS II, 898–901; MM, 61–66). However, I suggest it similarly reflects an implicit desire to retain the soma despite a drive to alter the body’s materiality. Memnone is an alchemist imprisoned by the Emperor for his heretic views on atoms: contrary to the dominant view that matter is entirely divisible, he argues that atoms exist and cannot be entirely dismantled. In order to escape his prison, he fi lters his food until he becomes so diaphanous that, while retaining his form, the atoms of his body can pass through the walls of his cell. On his return to his wife Ecate, he eats, with some difficulty, in a bid to regain strength, but is then overcome by desire for her and, in his state of partial dissolution, he dissolves into her body as they make love. As Santagostino points out in her extended analysis of the story, it is dense with allusions, not least the names of the characters, evoking Memnon, the Ethiopian king killed by Achilles and made immortal, and Hecate the goddess, endowed with a range of qualities from sensuality to motherly nurturing to sorcery, who is even associated with the diabolic, child-murdering Lilith, one of Levi’s mythic points of reference (Santagostino 2004, 144–45). Santagostino reads this story as a reworked version of Ulysses’ homecoming, entwined with both Dante’s Ulysses, so important to Levi, and Levi’s own return journey to Turin, in which, like the immortal Memnon, his alter ego, Levi, overcomes death—not as a result of divine intervention but through the flesh made text, through artistic ‘pro-creation’ in his writing (Santagostino 2004, 148, 151). I propose an alternative reading that supplements this interpretation, but follows instead the thesis of this book, that Levi’s representations of embodiment are always negotiations of containment. Memnone is imprisoned in his stone cell but is also contained in his body. His escape from the former leads to the loss of the latter as his ‘victory’ in proving his theory leads to the partial dissolution of the unified self. Memnone renders porous the boundaries of his body without losing his shape: after he passes through the wall, his body is permeated by granules of stone; as he walks his feet sink into the ground; the meat he attempts to eat merges with his teeth. Concerned by this lack of clear boundaries, his desire is not to merge with his surroundings, but to return to his former state, ‘riaddensarsi, per

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ristabilire i confi ni col mondo’ [to densify again, to re-establish the borders between himself and the world] (RS II, 900; MM, 65). On his way home he is forced to run since otherwise his feet constantly merge with the ground, leading him to the anguished reflection: ‘correre, senza fermarsi mai. Fino a quando? Era questa la libertà? Questo il suo prezzo?’ [run without ever stopping. Until when? Was this freedom? Was this its price?] (RS II, 900; MM, 64). It is the bounded individual self and body that is at stake, and at risk here. On one level, Memnone is seeking to regain his former status as a hardbodied male, rather than becoming one with the feminine earth, or his female wife, as the story plays with socio-cultural and historical notions of gender and gendered phenomena. Paradoxically, his freedom leads to his body being imprisoned in that of his wife, a form of death that is perhaps presaged by the description of his emergence from the stone prison like a ‘farfalla’ [butterfly] (RS II, 899; MM, 64), signifying the human soul leaving the body as in the Greco-Roman and Egyptian traditions (Warner 2002, 90). The divisibility of his body means that he can penetrate not only walls but categories of sexual dualism and existential states, since ultimately he remains somewhere between life and death, held within a new, porous, somatic container. On another level, this is a story in praise of a different type of container than the human body, but of which it is composed: the indivisible atom. The indivisibility thesis is utterly denied by the Emperor, who, in line with the dominant view, argues rigidly and inflexibly that matter is infi nitely divisible. Yet this creates a further paradox since, while Levi manipulates the reader’s sympathies in support of Memnone and indivisible matter, his thesis is scientifically incorrect, as Levi notes in his comments on William Bragg’s Concerning the Nature of Things, which is included in La ricerca delle radici (RR II, 1388–92; SR, 31–37). Levi reminisces ironically about his youthful admiration of Bragg’s thesis regarding the indivisible nature of the atom, inspired by the ancient atomists, and which has now been disproved; however, it was this theory, he claims here, that motivated him to become a chemist since it promised hope: ‘i modelli in scala umana . . . un cosmo immaginabile, alla portata della nostra fantasia, e l’angoscia del buio cede il posto all’alacrità della ricerca’ [Models on a human scale . . . a comprehensible universe, one accessible to our imagination, and the anguish of the dark recedes before the rapid spread of research] (RR II, 1388; SR, 31). Levi’s hope here is literally humanist, placing the human body as the heuristic pivot at the centre of our understanding of the world, mediating between the micro atoms of which we are composed and the macro of the universe, which, in this thesis, is constituted by similar particles.19 There is a desire for material sameness and belonging here, for some form of co-extensivity with the cosmos, which finds resonance in critical work on fantasy and psychoanalytic theories. Jackson argues that ‘fantasies try to reverse or rupture the process of ego formation which took place

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during the mirror stage, i.e. they attempt to re-enter the imaginary’, undoing any notion of the unified self and body (Jackson 1981, 90). In Freud’s thought, a comparable kind of undoing is represented by the ‘undifferentiation’ discussed earlier, achieved through a return to a previous state, most obviously the union with the mother, obliquely figured in Levi’s story as Memnone merges with the female body of his wife. We might also think of Freud’s discussion of the ‘oceanic feeling’: a sensation of ‘“eternity”, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded, as it were, “oceanic”’ (Freud 1961, 64). While unable to see this in himself, Freud interprets the feeling as potentially consolatory, since it means that ‘we cannot fall out of this world’ (1961, 65). Levi stated that he did feel Freud’s ‘oceanic feeling’, not in a religious sense but in terms of his relation to the cosmos (Greer 2001, 8). Yet in his fiction it seems that he wishes to preserve the individual, the narrative of the autonomous self. Memnone’s experiences prove that the coherence of the human body is such that it can hold together even when rendered diaphanous, at least unless it is overwhelmed by sexual union, an Ovidian sexual union depicting ‘passion where it combusts, or levitates, or mutates into an experience of the supernatural’. 20 The bodies considered in this chapter are both contained, in their hyphenated halves or distinct special parts, and uncontainable, as they spill over the boundaries of ‘natural’ categories to become something new. In stark contrast to the bodies and subjects considered in previous chapters, it appears that, with the exception of Leeb’s subjects who were the victims of a warped scientific experiment imposed on them by others, these beings cannot be reduced to bare life or nonlife. Similarly, their animalistic qualities are certainly not of the same ilk as the degrading, bestial characteristics enforced on prisoners in the Lager. Levi’s characters repeatedly merge with other phenomena, sometimes through their own desires, sometimes as a result of external interventions or internal spontaneous reactions. Their bodies are altered and seem to become polyvalent, as these doubled selves mingle together the individual’s constitutive parts—spirit, flesh, hormones, and experience, ego and id—with those of the other with which they merge and meld. Not only do Levi’s metamorphoses continue to undermine the dualistic Cartesian logic of the body/mind separation, but they also point to a vision of the embodied human self as a being still in the process of evolving. There are tensions here between the desire to affi rm individuality and the logical conclusion of a process of merging: the dissolution of autonomy. In turn, these tensions are complicated by the sense of oceanic oneness that emanates from certain stories. Here, recent work on posthumanism is helpful, in its attention to human bodies as one system among many others around it, which are both autonomous and radically interactive, ‘both open and closed as the very condition of the possibility for their existence (Wolfe 2010, xxiv). In this view, hybridity and mutation are necessary stages in the evolutionary existence of any species. As Clarke puts it,

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the discrete merger of separate systems into hybrid consortiums is the way the world works . . . Mythopoetic assemblages from the Sphinx to the Brundlefly to the construct offspring of humans and aliens convey images of the necessary hybridity—the multi-sidedness—of any form of identity. The neocybernetic posthuman joins with Archean evolution and premodern premonitions of bodily metamorphosis to observe that the noise and heterogeneity generated by the self-maintenance and selfreproduction of systems, starting with living systems, are the price of their ongoing existence as well as the cause of their eventual cessation or subsumption into posterior forms. (2008, 195) Yet, while Levi’s work certainly provides examples of hybrids, systemic mergers, and interspecial and intersexual shape-shifters, the human body remains recognizably a strong point of reference and does not dissolve into flux: even Memnone fi nds a fi nal ‘home’/Heim in his metaphorical return to the womb—the body of his wife. Far from narrating a return to the pullulating primordial soup of the clay from which life fi rst sprung, these stories trace our genealogy back to this mineral-rich mud, but look forward and sideways as they narrate hypothetical visions of the embodied human subject in relation to the world of nature and the cosmos. Recombining known elements to reveal what seemed previously to be hidden, these texts redraw the boundaries between self and all the others surrounding us. These bodies confuse chronology since they are both pre- and posthuman. Ultimately, however, these bodies endure, even if in altered form, both open and closed, and promise an alternative strand of bodily evolution to the technologized, rationalized bodies which Levi depicts as almost exclusively negative in their calcified rigidity.

Conclusions

My purpose in this book was to offer a reading of Levi’s work through the lens of his defi nition of the human being as the creator of containers, to explore human embodiment as an experience of negotiated containment, and to reflect on the significance of containers/containment for his thought more broadly. My approach has certainly been flexible, but the sustained, multi-stranded discourses on embodiment and containment I have identified have enabled me to suggest connections between Levi’s position on epistemological discourses, on language, on humanity and human instinct, on technology, on consciousness, and on the heuristic value of material embodiment. From the analyses gathered here, it transpires that bodies played a vital part in Levi’s imaginary, in his conception of the human subject as a thinking being, and in his understanding of humanity. There is not one narrative of embodiment but many, often consisting of contradictory, overlapping or divergent threads, which are frequently revealing of tensions and concerns within Levi’s thought. However, his work is characterized by a recurrent valorization of the link between mind and body, by an assertion, expressed both implicitly and explicitly, that autonomous, material embodiment is vital in order for human life to thrive. The body and the sense of existing through the soma rather than as Descartes’ res cogitans are constant points of reference in his reflections, whether it is a question of describing his house, how he moves between the disciplines of science and literature, or hypothesizing about the impact of computers on social interaction. Yet this materially located self is supplemented by a more immaterial self, the social self, or the reified unconscious, which Levi alternately dismisses and deliberately dramatizes in his work. The fi rst part of the book is concerned largely with lived experience and with identifying the range of circumstances in which containers are evoked in relation to the variety of modalities of embodiment Levi narrates. Here, the body is depicted as both a container and a tangle of energies, as constituted by and experienced through socio-cultural practices as much as by and through biological organs and sensations. It is also through the body that we experience the world, and therefore the boundaries of our somatic selves function as a vital meeting point of inner and outer dimensions of

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the self. In Levi’s writings, bodily boundaries are revealed to be moveable and subject to change, sometimes to protect the individual’s symbolic self and sense of humanity, as when the body becomes abject, sometimes allowing Levi to step between different parts of his divided chemist-author self. There is a desire for both continuing stability and change, for constancy tempered by multiplicity in these narratives, for some kind of protective container to remain even if perforated or made porous. In a related vein, his conceptions of the double, divided self, and of the conscious and unconscious aspects of language and knowledge, also hover between a privileging of the rational ‘I’ and the irrational, disruptive, or enriching aspects of itself that may emerge from within to disturb what is without, sometimes to allow the projection of alter egos outside the body, both distancing ourselves from and articulating difficult emotions. Given his experiences in the Lager, it is not surprising that Levi’s narratives of embodiment are haunted by spectres of negative or painful states, by examples of bare life as nonlife; the abjection of suffering bodies and the dullness of alienated bodies are themes that recur throughout his work, from testimonial writing to science fiction stories. Notably, these repeated depictions of traumatic embodiment are tempered by narratives of selfcreation (‘Il fabbro di se stesso’) and endurance (‘Autobiografia’), of an appreciation of the scars and traces of past troubles as borne by his house and, by extension, himself. These signs inscribed on the body or in the body are important markers from which we should learn in order to avoid further demolition of human subjects and subjectivity. Similarly, Levi’s science fiction writing reveals his concerns about how science and technology have the potential to reduce individuals to bare/nonlife. We also see how technology may intervene on our bodies and consciousnesses, mediating, manipulating, modifying, and managing our sense of embodiment. If the extension of the body into the world through prosthetic devices opened up the monadic container to the potential of civilization, it also threw open the way to create technologies that threaten to (re)absorb our bodies and selves in their rational rigidity. These science fiction ‘parables about ourselves’ urge us to valorize the human body, to retain our autonomy over it, to resist rationalization when we know that we are not fully rational beings. However, if in some of Levi’s texts the rationalization of humanity and the rigid containment of the body means denying the possibility of playfulness, spontaneity, and human feeling, there are also instances when our narratives of ‘civilization’ come into play to protect us. Contained within us, Levi suggests, are impulses that we cannot fully understand, from the influence of our unconscious selves to the substrate of violence that gnaws away within us, wishing to get out, the beast in the temple. It is here that negotiations of containment become vital, and the balance between too little and too much can unleash what Levi perceived as ‘barbarism’, or crush our individuality and freedom, reducing us to nonlife. It is against these concerns that the stories considered in Chapter 7 strike a more positive

166 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment note, although the somatic mergers and mutations proposed here are also, in some cases, ultimately metaphors for death. Therefore, perhaps the ideal of embodiment that haunts Levi’s work is ultimately unattainable. In this book I have drawn on the work of many different and diverse thinkers, not in a flourish of intellectual aggrandizement, but because I believe that this complex theoretical and critical framework enables an enriched analysis of Levi’s thought. His work reveals a familiarity with a vast range of schools of thought and critical concepts, and a wide-ranging interest in all manner of socio-cultural phenomena. I have sought to explore truncated dialogues in his writing, such as his relationship to Freudian psychoanalysis, and to bring his work into dialogue with that of other thinkers whose ideas have not previously been considered in relation to his work, such as Hayles or Scarry. The tensions between delimited, contained embodiment and more postmodern, discursive modalities of being in the world continue throughout his work and are almost never resolved into an ideal representation of full embodiment, as a ‘persona completa’ [complete person] (D, 62); instead, we are confronted with alienated subjects yearning poignantly for what they had but have lost, or resigning themselves to what seems to be an inevitable progressions towards nonlife. Hermetic containment remains a negative condition for Levi, whether in terms of epistemological traditions, the relationship between mind and body, or self and other. What emerges from these reflections is the recurrence of the container in Levi’s writing, in all the ambiguous variety suggested in the essay from which I take the concept, ‘Una bottiglia di sole’. Ultimately, the container functions as a transcendable limit, posited as a provisional barrier in times of need (the protective niche, shell, or shield; the defence against violent urges), necessary in some sense to preserve our narratives of a coherent self, even though this self is discursively constituted. It is a frontier that should always remain selectively open to infractions, extensions, and evolutions that do not threaten to dissolve or ultimately compromise the embodied self. These questions fi nd an echo not only in analyses of the interconnectedness of systems in recent discourses on posthumanism (Clarke 2008, 195), but also in Haraway’s reflections on what might qualify as an ‘individual’ in the era of postmodern unboundedness (1991b, 220). Drawing in particular on Dawkins’ notion of the Selfi sh Gene, Haraway concludes that, despite the epistemic fascination with porosity and interconnectedness, even in Dawkins’ work the notion of the individual being or organism endures: ‘organism’ and ‘individual’ have not disappeared; rather, they have been fully denaturalized. That is, they are ontologically contingent constructs from the point of view of the biologist, not just in the lose ravings of a cultural critic or feminist historian of science. (1991b, 220) Haraway makes two significant points here. First, she argues that it is possible to continue to speak of individuals despite their deconstruction or

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open-endedness, since they can be spoken of as constructs. We might see Levi’s depictions of the embodied self as functioning in this way, since the self endures, both despite and because of a radical interconnectedness with the world around it. Moreover, in Levi’s work the self seems to remain predominantly located in a single material body, even though that body may mutate. The second point that Haraway makes is to celebrate the cross-disciplinary correspondence of ideas, as cultural theory, fiction, and biology begin to speak the same language. Her parodic self-representation as a raving feminist is charged with connotations of disciplinary hierarchies and dismissive attitudes to non-canonical thought, evoking the two-cultures debates. Haraway’s support for cross- and inter-disciplinarity recalls Levi’s views on the importance of the disciplines entering into reciprocally informing dialogue with one another. Here, Haraway reveals that scientific discourses are increasingly forced to recognize their contingency and disavow their pretensions to transcendental objectivity, in ways that enrich both their own development and that of cultural discourses more broadly. In some sense, the interconnectedness between ‘scientific’ and ‘cultural’ analyses of the individual which Haraway identifies exemplifies Levi’s view that the distance between ‘science’ and the creative imagination is narrower than we are often led to believe. Ultimately, both strands of critical discourse can serve to enhance our understanding of human life and embodiment. Aside from a book about bodies, this is also a book about posthumanism, in the triple sense identified in the Introduction. Analysis has revealed the extent to which Levi was engaged with issues of posthumanism before contemporary theories were elaborated. His technologized posthumans are instrumentalized in his fiction to convey a cumulative warning about the risks of annexing ourselves to technical prostheses; however, he is also fascinated by the prosthetic extension of human beings into our environment and by the evolutionary developments to which this may have led, which he even celebrates. Postanthropocentric posthumans in his writing often stand to (re)affi rm the link between humans and nature as a powerful energizing connection that renews us and which we may in turn renew. Finally, in the more philosophical sense of the word, Levi does, as Druker argues, both valorize and criticize Enlightenment and humanist values. On the one hand, he remains convinced of the importance of scientific and technological innovation, and asserts the superiority of the human race, with the human form as the fulcrum of thought; on the other, he attacks teleological approaches to progress, differentiates between a belief in the value of ‘reason’ tout court and a belief in ‘ethical reason’, and posits interspecial metamorphosis as a potentially positive evolutionary development. Ultimately, the elements of Enlightenment and humanist thought that he recuperates are rehabilitated through their infusion with the kind of ethical reflection articulated in Levinas’ attention to the other. Significantly, the humanist privileging of human experience over religious beliefs leads in Levi’s work to an assertion that we are embodied, not transcendental

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beings, despite the aspects of the self that surpass the boundaries of the physical body. It also leads to a remarkable interest in how we inhabit our bodies, and an attention to the multiple manifestations of the self that are contained within or extend beyond the soma. What this book shows is how important and productive it can be to consider these three types of posthumanism alongside one another, as they inform, depart from, and overlap with one another. Finally, a further tendency that emerges in a fascinating way from Levi’s work is the non-conventionality of his position in relation to gendered debates on embodiment. While certain aspects of his depictions conform to received, gendered understandings of the relationship between the self and the body (women as reproductive vessels that have a special connection to nature; strong masculinity as represented by a hard body), others diverge in compelling, original ways. His own embodiment of masculinity departs from hegemonic models, striving for communion with nature and remaining unreliant on sexual prowess as a means of asserting domination. Second, modalities of embodiments marked by either hyper-technologized, reinforced exteriors or by fluidity and flux are not limited to specific genders, but may affect both men and women, avoiding dualistic conceptions of gender. Moreover, Levi even reveals a sporadic feminist sensibility, for example, to the ways in which some forms of science (associated with problematic post-Enlightenment, patriarchal positions) specifically exploit women. It is striking that despite the growing body of critical work on Levi, this aspect of his thought has, to date, received virtually no attention, just as his sustained explorations of embodiment have received only brief critical evaluation. Gallop has noted that, due to historically dismissive attitudes to female scholarship and the assumed authority of the male voice, while women who have written on the body have not always received due recognition, ‘men who do fi nd themselves in some way thinking through the body are more likely to be recognized as serious thinkers and heard’ (Gallop 1988, 7). However, in the case of Levi, unquestionably and universally recognized as a ‘serious thinker’, it is his work on the body and his position on gender that have not been ‘heard’, at least not in as great detail as other aspects of his writing. I hope that this book has rectified this to some extent and will ensure that the complex, challenging, and, at times, illuminatingly prescient depictions of embodiment that animate his work will now be more fully ‘audible’ to a broader community of readers and scholars.

Notes

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. Italo Calvino described Levi’s short stories as ‘fantabiological’ rather than science fi ction: letter dated 22 November 1961 in Calvino 2000, 695–96. 2. Cited in Rosenfeld 1980, vii. 3. Here I take inspiration from Lucie Benchouiha’s exploration of Levi’s later fiction as ‘re-writings’ of the Holocaust (2005). 4. While the Italian text of this essay was published in the collection Racconti e saggi, an English translation is included in the volume Other People’s Trades (19–23), a partial translation of L’altrui mestiere. 5. See Valabrega 1997 and Antonello 2005, Chapter 5, ‘La materia, la mano, l’esperimento: il centauro Primo Levi’. 6. See, for example, Farinelli 1995, 67, 77; Patruno 1995, 8–28; Philippe 2005; Carasso 2009, 44–53. 7. Examples of these analyses include Farinelli 1995; Segre 1997; Girelli-Carasi 1990. In a much-cited passage, Levi notes the discrepancy between terms such as ‘hunger’, ‘tiredness’, ‘fear’, and ‘pain’ used in everyday life by free individuals, and the extreme, hyperbolic manifestation of these sensations in the Lager, for which, he suggests, existing languages are inadequate (SQ I, 119–20; IM, 129). 8. Levi explains that this term was used to denote the weaker prisoner, destined for selection (SQ I, 84; IM, 94); see also Agamben’s chapter ‘The Muselmann’ (1999, 41–86) for a broader discussion of the term and its use. 9. On reification see Lukàcs 1968, especially 88–90. See also La Torre 1966, and Santagostino 2001, for discussions of reification in Levi’s work. 10. I share the objections raised by feminist scholars to the use of the word ‘man’ to indicate all of humanity, as though it were a neutral universal term, rather than one that specifically evokes the male (see, for example, Cavarero 2003, 43–44). However, Levi often uses the equivalent term ‘uomo’ to indicate humanity in a collective sense, and his translators have been faithful to this in their translations, which I cite in this book. I address the use of the word ‘man’ as a universal descriptor in more detail in due course. 11. These terms had already been employed to analyse the Holocaust, although not Levi’s works specifically, by Hannah Arendt (1958, 57). 12. ‘Così fu Auschwitz’, La Stampa, February 9, 1975; now in I, 1190–93 (1192).

170 Notes 13. Druker 2009, 40–49. He refers to Adorno and Horkheimer’s discussion of Ulysses’ artifice and ambiguity (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 43–80), as well as to Gabriele D’Annunzio’s poetic eulogy to Ulysses as a form of Nietzschean ‘superman’: ‘L’incontro di Ulisse’ (D’Annunzio 1984, 33). 14. The term ‘posthumanism’ only began to circulate in critical discourses in the mid-1990s, but the ideas it denotes can be traced back to earlier reflections on humanism and its legacies (Wolfe 2010, xii). 15. See, for example, Druker, 2009, 5; Farrell 2004. 16. Marco Belpoliti suggests that for Levi, all human beings are also constituted by an animal element (1997c, 189). 17. Scholarship that deflects attention away from the body includes work that privileges the ‘human image’ rather than an embodied state, relating this not to lived experience on Earth but to God, since humans are made in his likeness (Patterson 1999, 220–21). In contrast, Sander Gilman engages directly with how the legacies of the Holocaust have impacted on specifically Jewish experiences of embodiment, analysing the Jewish body as a signifier of ‘dangerous’ otherness (Gilman 1998, esp. 98–112). 18. Robert Gordon has identified productively some of the ways in which Levinas’ ethics resonate with Levi’s thought (2001, 18–19, 39–54). For Druker (2009), Levinas is one of the posthumanist thinkers whose work illuminates Levi’s position on Enlightenment thought. 19. For a discussion of how gender has been overlooked in critical engagements with accounts of the Holocaust, and why it is important to treat it seriously as an issue for analysis, see Horowitz 2000. 20. These criticisms relate to the use of psychoanalysis as a key to understanding the experience of Lager prisoners (SS II, 1056–57; DS, 64–65). For a rare (and brief) critical engagement with this aspect of Levi’s thinking, see Gordon 2001, 122. 21. See Grosz 1994, 22 and xii–xiii. She draws this image from the work of Jacques Lacan. See also the discussion in Lafrance 2010. 22. Cited in Denzin 1991, 32–33. 23. The risk of tracing a genealogy such as this is an inevitable reductiveness. As Rita Felski has pointed out, there is more than one modernism, and this is ‘only one of various possible stories’ (1995, 2). I certainly do not want to imply a monolithic model of modernist, or other conceptions of embodiment and this theoretical framework is not intended to be exhaustive; rather, different conceptions of the body have been included to show broad progressions in thought and for their relevance to Levi’s work. 24. Williams and Bendelow refer specifically to Douglas 1970, 65. 25. For a brief overview of thought on this issue see Howson 2005, 44. See also Williams and Bendelow 1998, 113–30, and Laqueur 1990. 26. First-wave cybernetics was particularly interested in determining whether machines could function like human beings. See Hayles 1999, 7. 27. Marshall 1994, 10. See also Ollman 1990 for a broader discussion of alienation. 28. For an account of the developments in posthumanist thought, and related discourses, see Wolfe 2010, especially xi–xxvi. 29. Latour 1993, 64; see also the discussion of Latour’s work in Clarke 2008, 47–54. 30. I am working from the actual transcript of Germaine Greer’s interview with Levi (Greer 1985), as well as from the published versions of it in English (Greer 2001) and Italian (Greer 1997). The published versions do differ somewhat from the transcript.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. Levi includes an extract from Darwin’s The Origin of the Species in La ricerca delle radici (RR II, 1383–87; SR 25–30). See also the discussion of Levi’s Darwinism in Belpoliti and Gordon 2007, 56–57. 2. Published translation at IM, 62. 3. See also Philippe (2005, 126), who describes Se questo è un uomo as ‘an essay in general anthropology’. 4. Antonello (2007) discusses Levi’s engagements with and defi nitions of humans as tool makers. 5. Recently, evidence has suggested that chimps may be able to plan for the future, which might result in some reclassification of the species (BBC 2009). 6. This is Angier’s translation of an excerpt from Levi’s unpublished manuscript Il doppio legame [The Double Bond] (Angier 2002, 685). 7. Published in the 1971 collection Vizio di forma. I discuss this story in Chapter 6. 8. Published translation at IM, 62. 9. Shakespeare, King Lear, Act III, Scene iv (1997, 279). 10. Unpublished interview with researchers from the University of Berna, Switzerland, 1976, now in Poli and Calcagno, 1992, 236. 11. On Levi’s relationship to his home see Gordon 2001a. Philip Roth expressed astonishment that Levi had ‘lived in the same apartment all his life’. He remarks, ‘I don’t personally know of another contemporary writer who has voluntarily remained over so many decades, intimately entangled and in such direct, unbroken contact with his immediate family, his birthplace, his region, the world of his forbears, and, particularly, with the local working environment’ (Roth 2001, 15). Levi’s essay ‘La mia casa’ is briefly discussed in Ferrucci 1990. 12. See Anzieu (1989) and the helpful summary of this theory in Lafrance 2010. 13. This phrase echoes his description of chemistry almost exactly: ‘La chimica è l’arte di separare, pesare e distinguere’ [chemistry is the art of separating, weighing and distinguishing] (AM II, 642; OPT, 175). 14. This is cited alongside the list of containers enumerated in ‘Una bottliglia di sole’ in Bartezzaghi (1997, 306–7), but the point is not developed. 15. This may be an allusion to Carl Jung’s location of the unconscious in the cellar. See Jung 2001 and Bachelard’s discussion of this (Bachelard 1994, 18–19). 16. Published translation at OPT, 158. 17. I have omitted the fi rst four lines. This English translation is cited in Webber 1996, 13–14. For the full German version see Heine 1993, 39. 18. Freud did not fully explore this tentative theory, and it was left to Melanie Klein to develop a more substantial account of projective identification. See Klein 1946. 19. My translation. The source German text reads, ‘Mir graust es, wenn ich sein Antlitz sehe /Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt’ (Heine 1993, 39). 20. For a discussion of Levi’s fascination with animals, and the potential bestial quality lurking within human beings, see Belpoliti 1997c, 159. 21. The story of Lilith relies on the lacuna in the Bible that fails to account for the fact that God appears to make humans twice; one on the sixth day, where he blesses the man and woman, and again after the seven days of creation, when he breathes life into Adam and creates Eve from Adam’s rib (Genesis II: 7–21).

172 Notes 22. Published translation at OPT, 99. 23. Similarly, Ahmed and Stacey note the ‘disembodying’ effects of structuralist and postructrualist thought that privilege language, not the material body (2001, 4).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1. This point is made by Druker 2009, 63–65. 2. Comments made during a discussion in Zurich in 1976, now in Poli and Calcagno 1992, 48. 3. The OED defi nes ‘inhuman’ as ‘Not having the qualities proper or natural to a human being; esp. destitute of natural kindness or pity; brutal, unfeeling, cruel’. Humanity is therefore associated with kindness and empathy (www. dictionary.oed.com). 4. For a discussion of shame in Levi’s testimonial works, see Boone 1999. Abjection features widely in testimonial literature about the Holocaust; see, for example, the abject body of Robert L. described by Marguerite Duras in La Douleur (1985). 5. For a discussion of the reduction of humans to animals in Levi’s work, see Santagostino 2004, 35–40. 6. This point is also made by Bernstein 2006, 40. 7. Lukàcs (1968) draws on Marx’s work to discuss the commodification of the worker in the industrial age, remarking on losses of subjective autonomy that resonate with the dehumanization of prisoners in the Lager. He describes how the ‘personality can do no more than look on helplessly while its own existence is reduced to an isolated particle and fed into an alien system’ (90). He also comments on enslavement across the centuries as preventing slaves from considering themselves as human beings (90), and on the ‘dehumanising function of the commodity relation’ (92). 8. In the interview with Greer, conducted in Italian, Levi uses the English word ‘husk’, which is translated into Italian as ‘guscio’ [shell], in Greer 1997, 75. 9. Klein was the fi rst psychoanalyst to develop theories of object relations. See Bronstein 2001. 10. Timothy Campbell considers this passage in a discussion of the localization of memory in Levi’s work, noting how here, memory is invested in objects ‘as a form of prosthesis or extension of the body’ (2005, 101). Campbell draws on Jean Piaget’s work to elaborate the point. 11. Boone (1999, 82) suggests that these flimsy barriers against the prisoners’ shame at their bodies and vulnerability may also evoke ‘the reader’s postHolocaust defences’; she argues that Levi wishes to cast doubt on the ‘thin armour’ of our conviction that we are safe and the threat of that historical moment has passed, when in reality we too may awake to fi nd ourselves similarly under threat in the future. 12. Langer (2001) discusses Levi’s accounts of this lack of solidarity in the Lager. 13. Published translation at DS, 1033. 14. Levi was by no means the only survivor to speak of these prisoners as somehow ‘non-human’; see for example Améry (1980, 9) and the discussion of the Muselmann in the work of writers such as Z. Ryn and S. Klodzinski in Agamben 1999, 41–48. 15. Indeed, Bernstein identifies a ‘tropic fascination with the Muselmann as the exemplary instance of the meaning of the Shoah’ as if only the dead could speak truly (Bernstein 2004, 2–3).

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16. For Chare, Agamben’s reflections are motivated by an anxiety that the limit figure of the Muselmann threatens ‘to close the gap between the human and the inhuman’, between the inhuman and language, on which our human state is predicated. This causes concern since ‘to successfully close this gap would be to do away with the dyad that grounds the dialectical process that founds the human’ (Chare 2006, 46). 17. In Santagostino’s analysis, Levi represents precisely this reduction of human life to inert matter, as part of a larger cycle of degradation and vivification (2004, 36–37). 18. Agamben is not alone in privileging language as the marker of humanity; for example, Sayre and Vacca discuss dehumanization and rehumanization in Levi’s work as hinging on manipulations of and access to language (2001, 115). 19. Politics, cited in Agamben 1998, 7. 20. As Sodi has noted, however, the ‘mongrel locutions’ of the Lagerdeutsch spoken in the camps served not to elucidate, but to distance the experiences of the camp from Italian syntax, life, and culture, allowing prisoners to retain some symbolic distance from their current experiences (Sodi 2001, 42–43). Hence the use of this lexicon would not necessarily enable the memberment of the self through language. 21. This is untranslated in the English text (IM, 149). 22. Heinemann shows how gender played a part in how women were treated, and impacted significantly on their possibilities of survival (1986, 14–15). 23. Similarly, hair functions as a marker of femininity as well as race in Paul Celan’s poem ‘Deathfuge’ which contrasts Margareta’s ‘golden hair’ with Shulamith’s ‘ashen hair’ (Celan, 1988, 60–63). As noted by Brian Cheyette (2007, 71), Levi included this poem in La ricerca delle radici and emphasized how much it meant to him: ‘lo porto in me come un innesto’ [I wear it inside me like a graft] (RR II, 1513; SR, 198). 24. The title of this poem, which means ‘Listen’, comes from the prayer in Deuteronomy (6: 4–9) that commands Jews to be monotheistic and to remember their God (Harrowitz 2007, 28–29). The second verse reflects on whether female prisoners were still ‘women’. 25. Inferno canto XXVI, 116–20. This translation is taken from Dante 1961, 327. Published translation at IM, 119. 26. Published translation at IM, 148. 27. See Heinemann (1986, 16) on female rape and prostitution in the camps. 28. Francesco Rosi’s fi lm adaptation of La tregua (1997) departs significantly from the text in several ways, including showing Levi and Flora making love in a cabin in the woods. Cheyette (2007, 73) suggests that the ‘passion’ of this encounter is instrumentalized by Rosi to confi rm a ‘specifically Italian masculinity’. However, as Cheyette implies and as I show in this chapter, while Levi may not have offered support to Flora, his gender identity certainly did not conform to the stereotype of masculinity as premised on sexual conquests of women.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1. See Kant 2007. Of course, while this is how Levi presents the issue, it constitutes a rather reductive interpretation of Kant’s position; for a more nuanced treatment of the complexities of his writings on the moral law, see Ameriks 2000, 190–233. 2. Francesca Poli, ‘Intervista a Primo Levi’, Il Quotidiano dei lavoratori, February 28, 1979. Now in Poli and Calcagno 1992, 129.

174

Notes

3. Published translation at C, 62. 4. Cited in Woolf 1984, 268. 5. It should be noted that this is a rather romanticized view of the table as the defi nitive key to the complexities of the universe. Discussing Levi’s work, the chemist Jean-Marie Lehn (Nobel Prize 1987) noted that Mendeleyev’s table continues to be supplemented by artificial elements as the basic bricks of known molecules may be amassed into new and unknown quantities that transcend their source materials (AAVV 2002, 298–99). 6. See Feyerabend 2000, 221–22; Harding 1986 and 1996; Haraway 1991a. These positions can be seen as developments of Heisenberg’s 1926 theory that demonstrates the impossibility of carrying out purely objective research. 7. This comment was made in the Appendix to the 1976 scholastic edition of the text, included in Woolf’s 1987 translation of If This Is a Man and The Truce, 382. 8. In a related vein, Lepschy and Lepschy note the tensions in Levi’s work between the need for precision and the impossibility of achieving this clarity, partly because of the ‘untranslatability’ of his experiences in the Lager (2007, 135). 9. Published translation at CP, 45. 10. Published translation at SR, 5. 11. This association of the autobiographical and the abject has been articulated by other writers. John Updike described writing his autobiography Self-Consciousness (1990) as ‘scab-picking’. See Prosser’s analysis of this (2001, 58). 12. Frank Fremont-Smith cited in Hayles 1999, 71. 13. Although not affi liated with the Oulipò group (the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) Levi’s work has been identified as displaying similar features to that of Georges Perec, in particular (Kiernan 1997). To hear Levi on palindromes see ‘Calore vorticoso’ [Extreme Heat] (L II, 100–3); for a discussion of portmanteau words see ‘L’aria congestionata’ [Crowded Air] (AM II, 663–68). 14. Cliff explores this issue, considering the ‘violence done to humanity through the violence done to language’ (2001, 105), focussing on the reifi cation of prisoners through the terms used to address them. However, he does not engage directly with issues of embodiment. 15. This might be compared to Calvino’s criticism of ‘anti-language’—a dehumanized, bureaucratic, and rigid form of expression that threatens to erode the ‘human’, humorous and emotional content of language (Calvino 1995, I, 154–59). 16. This was the 1959 Rede Lecture (Snow 1993). 17. Gramsci argued that homo faber cannot be separated from homo sapiens, and that the ‘new intellectual’ would dissolve the ‘aura’ of intellectual work and show that intellectuals could no longer remain apart as though ‘superior’ in some way, as well as overcoming epistemological schisms by moving between the realm of eloquence and practical life (1964 II, 6–7). 18. For a discussion of Il Politecnico, directed by Elio Vittorini, see Bonsaver 2001, 118–23, 137–45. 19. Italian responses to the lecture were articulated initially in numerous magazines and newspapers (including the Libri supplement of Paese Sera, Corriere della sera and Civiltà delle macchine), and later in anthologies of critical essays and longer studies (Preti 1968; Battistini 1977; Raimondi 1978; Petrucciani 1978). They ranged from arguments in favour of

Notes

20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

175

scientific integration into cultural consciousness to warnings that science itself lacked moral direction. See, for example, his article ‘Deportati. Anniversario’ [Deportees. Anniversary] that discusses how science was warped by the Nazis (I, 1113–15; fi rst published in Torino, 31/4 (April 1955), later in AV, and translated in BH, 3–5). See Cicioni 1995 for a sustained discussion of how bridges function in Levi’s writing. As critics have argued (Antonello 2005), Levi’s thought chimes with that of his contemporaries who were similarly intent on breaking down the stalemate opposition of literature and science; these include Calvino, who wrote in 1967 of a triangular ménage-à-trois consisting of literature, science, and philosophy, which could only rise to the challenges of contemporary culture if all three disciplines constantly called each other into question. See Calvino 1995 I, 193–94. Bakhtin cited in Holquist 1990, 14. For an analysis of how Gadda and Sinisgalli worked across and between the disciplines see Antonello 2005. Sergio Solmi was a critic, poet, translator and editor with an interest in science fiction. Levi knew Kafka’s work well and translated The Trial in 1983. This novel is one of Levi’s best known works in Italy and beyond, and has inspired much critical attention, including Cannon 1990, Pierantoni 1991, and Bareil 1997. Levi commented that his books came to him as twins: two on his experiences in the Lager followed by two collections of short stories. Il sistema periodico was alone, but he intended to give it a twin, in the unpublished manuscript Il doppio legame [The Double Bond]. However, he acknowledged that much of the material he might have put in this text found its way into La chiave a stella (I, 1453). As well as going against the grain of Levi’s school education, Wilson argues that the hybrid character of Il sistema periodico means it can be read as a subversive answer to the Holocaust’s attempt to impose a rigid logic (Wilson 1999, 71). In Il sistema periodico he writes, ‘A distanza di trent’anni, mi riesce difficile ricostruire quale sorta di esemplare umano corrispondesse, nel novembre 1944, al mio nome, o meglio al mio numero 174 517’ [At a distance of thirty years, I fi nd it difficult to reconstruct the sort of human being that corresponded, in November 1944, to my name, or better, to my number: 174 517] (SP I, 860; PT, 139). Unsurprisingly, Levi spoke out vehemently against the historical revisionism that has attempted to deny the Holocaust. See ‘Ma noi c’eravamo’, I, 1251–52, published in the Corriere della sera, January 3, 1979, translated in BH as ‘But We Were There’ (50–51); ‘Cercatori di menzogne per negare l’olocausto’, I, 1332–33, published in La Stampa, November 26, 1980, translated in BH as ‘Seekers of Lies to Deny the Holocaust’ (69–70). For brief analyses of Levi’s references to Tiresias, see Gordon 2001, 168, 201, 247. Published translation at W, 52. Ian Thomson notes that in 1979 Levi corresponded with Arieti, an Italian Jew who was then working in the Psychoanalytic Institute in New York (2002, 401–2). Thomson does not state which of Arieti’s works Levi had been reading, but it may have been Arieti’s award-winning Interpretation of Schizophrenia, which had been republished in 1974, or The Intropsychic Self (1976).

176 Notes NOTES TO THE FOREWORD 1. Levi did of course return to testimonial writing later, most notably in I sommersi e i salvati. 2. Barberis 1972 cited in I, 1442. 3. See the stories ‘L’intervista’ [The Interview] (RS II, 863–65; MM, 11–14) and ‘Le fans di spot di Delta Cep’ [The TV Fans from Delta Cep] (II, 1297–1300; TS, 143–47), published in L’astronomia, no. 54, April 1986. 4. He stated, ‘non ho mai creduto ai generi letterari’ [I have never believed in literary genres]. Letter to the author Roberto Vacca in Tuttolibri, II, no. 27, July 10, 1976, now in I, 1198. 5. D’Angeli 1966, cited in I, 1437. 6. Cited in Poli and Calcagno 1992, 116. 7. Interview with Gabriel Bertinetto, 1978, cited in Poli and Calcagno, 1992, 14–15. Benchouiha discusses this issue in her analysis of Storie naturali (2005, 50). 8. Although this meaning has been noted by critics, the implications have not been explored. See, for example, Dini and Jesurum 1992, whose discussion of the name and its meaning (Chapter 7, ‘Il buio oltre le parole’: 161–86) makes no attempt to tackle this evocation of the abject. 9. Levi uses the Freudian term Fehlleistungen and cites the Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Freud 1974). 10. C. S. Lewis, cited in Mei 1978, 348.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. Perhaps the best known science fiction dramatization of this concern is the computer Hal in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), loosely based on Arthur C. Clarke’s 1948 story ‘The Sentinel’ (Clarke 1991). 2. Extract from L’uomo futuro (1933), cited in Verdone 1986, 91. 3. Scarry 1985, 253. She also refers to Stephen Jay Gould’s discussions of the importance of posture and hand held implements in creating human life as we know it today. See ‘Posture Maketh the Man’, in Gould 1980, 207–13. 4. From the Preface to A. L. Cagliotti’s I due volti delle chimica [The Two Faces of Chemistry] (1979), in I, 1312–17 (1313); translated in BH, 121–25 (122). 5. See also Antonello (2007, 98), who draws on the work of Arendt to argue that Levi does not ‘denaturalize nature’. 6. Levi Montalcini was no relation but she also grew up in Turin and she and Levi knew one another. 7. See also the earlier story ‘Il sesto giorno’ [The Sixth Day] (SN II, 529–47; SD, 103–21), which narrates an alternative version of human evolution. These stories can be seen as in dialogue with Calvino’s Cosmicomiche (1965) which were inspired by Levi’s ‘Il sesto giorno’ (I, 1444). Levi then ‘borrowed’ Calvino’s narrator Qfwfq as inspiration for ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’, which is dedicated to Calvino. 8. This is exemplified by the futurist Marinetti’s Mafarka, the protagonist of Mafarka le futuriste (1909). As Barbara Spackman has analysed, Mafarka’s misogynistic, male preoductive fantasies culminate in his desire ‘to bypass the “vulva” and impregnate the “ovary” that is the male spirit’ (Spackman 1996, 53–54).

Notes

177

9. This resonance is briefly noted by Druker 2009, 130. 10. Published translation at W, 53. 11. For a discussion of the processes of degradation in Levi’s work, see Santagostino 2004, 23–40. 12. Tragically, Levi’s womb-like skin of a home was also the scene of his death. In ‘The Uncanny’, Freud also discusses the effectiveness in fiction of creating and sustaining uncannily ambiguous characters that are neither clearly human nor automata (Freud 1955, 227). 13. For accounts of the growing power of the multinational, see, for example, the well-known studies Klein 2000 and Monbiot 2000. 14. Published translations at TS, 86, 88. 15. Levi, cited in Poli and Calcagno 1992, 116. 16. Levi’s interest in the computerized composition of poetry in this play echoes that expressed by other Italian writers at the time; for example, Calvino discusses technologically mediated writing as the fruit of an automated literary machine that substitutes human powers of creation (Calvino 1995, I, 221). 17. Sally Hacker (1990, 164) documents how automation affects especially ‘lower level (female) management, and women workers in clerical positions’. Thus Levi was accurate in his depiction of the casualties of automation in the workplace. 18. Vartanian discusses how the Golem ‘which in sixteenth-century Yiddish folklore was envisaged as a beneficent servant of man, has spawned in our own time a numerous progeny of “mechanical creatures” about whose intentions we are far less confident’ (Vartanian 1973, 146). Massimo Lollini’s essay ‘Golem’ notes how Levi’s depictions of Golems include both figures clearly inspired by Jewish legend and a mechanical Golem, his computer (Lollini 1997, 350). 19. See the chapter ‘Golem’, in Mattioda 1998, 79–89 (80). 20. Lollini discusses this connection (1997). 21. In Marge Piercy’s Body of Glass (1992) dedicated to Levi’s memory, the parallel narrative tells the stories of Joseph, a Golem created in 1600s Prague by the Rabbi Judah Loew, and Yod, a cyborg created in a futuristic time to fight against a dehumanizing technological rule of fear and oppression. Both storylines focus on the fraught issue of sexual relations between organic humans and their created likenesses. 22. Published translation at OPT, 192, 195 23. Published translation at TS, 195.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1. See Taylor 1916, and on Ford, see, for example, Dupont 1964. 2. Marcuse’s text was fi rst published in 1964. The European Recovery Plan or Marshall Plan was named after George Marshall, U.S. Secretary of State in 1947. See Ginsborg 1990 (78–79 and 157–60), for a discussion of how this fi nancial injection influenced Italian life and culture. 3. De Melis 1997, 192. For accounts of Levi’s experience of translating Il processo, commissioned by Giulio Einaudi as the initial text in a series of ‘scrittori tradotti da scrittori’ [writers translated by writers], see II, 1586–87; ‘Tradurre Kafka’ [Translating Kafka] (RS II, 939–41; MM, 126–30); and his interview with Greer, in which he admits that upon fi nishing the translation he fell into a six-month long depression (Greer 2001, 10).

178 Notes 4. This article was fi rst published in Notiziario Banca Popolare di Sondrio, no. 33, December 1983. Levi cites from Leopardi’s Canti: ‘Al gener nostro il fato/ non donò che il morire. Omai disprezza / te, la natura, il brutto / poter che, ascoso, a comun danno impera / e l’infi nita vanità del tutto’ (Leopardi 1978, 593). 5. See, for example, Rifkin, with Howard (1980), which examines the implications of entropy beyond the narrow confi nes of physics, in the everyday world; Harris (2000), also deals with entropy as ‘a fact of life’. 6. Levi alludes to the fact that despite being used since the late eighteenth century, Watt’s regulating cycle was only fully recognized and theorized as the ‘feedback loop’ in the twentieth century, in the 1930s and 1940s. Hayles explains that ‘the feedback loop was explicitly theorized as a flow of information’ which led to the birth of cybernetics when nineteenth-century theories of control were merged with new theories of information flow (Hayles 1999, 8). Thus Levi’s juxtaposition of machines and humans in this article can be read as an allusion to the beginnings of cybernetic theory. For a full history of the development of the feedback loop, see Mayr 1970. 7. Marcuse cited in Berman 1988, 28. 8. In La Stampa, December 2, 1986; in II, 1309. 9. Miller reports that female infanticide in Northern India was traditionally openly admitted by locals as common practice until outlawed by British intervention in 1870 (1981, 49). European cultures have also historically privileged and desired male children over female children. 10. IVF was developed in the UK by Doctors Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards, and the fi rst ‘test-tube’ baby was born in 1978, seven years after Levi published ‘I sintetici’. See Van Dyck 1995, 61–86. 11. See Spackman 1996 for an analysis of Fascist ideals of masculinity. 12. These points are expanded in her discussion of the story ‘Un lungo duello’ [A Long Duel] (AM II, 831–36; OPT, 52–58) in Angier, 2002, 56–67 and 106–11. 13. Journalistic accounts include Derbyshire 2001. The term ‘reprogenetic technologies’ is used by Silver, who also devotes space to the issue of the ‘designer child’ (1997, 266–80). 14. Hayles shows how cybernetic theory is premised on the separation of body and mind, and how information is disembodied through a process of somatic suppression and elision (1999, 1–13); she also provides an account of the selfreplication of cybernetic machines (1999, 140–43). 15. This story was published in La Stampa, June 21, 1981. 16. Levi also explores the theme of an appointed time of death in the story ‘A tempo debito’ [At the Appointed Time], published in the same year in the collection Lilìt (II, 131–35). Here, the protagonist is visited by his future assassin and asked to pay a mafiaesque cautionary sum to ensure a pain-free demise when the time comes. This story has obvious resonances with Kafka’s The Trial. 17. On the bureaucracy see Weber 1978 (II), Chapter XI. 18. See Jaggar and Bordo 1992, and Harding 1986 and 1996 for a feminist critique of Enlightenment rationality and scientific objectivity, and an elaboration of feminist epistemology. 19. See especially the chapter ‘Elements of Anti-Semitism’ in Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 168–208. This section was added to the original text in 1947. This point resonates with arguments made by Druker 2009, although he does not discuss this text. 20. First published in 1872. For more details about the composition of Levi’s text see the note at I, 1443.

Notes

179

21. Calvino 1983. See Antonello’s analysis of this (1998).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1. See Hayles’ discussion of loose and close couplings in cybernetics (1999, 108–12). 2. The title of the fairy tale in Italian is much closer to Levi’s reworking of it: ‘La bella addormentata nel bosco’ [Lit. The Beauty Asleep in the Woods]. It was recorded on June 16, 1961. See the note at I, 1437. 3. See the discussion of Marcuse’s view in Miller and Rose 1997, 6. 4. When the Italian Dr Severino Antinori attempted to establish a research centre for experiments into human cloning in the UK (which were banned in Italy), the British government implemented emergency legislation to prevent this; see BBC 2001 and the ‘Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001’. 5. Levi makes just this association in describing his early chemistry experiments as ‘il confronto con la Materia-Mater, con la madre nemica’ [the confrontation with Mother-matter, with the enemy mother] (SP I, 771; PT, 38). 6. However, many of Asimov’s short stories were available in Italian translation in science fiction magazines and anthologies; for example, the stories ‘Nightfall’ (1941) and ‘The Last Question’ (1956; now in Asimov 1973 and 1973a, respectively), translated as ‘Cade la notte’ and ‘L’ultima domanda’, were included in a 1962 anthology Fantascienza: terrore o verità?, edited by Roberta Ramelli and Andrea Canal. Levi was familiar with such anthologies and his own work appeared in similar publications: ‘Cladonia rapida’ (SN I, 442–46) appeared in the anthology Interplanet, vol. 6, 1965: 143–48. 7. Originally published in 1938, and reprinted in several anthologies. 8. There is one further story in the series, ‘Pieno impiego’ [Full Employment] (SN I, 517–28; SD, 91–102) which deals with a device enabling communication with, the training and the exploitation of animals. 9. For a discussion of the ways in which women’s appearance determines their worth in the world, see, for example, Wolf 1990. 10. In Body of Glass (1992), Piercy describes ‘stimmies’, a version of Huxley’s ‘feelies’ (1994), in which the viewer experiences the protagonist’s sensations, comparable to this form of virtual reality. 11. This is drawn from Ecclesiastes 1: 18. 12. See Scott Sørensen 2001. See also Piercy (1992, 71), for her vision of futuristic engagements with cyberspace. 13. Hacker (1990, 121), explores this issue, citing from Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man: ‘True knowledge and reason demand domination over—if not liberation from—the senses . . . The link between reason and sexuality or eroticism is broken; scientific rationality dominates. As nature is scientifically comprehended and mastered . . . the rational hierarchy merges with the social one’. 14. Echoes of the knall can be found in a new ‘stun’ laser which operates from up to 2 km away and ‘could change the way the military and law enforcement authorities deal with civil disturbances’ (Hambling 2002). Fear induced by increased police capacity to violently stun individuals from such a range may well have an adverse affect on non-violent civilian protest, just as the threat of the knall alters social behaviour. 15. See also the discussion of Goffman’s work on this issue in Williams and Bendelow 1998, 55–61.

180

Notes

16. This is included in the 1997 collection Conversazioni e interviste; also in VM 70–71.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1. For a discussion of posthumanism that does not involve technology, see Callus and Herbrechter 2007, who refer to Heidegger’s work on techn ē and poi ē sis, as well as to Dante’s concept of ‘transumanar’, to go beyond the human. 2. Neil Badmington (2000, 9) makes this argument, drawing on the work of Derrida. A similar point is made by Rutsky (2007, 107), and Wolfe (2010, xv). 3. These collections also include material that was written and published earlier, in newspapers and magazine. For example, L’altrui mestiere includes material dating from 1964 to 1984 (II, 1554–57). 4. Marco Belpoliti has chronicled the vast array of animals that populate Levi’s work (1997c). 5. First published in Spanish in 1957 as the Manual di zoologìa fantastica, by Borges and Margarita Guerrero, this was translated into English, in revised form in 1969, as The Book of Imaginary Beings (New York: Dutton), and into Italian in 1979 by F. Lucentini as Manuale di zoologia fantastica (Turin: Einaudi). 6. This is a reference to Huxley’s essay ‘Sermons in Cats’ (1949). Huxley wrote, ‘Primitive people, like children and animals, are simply civilized people with the lid off, so to speak—the heavy, elaborate lid of manners, conventions, traditions of thought and feeling beneath which each one of us passes his or her existence’ (260). Levi passes over in silence the problematic implications of classing ‘primitive people’ with children and animals. 7. AM II, 793; OPT, 18. Samsa is the protagonist of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ (1949). In the Penguin translation, the German term ‘Ungeziefer’ has been rendered as ‘insect.’ 8. For Levi’s discussion of portmanteau words see ‘L’aria congestionata’ (AM II, 663–68). 9. Halyes 1999, 16. She is discussing Wolfe’s 1952 novel Limbo. 10. See Dante’s Purgatory X, 124–26 (1961a, 136–37). 11. For a discussion of ‘Angelica farfalla’ see Ross 2007, 107, and Klein 1990. 12. For a discussion of Jason’s autarkical aspirations see Spackman 1996, 54. 13. Hayles identifies and analyses this hybrid form in Wolfe’s work (1999, 123). 14. ‘Argilla da Adamo’ published in La Stampa, 15 February 1987, in II, 1328–31; translated as ‘Adam’s Clay’ in MM, 185–90. 15. See Deleuze and Guattari 1996, 149–66. 16. Genesis 9: 1. See Greenberg 2001, 110. I am grateful to Gemma Briggs for this reference, which she discusses in her doctoral research. 17. In this, it stands in contrast to Deleuze and Guattari’s body without organs, which tends towards fluid ‘flows’ rather than a substantial materiality (1996, 162). 18. This fragment comes from the Purifications, which depicts the soul as enduring ‘through diverse forms of living beings’ (Lambridis 1976, 131). 19. Similarly, the story recalls Leibniz’s theory of the monad, the indissoluble, ‘real atoms of nature’ of which all things are made (Leibniz 1991, 3), so that in all matter, throughout the universe, there is life and soul (Leibniz 1991, 66–69). 20. Ted Hughes cited in Warner 2002, 9.

Bibliography

WORKS BY PRIMO LEVI

(a) Collected Works 1997. Primo Levi. Opere. Edited by Marco Belpoliti. 2 vols. Turin: Einaudi.

(b) Published Works 1958. Se questo è un uomo. Turin: Einaudi. Translated by Stuart Woolf, If This Is a Man and The Truce (London: Abacus, 1987). First published in 1947. 1963. La tregua. Turin: Einaudi. Translated by Stuart Woolf, If This Is a Man and The Truce (London: Abacus, 1987). 1965. Cladonia rapida. In Interplanet, vol. 6, edited by Gianfranco De Turris: 143–48. 1966. Storie naturali. Turin: Einaudi [until 1979 published under the pseudonym of Damiano Malabaila]. Partial translation by Raymond Rosenthal, The Sixth Day (London: Abacus, 1998). 1971. Vizio di forma. Turin: Einaudi. Partial translation by Raymond Rosenthal, The Sixth Day (London: Abacus, 1998). 1975. Il sistema periodico. Turin: Einaudi. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal, The Periodic Table (London: Abacus, 1985). 1978. La chiave a stella. Turin: Einaudi. Translated by William Weaver, The Wrench (London: Abacus, 1995). 1981. Lilít e altri racconti. Turin: Einaudi. Partial translation by Ruth Feldman, Moments of Reprieve (London: Abacus, 1997). Partial translation including previously untranslated tales from Storie naturali and Vizio di forma, Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli, A Tranquil Star (London: Penguin, 2007). 1981. La ricerca delle radici. Turin: Einaudi. Translated by Peter Forbes, The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001). 1984. Ad ora incerta. Milan: Garzanti. Translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann, Collected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1988). 1985. L’altrui mestiere. Turin: Einaudi. Partial translation by Raymond Rosenthal, Other People’s Trades (London: Abacus, 1991). 1986. I sommersi e i salvati. Turin: Einaudi. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal, The Drowned and the Saved (London: Michael Joseph, 1988).

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(c) Interviews Belpoliti, Marco, ed. 1997. Primo Levi: conversazioni e interviste. Turin: Einaudi. Revised, translated, and edited by Marco Belpoliti and Robert S. C. Gordon, The Voice of Memory: Interviews 1961–87. Primo Levi (Cambridge: Polity, 2001). Camon, Ferdinando. 1991. Conversazione con Primo Levi. Milan: Garzanti. Translated by John Shepley, Conversations with Primo Levi (Vermont: Marlboro Press, 1989). Levi, Primo and Tullio Regge. 1984. Dialogo. Turin: Einaudi. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal, Conversations (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989). Poli, Gabriella and Giorgio Calcagno, eds. 1992. Echi di una voce perduta: incontri, interviste e conversazioni con Primo Levi. Milan: Mursia.

(d) Translations Kafka, Franz. 1983. Il processo. Translated by Primo Levi. Turin: Einaudi. Originally published as Der Prozess (Berlin: Verlag Die Schmiede, 1925).

OTHER WORKS AAVV. 2002. Table ronde et discussion. In Primo Levi: le double lien, edited by Walter Geerts and Jean Samuel, 291–324. Paris: Ramsay. AAVV. 1938. Manifesto degli scienziati razzisti. Giornale d’Italia, July 15, 1938. http://www.cronologia.it/mondo23i.htm (Accessed April 9, 2010). Adorno, Theodor W. 1973. The Jargon of Authenticity. Translated by Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. . 2003. Can One Live After Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, translated by Rodney Livingstone et al. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer. 1997. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. New York: Verso. Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. . 1999. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. New York: Zone Books. Ahmed, Sara and Jackie Stacey. 2001. Dermographia. In Thinking Through the Skin, edited by Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey, 1–18. Routledge: London and New York. Alighieri, Dante. 1961. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. I, Inferno. Translated and with a commentary by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press. . 1961a. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. II, Purgatorio. Translated and with a commentary by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Index

A abjection, 12, 71, 91, 92, 126, 151, 153, 165, 174n11, 176n8 in the Lager, 18, 41–45, 48, 50, 52, 53, 57, 59, 60, 62, 172n4 and technology, 99, 104, 107, 111, 141. See also disembodiment, dismemberment Adorno, Theodor W., 9, 34, 44, 51, 72, 75 and Max Horkheimer, 6, 7, 11, 31, 44, 99, 107, 116, 125, 140, 142, 144, 170n13, 178n19 Agamben, Giorgio, xi, 5–6, 49–53, 169n8, 172n14, 173nn16, 18, 19 Ahmed, Sara, and Jackie Stacey, 172n23 alienation from one’s surroundings, 2, 12, 35, 129, 135, 170n27 from oneself, 7, 89, 149, 166 from the body, 13, 20, 28, 59, 100, 127, 130, 131, 138, 141, 147, 165 and technology, 8, 15, 16, 19, 82, 104, 111, 116, 123, 124, 148 and language, see language See also reification, dehumanization Alighieri, Dante, 55, 77, 152, 153, 154, 160, 173n25, 180nn1, 10 Ameriks, Karl, 173n1 Améry, Jean, 76–77, 172n14 Amsallem, Daniela, 6, 69 Anderson, Linda, 83 Andreoli, Aurelio, 11 Angier, Carole, 25, 103, 120–21, 171n6, 178n12 Antonello, Pierpaolo, 64, 73, 169n5, 171n4, 175nn22, 24, 176n5, 179n21

anthropocentrism, 8, 71, pre-anthropocentrism, 160 postanthropocentrism, 7, 8, 19, 20, 148, 152, 155, 158, 167. See also posthumanism anthropology, 3, 5, 24–26, 31, 94–96 anthropomorphism, 8, 94, 96, 98–106, 127, 148 anti-Semitism, 6, 9, 54, 55, 73, 74, 120, 153, 170n17, 189n19. See also Jewishness, Judaism. Anzieu, Didier, 27, 32, 70, 171n12 Arendt, Hannah, 25, 42–43, 46, 50–53, 169n11, 176n5 Arieti, Silvano, 84, 175n33 Aristotle, 6, 52 Armstrong, Tim, 13, 15, 38, 103 Asimov, Isaac, 132, 136, 179n6 Athanasiou, Athena, 44 autobiography in Levi’s texts, 17, 18, 19, 61, 63, 75, 79–81 and the body, 63, 69, 159 and the unconscious, 80–81, 83 and abjection, 70–71, 174n11 Rita Levi Montalcini and, 99

B Bachelard, Gaston, 30, 32, 141, 171n15 Badmington, Neil, 180n2 Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 13, 76, 175n23 barbarism, 38, 41, 52, 92, 107, 140, 165 Barberis, Alfredo, 176n2 bare life, 5, 6, 49–54, 70, 72, 113, 115, 133, 136, 137, 138, 144, 162, 165. See also nonlife, zoē Bareil, Jean-Pierre, 175n26

198

Index

Bartezzaghi, Stefano, 171n14 Barthes, Roland, 17 Battersby, Christine, 33, 35, 40, 76 Battistini, Andrea, 174n19 Baudrillard, Jean, 13, 37, 136–37 BBC, 171n5, 179n4 Beer, Gillian, 70, 71 Belpoliti, Marco, 1, 24, 150, 151, 170n16, 171nn1, 20, 180n4 Benchouiha, Lucie, 169n3, 176n7 Bendelow, Gillian, see Williams, Simon J. Benjamin, Walter, 137 Berman, Marshall, 13, 15, 115, 116, 178n7 Bernstein, J. M., 51–53, 122, 137, 138, 172nn6, 15 Bernstein, Jeremy, 111 Bertone, Giorgio, 2 Birkett, Ian, 13, 39, 45, 49, 62 bios, 5, 6, 18, 40, 49–53, 61, 113, 133. See also zoē body in relation to machines/technology, 10, 13, 15, 16, 19, 44, 52, 93–147, 148, 149, 170n26, 177n16, 178nn6, 14 and postmodernism, 10, 13, 18, 20, 24, 27, 33, 35, 39–40, 49, 70, 77, 147, 148, 166 social, socially conditioned/constructed, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 25, 31, 38, 39, 42, 47, 49, 51–53, 54, 92, 135, 137, 139–40, 143–45 (see also gender) biopolitical, 6, 20, 50, 107, 115, 139 carnivalesque, 13 hard, 14, 28, 43, 45, 48, 143, 147, 158, 161, 168 leaky, 11, 14, 48, 117, 158 cyborg, 1, 16, 17, 117, 118, 121, 135, 139, 157, 177n21 (see also posthumanism) and Jewishness, 170n17. See also embodiment Bordo, Susan, 11. See also Jaggar, Alison Bonsaver, Guido, 174n18 Boone, Susan L., 172nn4, 11 Borges, Jorge L., 25, 26, 150, 180n5 Borri, Giancarlo, 73 Bragg, William, 161 Braidotti, Rosi, 71, 104, 121–22, 137 bridges, 75–76, 80, 90, 175n21

Briggs, Gemma, 180n16 Bronstein, Catalina, 172n9 Bukatman, Scott, 157 Butler, Judith, 13, 135, 143 Butler, Samuel, 113, 125–26 butterflies, 60–61, 70, 150–54, 161

C Cagliotti, A. L., 176n4 Cairns-Smith, Alexander Graham, 156 Callus, Ivan, and Stefan Herbrechter, 180n1 Calvino, Italo, 91, 96, 99, 129, 169n1, 174n15, 175n22, 176n7, 177n16, 179n21 Canal, Andrea, see Ramelli, Roberta Cannon, JoAnn, 175n26 Campbell, Timothy C., 172n10 Camon, Ferdinando, 79 Carasso, Françoise, 169n6 Cartesianism, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 33, 36, 39, 45, 48, 49, 55, 62, 75, 77, 127, 130, 155, 162 anti-Cartesianism, 12, 62, 64. See also Descartes, René Caronia, Antonio, 153 Cavarero, Adriana, 169n10 Cases, Cesare, 98 Celan, Paul, 173n23 centaur, 12, 36, 38, 39, 40, 77, 81, 83, 150, 151, 156, 169n5. See also Levi, Primo, ‘Quaestio di centauris’ chaos within the self, 28, 39, 73, 110, 111, 125 and order, 66, 67, 69 and technology, 106 theory, 33 Chare, Nicholas, 51–52, 173n16 Cheyette, Brian, 173nn23, 28 Chicco Vitzizzai, Elisabetta, 82 Cicioni, Mirna, 89, 175n21 civilization, 29, 90, 92, 96, 150, 165, 180n6 and the body, 13, 15, 31, 34, 50, 62, 64, 97, 151 and the Enlightenment subject, 31, 38, 43, 44, 49 and industry, 93, 100, 102, 142 Clarke, Arthur C., 110, 176n1 Clarke, Bruce, 80, 81, 162–63, 166, 170n29

Index Cliff, Brian, 174n14 cloning, human, 1, 130, 134–37, 139, 179n4 cognitive theory, 10, 11, 12, 27, 63 Croce, Benedetto, 74–75 cryogenics, 133 Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan Jr., 105 cybernetics, 10, 17, 89, 114, 118, 132, 178n14, 179n1 First wave, 14, 16, 109, 170n26, 178n6 Second wave, 129 Third wave, 138 neocybernetics, 163 and autopoesis, 121 cyberspace, 179n12. See also virtual reality. cyborg. See body, posthumanism

D Darwin, Charles, 15, 23, 33, 71, 95, 96, 171n1 D’Angeli, Gabriella, 176n5 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 170n13 Dawkins, Richard, 137, 166 De Melis, Federico, 116, 177n3 De Rienzo, Giorgio, and Ernesto Gagliano, 38, 69, 74 dehumanization, 1 in the Lager, 2, 18, 29, 42–49, 54, 150, 172n7 and technology, 82, 105, 114, 121, 124, 127, 177n21 and language, see language. See also reification, abjection, dismemberment, disembodiment Del Rey, Lester, 136 Del Giudice, Daniele, 151–52 Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, 157, 180nn15, 17 Denzin, Norman K., 170n22 Derbyshire, D., 178n13 Derrida, Jacques, 75, 180n2 Descartes, René, 4, 10, 11, 15, 45, 62, 117, 137, 152, 164. See also Cartesianism di Caro, Roberto, 69, 71 Dini, Massimo and Stefano Jesurum, 176n8 Douglas, Mary, 13, 27, 39, 46–47, 170n24 disembodiment. 1, 6, 10, 78, 172n23 in the Lager, 12, 42, 43, 47, 48, 59, 61, 72

199

and technology, 13, 100, 111, 121, 127, 130, 138, 139, 144, 147, 148, 178n14 and the Enlightenment subject, 9, 17, 62 emptying of body, 15, 43–47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 60, 61, 72, 103. See also reification, dehumanization, abjection, dismemberment, embodiment dismemberment, 51–53, 60, 121–22. See also dehumanization, abjection, disembodiment Doppelgänger, 12, 36–37, 69, 78, 158 Druker, Jonathan, 6–8, 55–56, 84–85, 167, 170nn13, 15, 18, 172n1, 177n9, 178n19 Dupont, Chandler, 177n1 Duras, Marguerite, 172n4

E Eaglestone, Robert, 5, 10, 97 embodiment definitions of, 1–2 critical theories of, 9–18 as a challenge to Enlightenment thought, 8, 84–85 and cognition, 7, 11–12, 62–88. See also disembodiment, body Emerson, Carol, see Morson, Gary Saul Engels, Friedrich, 95–96, 100 Enlightenment, 42, 56, 75, 76, 116, 125, 148, 157, 167, 170n18 as totalitarian, 6 Levi’s position on, 6–8, 38, 97, 99, 130 and the body, 9, 11, 14, 31, 39, 43, 44, 49, 50, 51, 55, 84 post-Enlightenment thought, 6–8, 17, 49, 114, 125, 130, 137, 146, 167–68, 178n18. See also Humanism entropy, 71, 117, 127, 178n5 ethics responsibility to others, 4, 9, 41, 43, 45, 49, 51, 56, 85 (see also Levinas, Emmanuel) and reflection, 5 and reason, 6, 129, 167 and the self, 129 and science/technology, 16, 75, 79, 113, 116, 119, 121, 122, 132, 146, 153 and science fiction, 90, 92

200 Index and Enlightenment, 56 and language, see language eugenics, 118–128, 145

F Fadini, Edoardo, 12, 77, 78, 90, 91 Farinelli, Giuseppe, 169n6, 7 Farrell, Joseph, 6, 170n15 Fascism, 6, 56, 73, 120, 144, 158 and ideals of dominant masculinity, 7, 10, 120, 178n11 feedback loops, 117, 178n6 Felski, Rita, 170n23 femininity, 54–57, 104, 109, 138, 161, 173n23. See also gender Ferme, Valerio, 62 Ferrero, Ernesto, 69 Ferrucci, Franco, 171n11 Feyerabend, Paul, 174n6 Figueroa-Sarriera, Heidi J., 122 Fiore, Quentin, see McLuhan, Marshall Foucault, Michel, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 25, 30, 51, 67–68, 131, 139 Fremont-Smith, Frank, 174n12 Freud, Sigmund, 4, 10, 115, 166, 176n9 and ‘The Uncanny’, 37, 103, 151, 177n12 and the bodily ego, 12 and the split subject, 12, 36, 37, 69, 80, 91 and prosthetic enlargement, 31, 97, 111, 158 and the home (Heim), 32, 36, 103, 163 on psychoanalysis and chemistry, 67–68 and animism, 94 and undifferentiation, 156, 162 and projective identification, 171n18 on the instinct towards perfection, 156, 158 Friedan, Betty, 134 future ability to think about, 3, 23, 26, 42, 60, 65, 89, 92, 116, 128, 146, 171n5 as (un)knowable, 65, 92 as dystopia, 4, 15, 90, 104, 107–8, 116, 122, 172n11 (see also science fiction) and human development/ embodiment, 3, 19, 89–92, 93, 96, 127, 133, 141, 142, 148

and hope, 128, 146, 156, 158 Futurism, 95, 106, 108, 120, 176n8. See also Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, and Ginna, Arnaldo

G Gadda, Carlo Emilio, 77, 93, 94, 100, 175n24 Gagliano, Ernesto, see De Rienzo, Giorgio Gallop, Jane, 17, 60, 168 gender as normative, social construction, 10 and embodiment, 14, 42, 158, 161, 168 and the Holocaust, 10, 18, 54–61, 170n19, 173n22, 28 and technology/ science, 20, 106, 109, 126, 132, 135–39, 143, 145 and injustice, 119, 126. See also masculinity, femininity German language, xi, 43, 52 German laboratory assistants, 54, 57–59 German soldiers, 60 Germany, as a setting for Levi’s fiction, 90, 153 Gershenfeld, Neil, 128 Gilman, Sander L., 170n17 Ginna, Arnaldo, 95 Ginsborg, Paul, 177n2 Girelli-Carasi, Fabio, 169n7 golem, 108–11, 177nn18, 19, 21. See also Levi, Primo, ‘Il servo’ and ‘Lo scriba’ Goffman, Erving, 140, 179n15 Gordon, Robert S. C., 6, 24, 34, 49, 98, 153, 170nn18, 20, 171nn1, 11, 175n31 Gould, Stephen J., 176n3 Gozzi, Alberto, 76 Gramsci, Antonio, 74, 174n17 Grassano, Giuseppe, 67, 74, 82, 92 Greenberg, Irving, 157, 180n16 Greer, Germaine, 17, 64–66, 67, 70, 81, 162, 170n30, 172n8, 177n3 Grosz, Elizabeth, 44, 63, 68, 126–27, 170n21 Guattari, Félix, see Deleuze, Gilles Guiducci, Roberto, see Vincenti, Fiora

H Hacker, Sally L., 177n17, 179n13

Index hair, 42, 46, 54, 137, 173n23 hand, 5, 41, 69 and prosthetic extension, 2, 94–96 (see also prosthetic extension) as cognitive instrument, 5, 64, 74, 79, 83, 92, 155, 173n3 Hambling, David, 179n14 Haraway, Donna J., 16, 17, 95, 105, 117–18, 121, 135, 139, 140, 145, 166–67, 174n6 Harding, Sandra, 80–81, 174n6, 178n18 Harris, Anthony, 178n5 Harrowitz, Nancy, 173n24 Hartman, Geoffrey, 51 Hayles, N. Katherine, 4, 15–17, 63, 78, 109, 114, 117–18, 121, 122, 129, 138, 147, 166, 170n26, 174n12, 178nn6, 14, 179n1, 180n13 Heidegger, Martin, 14, 95, 180n1 Heine, Heinrich, 36–37, 171nn17, 19 Heinemann, Marlene, E., 10, 173nn22, 27 Heinlein, Robert A., 91 Herbrechter, Stefan, see Callus, Ivan Hollinger, Veronica, 136 Holocaust, 126, 169nn3, 11, 170nn17, 19, 172n4, 175n28 as a problematic term, xi witnessing the, 1, 2, 3, 50, 89 revisionism, 175n30 and Enlightenment thought, 6–7, 116 post-Holocaust humanity, 9–10, 157, 172n11 and science, 75 home, 140, 141, 142, 161 Levi’s return to Turin, 18, 59, 160 Levi’s relationship with, 28–34, 91, 171n11, 177n12 as extension of the self, 47, 93 (see also prosthetic extension) and Freud’s concept of the Heim, 32, 36, 103, 163 homeostasis, 117, 127–28, 133 Homo sapiens, 25, 118 in relation to Homo faber, 25, 174n17 homogenization, 118, 120, 122, 142, 144 homosexuality, 106. See also sex homophobia, 106, 138–39 Horkheimer, Max, see Adorno, Theodor

201

Horowitz, Sara R., 170n19 Howard, Ted, see Rifkin, Jeremy Howson, Alexandra, 27, 170n25 Hughes, Ted, 180n20 Humanism Levi’s relationship to, 4, 6–8, 50 antihumanism, 129 in relation to posthumanism, 148, 155, 158, 170n14. See also posthumanism, Enlightenment Huxley, Aldous, 69, 113, 118–20, 136, 150–51, 179n10, 180n6 hybridity and the body, 17 and Levi’s identity, 1, 4, 12, 73, 78, 84–85 in Levi’s fiction, 8, 20, 28, 36, 39, 149–63, 175n28 human/machine, see body, posthumanism

I industrialization, 13, 15, 17, 79, 81, 82, 93, 101, 102, 111–12, 114–15, 123, 141, 144, 147, 172n7 inhumanity, 3, 84, 110, 172n3 and the body, 1, 6 in the Lager, 41–42, 45, 50–51, 173n16. and language, see language and technology, 120, 121, 122, 125. See also non-humanity insects, 46, 60, 148, 180n7 intellect, as distinct from embodied self, see Descartes and Cartesianism intellectuals/intellectualization, 106, 114, 120, 138 Levi’s views on, 55–56, 59, 60, 62, 67, 74, 76, 78, 80 Gramsci’s theories of, 74, 174n17 in Auschwitz, 76–77 internal objects, 47, 100 Italy, economic boom in, 81

J Jackson, Rosemary, 149, 150, 151, 156, 161–62 Jaggar Alison M. and Susan R. Bordo, 63, 178n18 Jesurum, Stefano, see Dini, Massimo Jewishness, 6 and the body, 170n17. See also Judaism, anti-Semitism Job, 71

202

Index

Johnson, Mark L., 11, 63. See also Lakoff, George. Jordanova, Ludmilla, 132, 138, 156 Judaism. See also Jewishness, antiSemitism. 157, 173n24, 175n33, 177n18 Jung, Carl Gustav, 171n15

K Kafka, Franz, 78, 113, 116, 151, 175n25, 177n3, 178n16, 180n7 Kant, Emmanuel, 55, 62, 173n1 Kiernan, Susan, 174n13 Klein, Ilona, 132, 145, 180n11 Klein, Melanie, 47, 171n18, 172n9 Klein, Naomi, 177n13 Knapp, Bettina, 94 Kristeva, Julia, 12, 18, 19, 43, 99, 102–4, 141 Kubrick, Stanley, 110, 176n1 Kuhn, Thomas S., 76

L La Torre, A., 169n9 Lacan, Jacques, 37, 51, 68, 73, 170n21 LaCapra, Dominic, 51, 53 Lafrance, Marc, 27, 170n21, 171n12 Laing, R.D., 10, 12, 36, 78, 122, 127, 144 Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson, 10, 12, 13, 27, 28, 33 Lamberti, Luca, 72, 75 Lambridis, Helle, 180n18 Lang, Berel, 6 Lang, Fritz, 123, 132 Langer, Monika L., 172n12 language and alienation, 73 and dehumanization, 51–52, 71, 72, 173n18, 174n15. and ethics, 68 and inhumanity/non-humanity, 71–72 and the unconscious, see unconscious. See also German language Laqueur, Thomas, 170n25 Leopardi, Giacomo, 117, 178n4 Lepschy, Anna Laura and Giulio Lepschy, 72, 174n8 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 180n19 Levi, Neil and Rothberg, Michael Rothberg, 10 Levi, Primo, Se questo è un uomo [If This is a Man], 2, 5, 18, 23, 24, 28–29,

31, 36, 41–46, 48–50, 52, 54–58, 59, 62, 72, 76, 84, 89, 107, 108, 122, 169n7, 8, 171n3 La tregua [The Truce], 9, 18, 30, 41, 42, 48, 58–60, 89, 149, 150, 152, 157, 173n28 Storie naturali [The Sixth Day], 82, 89–91, 132, 133, 149, 176n7 ‘Alcune applicazioni del Mimete’ [Some Applications of the Mimer], 134–37 ‘L’amico dell’uomo’ [Man’s Friend], 70 ‘Angelica farfalla’ [Angelic Butterfly], 152–53, 180n11 ‘La bella addormentata nel frigo’ [Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge], 132–34, 139, 144 ‘Cladonia rapida’, 106–7, 179n6 ‘L’ordine a buon mercato’ [Order on the Cheap], 134 ‘La misura della bellezza’ [The Measure of Beauty], 137 ‘Quaestio de Centauris’, 38–39, 151–52, 156 ‘Pieno impiego’ [Full Employment], 117, 179n8 ‘Il sesto giorno’ [The Sixth Day], 154–55, 176n7 ‘Trattamento di quiescienza’ [Retirement Fund], 137–39 ‘Il Versificatore’ [The Versifier], 108–111, 113, 134 Vizio di forma [The Sixth Day], 72, 82, 89, 97, 98, 113, 116, 119, 121, 124, 128, 129, 132, 139, 149, 171n7 ‘A fin di bene’ [For a Good Purpose], 105–6 ‘Il fabbro di se stesso’ [His Own Blacksmith], 96–98, 129, 150, 152, 159, 160, 165, 176n7 ‘In fronte scritto’ [Written on their Foreheads], 142, 144 ‘Lumini rossi’ [Small Red Lights], 142–43 ‘Knall’, 140–41 ‘Le nostre belle specificazioni’ [Our Excellent Specifications], 72–73, 124–24 ‘Procacciatori d’affari’ [The Hard Sellers], 124, 125–27 ‘Protezione’ [Protection], 28, 140–42

Index ‘I sintetici’ [The Synthetics], 119–22, 142, 178n10 ‘Il servo’ [The Servant], 108, 109–11 Il sistema periodico [The Periodic Table], 17, 19, 33, 36, 62, 63, 64, 73, 74, 78–81, 98–99, 120, 152, 157, 158, 175n27, 28, 29, 179n5 La chiave a stella [The Wrench], 19, 63, 65, 74, 76, 78, 81–85, 95, 101–3, 107, 159, 175n27 Lilít e altri racconti [Moments of Reprieve / A Tranquil Star], 38, 149, 178n16 ‘A tempo debito’ [At the Appointed Time], 178n16 ‘La bestia nel tempio’ [The Beast in the Temple], 38 ‘Calore vorticoso’ [Extreme Heat], 174n13 ‘Disfilassi’, 155–58 ‘I gladiatori’ [The Gladiators], 106–8, 111 ‘Lilít’ [Lilith], 38, 57, 110–11, 160, 171n21 ‘Self-control’, 127–28, 130 ‘La sfida della molecula’ [The Molecule’s Defiance], 100–3, 106, 107, 108 ‘Gli stregoni’ [The Sorcerers], 64 La ricerca delle radici [The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology] 11, 19, 63, 65, 66, 70–71, 81, 116, 151, 161, 171n1, 173n23 Ad ora incerta [Collected Poems], ‘Autobiografia’ [Autobiography], 69, 159–60 ‘Buna’, 45–46 ‘Erano cento’ [There Were a Hundred], 28 ‘Lilìt’ [Lilith], 39, 110 ‘La notte è quieta, dormono le vie’, 36–37 ‘Shemà’, 54, 92, 122, 173n24 L’altrui mestiere [Other People’s Trades] 19, 63, 75, 149, 150, 169n4, 180n3 ‘Aldous Huxley’, 118–19 ‘L’aria congestionata’ [Crowded Air], 174n13 ‘Contro il dolore’ [Against Pain], 35

203

‘Eclissi dei profeti’ [Eclipse of the Prophet], 92, 146 ‘Inventare un animale’ [Inventing an Animal], 150 ‘Un lungo duello’ [A Long Duel], 178n12 ‘La mia casa’ [My House], 31–34, 141, 159, 164, 165, 171n11, ‘Romanzi dettati dai grilli’ [Novels Dictated by Crickets], 150 ‘Gli scarabei’ [Beetles], 150–51 I sommersi e i salvati [The Drowned and the Saved], 8, 18, 29, 31, 41, 43, 48–50, 52, 69, 76, 77, 84, 138, 170n20, 176n1 Racconti e saggi [The Mirror Maker], 23, 149, 169n4 ‘Una bottiglia di sole’ [A Bottle of Sunshine], 3, 18, 23–28, 63, 166 ‘Covare il cobra’ [Hatching the Cobra], 146 ‘Il fabbricante di specchi’ [The Mirror Maker], 37 ‘Il giocatore occulto’ [The Hidden Player], 111–12 ‘La grande mutazione’ [The Great Mutation], 152, 153–55, 158 ‘L’intervista’ [The Interview], 176n3 ‘Il passa-muri’ [Through the Walls], 160–62, 163 ‘Lo scriba’ [The Scribe], 108, 110–12 ‘Tradurre Kafka’ [Translating Kafka], 177n3 ‘L’uomo che vola’ [The Man who Flies], 154–55 Dialogo [Conversations], 4, 66, 69, 74, L’assimetria e la vita [The Black Hole of Auschwitz] ‘Anagrafe’ [Bureau of Vital Statistics], 122–24 ‘Il brutto potere’ [Brute Force], 117, 127, 128, 178n4 ‘Cercatori di menzogne per negare l’olocausto’ [Seekers of Lies to Deny the Holocaust], 175n30 ‘Deportati. Anniversario’ [Deportees. Anniversary], 175n20 ‘Io lo proiberei’ [I Would Forbid It], 119, 128 ‘Ma noi c’eravamo’ [But We Were There], 175n30

204

Index

Il doppio legame [The Double Bond, unpublished], 103, 171n6, 175n27 Other writings: ‘L’argilla d’Adamo’ [Adam’s Clay], 156, 180n14 ‘Così fu Auschwitz’ [This is what Auschwitz was Like], 6, 169n12 ‘Le fans di spot di Delta Cep’ [The TV Fans from Delta Cep], 176n3 Preface to A. L. Cagliotti’s I due volti delle chimica [The Two Faces of Chemistry], 97–98, 176n4 Levi Montalcini, Rita, 99, 176n6 Levinas, Emmanuel, 9, 33, 41, 43, 45, 47, 53, 85, 167, 170n18 Lewis, C. S., 92, 176n10 literature, and relation to science, see science, Two Cultures Lo Presti, Virgilio, 38, 39, 41, 73 Lollini, Massimo, 177n18, 20 Luce, Dina, 69, 91 Lukàcs, Georg, 5, 45, 169n9, 172n7

M Manifesto degli scienziati razzisti, 75 Marcuse, Herbert, 113, 115, 118, 134, 177n2, 178n7, 179nn3, 13 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 106, 108, 120, 128, 176n8. See also Futurism Marshall, George, 177n2 Marshall, Gordon, 170n27 Marx, Karl, 12, 19, 25, 80, 114, 115, 118, 172n7 and sentience, 99–100, 104, 105 masculinity, 10, 54–61, 99, 102, 109, 120, 132, 138, 145, 168, 173n28, 178n11. See also gender Mattioda, Enrico, 110, 177n19 Mayr, Otto, 178n6 McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore, 128 McRae, Murdo William, 80 Mei, Francesco, 176n10 memory and testimony, 1, 3 and the construction of the embodied subject, 30, 47, 49, 57, 69, 172n10 and the home, 32 and the unconscious, 36–37, 81 and evolution, 96 and technology, 106, 135, 138

Mendeleyev, Dmitri Ivanovich, 66, 80, 174n5 Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, 69 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 10, 34, 62 metamorphosis, 2, 5, 19, 20, 32, 60, 98, 149–63, 167, 180n7 Miccinesi, Mario, see Vincenti, Fiora Miller, Barbara D., 178n9 Miller, Peter and Nikolas Rose, 179n3 mind/body dualism, see Descartes and Cartesianism Möbius strip, 12, 63 Monbiot, George, 177n13 Morris, Desmond, 150 Morson, Gary Saul and Carol Emerson, Carol, 76 Muselman, 5–6, 18, 49–53, 72, 102, 137, 138, 144, 169n8, 172nn14, 15, 173n16

N Nascimbeni, Giulio, 73 natural selection (survival of the fittest), 41 nature/natural world, 82, 117, 178n4 alienation from, 7, 11, 13, 97–99, 128, 132, 137, 176n5, 179n13 human alignment with, 2, 8, 13, 35, 51–52, 59–61, 96, 98–99, 116, 148, 149, 152, 156, 157, 159, 162, 163, 167, 168 Nazism, 6, 10, 52, 90, 120, 125, 130, 153, 157, 175n20 niche, 24, 30–31, 34, 166. See also shells. nonlife and the Holocaust, 52–53, 137, 162, 165 and technology, 113, 115, 137–138, 141, 144, 166. See also bare life, zoē non-humanity and the Holocaust, 3, 5, 8, 41, 42, 49–56, 172n14 and language, see language and technology, 94, 100, 105, 108, 122, 125, and nature, 157. See also dehumanization, nonlife novum, 104–5, 107, 149, 155

O Oakley, Kenneth P., 25, 95 Ollman, Bertell, 170n27

Index O’Neil, Onora, 8 Orwell, George, 123 Oulipò, 174n13 Ovid, 149, 154, 156, 159, 162

P palindromes, 71, 174n13 Patruno, Nicholas, 169n6 Patterson, David, 9, 43, 170n17 Petrucciani, Mario, 79–80, 174n19 Pierantoni, Ruggero, 175n26 Philippe, Antoine, 4, 5, 50, 169n6, 171n3 Piercy, Marge, 177n21, 179nn10, 12 Popper, Karl, 65 Porro, Mario, 68, 73, 76 portmanteau words, 71, 151, 174n13, 180n8 postanthropocentrism, see anthropocentrism. See also posthumanism post-Enlightement, see Enlightenment posthumanism, 89, 162, 163, 166, 168 definitions of, 1, 7–8, 170n14, 170n28, 180n1 technologically-mediated, 2, 10, 11, 16–17, 18, 19, 92, 93, 113–130, 132–147, 148, 149 as post-Enlightenment thought, 4, 7–8, 41, 170n18 as postanthropocentrism, 20, 148, 154, 155, 157, 158. See also Humanism, anthropocentrism Preti, Giulio, 174n19 Probyn, Elspeth, 80 projective identification, 99, 102, 171n18 Prosser, Jay, 63, 70, 174n11 prosthetic extension of the body, 2, 27, 31, 71, 94, 97, 104, 111, 117, 118, 127, 128, 130, 136, 140, 141, 142, 152, 154, 165, 167, 172n10. See also hand psychoanalysis, 10, 11, 12, 36, 67, 91, 136, 166, 170n20. See also Freud, Sigmund, unconscious

R Rabelais, François, 71 Raimondi, Ezio, 174n19 Ramelli, Roberta and Canal, Andrea, 90, 179n6 Rawicz, Piotr, 2 Reading, Anna, 10, 54,55

205

reason, 79, 97, 98, 116, 120, 146 ethical, 6, 129, 167 Enlightenment, 6, 7, 8, 11, 17, 38–39, 44, 56, 71, 75, 76, 77, 130, 140, 157, 179n13 embodied, 7, 11–12. See also Enlightenment, ethics reification, 36, 37, 73, 90, 164 and the Holocaust, 2, 5, 45, 49, 53, 108, 144, 153, 169n9, 174n14 and technology, 13, 94, 100, 102, 103, 144. See also alienation, dehumanization reproduction, 10, 14, 15, 19, 96, 149, 153, 154, 157, 158, 163, 168 and technology, 113, 118, 119, 121, 122, 130, 132, 134, 135, 139, 143, 179n4 autarkical, 101, 135. See also cloning Rifkin, Jeremy with Ted Howard, 178n5 Ritzer, George, 115 robots, 19, 28, 89, 108, 110, 111, 118, 132, 136, 139, 142 Rose, Nikolas, see Miller, Peter Rosenbaum, Thane, 9 Rosenfeld, Alvin H., 169n2 Rosi, Francesco, 173n28 Roth, Philip, 28, 29, 34, 81, 82, 84, 116, 171n11 Rothberg, Michael, see Levi, Neil Rutsky, R. L., 180n2

S Santagostino, Giuseppina, 5, 105, 160, 169n9, 172n5, 173n17, 177n11 Sayre, Patricia, and Linea Vacca, 5, 173n18 Scalia, Gianni, 82 Scarry, Elaine, 19, 30, 32, 34, 47, 93, 99–103, 105, 166, 176n3 Schilder, Paul, 94 schizophrenia, 81, 84, 175n33 science, 1, 4, 12, 15, 16, 20, 26, 27, 34, 63, 66, 67, 69, 98, 99, 103, 115, 120–1, 145–6, 153, 161, 162, 166, 167, 168, 175n20, 178n18, 179n13 and relation to literature, 17, 18, 19, 27, 63, 73–84, 124, 156, 164, 167, 175n19, 22. See also gender, ethics, Two cultures science fiction, 2, 3, 10, 13, 19, 28, 89–92, 104–6, 113, 118–19,

206 Index 122, 131–36, 138, 142–43, 148–9, 151, 155, 165, 169n1, 175n24 Scott Sørensen, Ann, 179n12 Segre, Cesare, 169n7 sexed bodies, 10, 14, 20, 42, 54–58, 61, 82–83, 126, 144 sex and technology, 106–7, 109, 111, 119, 120, 132–33, 135–36, 139–42, 144, 148, 177n21, 179n13 as a ‘base’ urge, 37–39, 151 anxiety about, 40, 57–59, 81, 111 normative approaches to, 138–39, 158 and nature, 149, 152, 155–56 and the fantastic, 149, 157–63 (see also transsexuality) in the aftermath of liberation, 58–59, 60, 157 sexism, 137 sexual domination, 145, 168, 173n28 (see also masculinity) Shakespeare, William, 171n9 shells, 23–24, 29, 30–33, 35, 46, 48–49, 60, 141, 166, 172n8. See also niche shoes, 30, 44, 46, 77, 111 Showalter, Elaine, 135 Snow, C. P., 73–74, 174n16. See also Two cultures Sodi, Risa, 173n20 Solmi, Sergio, 77, 90, 1975n24 Spackman, Barbara, 176n8, 178n11, 180n12 Stacey, Jackie. See Ahmed, Sara Suvin, Darko, 91, 104

T Taylor, Elizabeth, 137 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 82, 115, 177n1 Tattersall, Ian, 26 technology and the body, see body, posthumanism, sex and gender, see gender and relation to literature, 19 (see also science) and ethics, see ethics and society, 4, 13, 16, 25, 64, 82 and power, 15

and teleology of progress, 17, 97–98 Levi’s view of, 76, 78, 83, 91, 93, 113–14, 128–29, 164, 165 and sentience, 93–112. See also cybernetics Tesio, Giovanni, 84 testimonial writing, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, 17, 18, 24, 31, 42, 49, 50–51, 53, 55, 59, 61, 68, 72, 81, 83, 89, 90, 91, 107 Theweleit, Klaus, 10, 55 Thomson, Ian, 175n33 tools, 2, 14, 25, 28, 94, 95, 97, 98, 107, 171n4. See also prosthetic extension. Toscani, Claudio, 81 transsexuality, 82–83, 159. See also Levi, Primo, La chiave a stella [The Wrench] Two Cultures debates, 19, 63, 73–81, 124, 167. See also C. P. Snow, science Turing, Alan, 143

U uncanny, see Freud, Sigmund unconscious and language, 19, 63, 68–69, 71, 73, 83–84, 165 and knowledge, 19, 63, 65, 66, 67, 80, 83–84, 165 materialization of, 2, 36, 69, 164 and Levi’s writing, 11, 68–70, 73 and adaptation, 24 and the divided self, 36, 91, 98 and gender, 143, 145 See also, Freud, Sigmund, psychoanalysis Updike, John, 174n11 Usher, Jonathan, 101, 154

V Vacca, Linea, see Sayre, Patricia Vacca, Roberto, 132, 139, 176n4 Valabrega, Paola, 64, 169n5 Van Dyck, José, 178n10 Verdone, Mario, 176n2 Vigevani, Marco, xi Vincenti, Fiora, Roberto Guiducci and Mario Miccinesi, 146 violence, 29, 57, 69, 97, 107, 116, 129, 174n14 ‘l’uomo violentato’ [violated man], 90, 107, 108, 133, 137

Index within us, 37, 39, 110, 151, 165, 166 and technology, 97, 140, 145, 179n14 virtual reality, 1, 16, 40, 121, 122, 128, 138–39, 148. See also cyberspace

W Warner, Marina, 149, 152, 153, 154, 161, 180n20 Watt, James, 117, 178n6 Webber, Andrew J., 13, 37, 158, 171n17 Weber, Max, 113, 114, 116, 122, 124, 129, 178n17

207

Wiener, Norbert, 16, 113, 114, 115, 123 Wiesel, Elie, 44 Weiss, Gail, 43, 48 Williams, Simon J. and Bendelow, Gillian, 13, 62, 170n24, 25, 179n15 Wilson, Jonathan, 175n28 Wolf, Naomi, 179n9 Wolfe, Bernard, 151, 155, 180n9, 13 Wolfe, Cary, 7, 16, 17, 148, 162, 170n14, 28, 180n2 Woolf, Christa, 174n4

Z zoē, 5, 6, 18, 40, 49, 51–53, 61, 70, 98. See also bare life, nonlife, bios