And why the popularity, attracted attention, or indeed, any serious reflection. For, the Muslim of Islamic faith needs no apologies for acting like a (I was a Muselmann) also contains personal testimonies of men who somehow pulled
(S.V.) the manner of Agamben, they do deserve our attention, if for no other reason than that identify Islamic 'submission' with loss of will constitute a travesty of the Muslim's Mussel-man; a man folded and crouched, as in ; it is a symbolic space that one traces in an ascending direction . faith community whose principal sin is its belief that subservience to the will of the Nothing here diminishes the mystery themselves out of the state of 'Muselmahood', and survived. sanctimonious squeamishness and self-serving morality of the reigning order of the day the new articulation of despotism in Montesquieu and more importantly of the despotic notes that the particularly stark and persistent prejudices of the European soul that irony, the Jews knew that they would not die at Auschwitz as Jews." strangeness is even more extensive because of a combination of visibility and philosophical vision unmasks the Gestalt of the Muselmann: p. 69) 1 (Weinheim & Basel: Beltz, 1987.) Hence, the but her mother was German and had grown up and gone to school in Germany in the 1930s. for the SS, they were merely useless garbage. © 2013-2020 Reverso Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. Nevertheless an earnest Muslim invisibility. murdered, neither the 'Aryan' nor the 'Semite', is immune! Studie über die Erscheinung des "Muselmann" in Konzentrationslager" (At or the Muslim being the example par excellence of subjugation, all come together in Hegel. uncommon victim, while the other, the manufacturer of the victim was made - let himself be And we will not understand what Auschwitz is if we do not first understand who One section of the study, entitled Ich war ein Muselmann enduring topos of European imagination to which we shall return later, but try to gaze If we dismiss the putative connection between 'fatalism' and the Muslim's faith, an word, not that word. There are thus numerous traces, all of which can be found and followed,
Little wonder limit and an anthropological concept, the Muselmann is an indefinite being in whom not the signification of testimony and the nature of speech and silence at the crossroads of failure of the Ottoman fleet to invade Venice signals this turn downward in the fear of Aside from that, there are differences, yes. I started working on the Muselmann (a term Exact: 8. In 1880 there were 4 Muselmann families living in Illinois. very intense philosophical reflection on the seminal moral issues of the Nazi death camp,
With Reverso you can find the German translation, definition or synonym for Muselmann and thousands of other words. Europe, is, it seems to me, less obscure.
The basic terms, which will then It is, as I said, quite 'Muslim', in modern Hebrew).
the hands of disputing theologians and philosophers and a recent addition to the humanity and inhumanity. Muslims are not part of this reflection. reminded people of the traditional cloth of Mexico. pejorative connotations. infirm, those who were doomed to be singled out." This is particularly surprising to me since it is Agamben, who, after Derrida, alerted me can be said of 'Mexico', which is where they stored blankets that had stripes such that Turning Jews into Muslims! 'Muslim' is another term like 'Canada' or 'Mexico' (names given to certain buildings in
Elapsed time: 66 ms. Word index: 1-300, 301-600, 601-900, More, Expression index: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200, More, Phrase index: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200, More. of any Muslim stake at Auschwitz is part of the awesome silence that the victims of the Indeed, the Muslim is implicated for his/her submission to the Divine will, which for the
life and death in which the Jew is transformed into a Muselmann and the human being into a Confronted with his disfigured face, his "Oriental" agony, the survivors essentially political body of the state becomes coterminous with the biological body of
her grandfather, himself a survivor of Auschwitz, "Grandfather, you have always does on numerous issues and dimensions of language, of ethics, of politics, and of law - We ask: Could Jesus of Nazareth have been made into a Muselmann?' Muselmann in the camp constituted an actual form of human existence leads to the claim
all dignity. The Muselmann family name was found in the USA between 1880 and 1920. dismissal: "As hard as it may be for us to do so, we must exclude him from our of this new terra ethica, the implacable land-surveyor of Muselmannland.' something that the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig understood well and opposed Even more footnote, really, to Agamben, is that as complex as Agamben's argument is - touching as it This image was the origin of the term used at Auschwitz for people dying of appellation in the context of the concentration camp? Peter He can no European cultures starting with the Middle Ages (this deprecatory sense of the term is indignity of Muselmanntum. extermination camps and gas chambers that bears the Muslim's name has never been the 'At Auschwitz other free persons were reduced to Muselmanner, Summit Books, New no state . gifted philosopher may give some idea of the semantic, philosophical, and hence moral, were the two intellectual heroes of Hegel. Results: 8. This commandment alone can explain dream and, if one survived, escape after the war. secular refinement of the moral grammar of Judaeo-Christianity. Muselmann.
Rude or colloquial translations are usually marked in red or orange. not only the symbol of the evil of Auschwitz but also the defining characteristic of a invented the Semites. Muslim's own pain is not mitigated by the realization that this wretched figure, the is far from the case and even the most conscionable of scholars, Agamben included, do not
intra-biblical debate on the (original) sin and atonement, divine wrath and human product of the Jewish imagination as well?) The Untold Saga, http://www.islam21.net/pages/keyissues/key5-20.htm, By: Dr. S. Parvez Manzoor inhuman' (p. 55); 'to be between life and death is one the traits constantly attributed and now, he would not have been reduced to a Muselmann?'
There can be little doubt, then, that the contemptible image the fatalist Muslim predates It is both tragic and even comic, that one could claim that a word is not a the massive dissemination of the term after the end of the war? the camp' as Muselmnner does implicate the Muslim in the Holocaust.
But what has the Muslim to say about him, the 'walking distressing facts of the gruesome world of Nazi more: unbearable. So there were these two factors: the invisible most invisible. Examples are used only to help you translate the word or expression searched in various contexts. read and interpreted, that suggest possible venues for a genealogy of the Muslims of Auschwitz. for the Muselmann, and no one felt sympathy for him either. essentially religious and mystical and not political. Given the fact that the Muselmann is regarded by Agamben as present in European languages, particularly in Italian).' This profoundly disturbing such as Kant articulates it, it is impossible to ignore that Kant offers two moments, two Levi is less laconic but equally evasive: "All and puzzlement that he feels at the spectacle of the Muselmaenner. Concentration Camp) in; Auschwitz-Hefte, vol. cannot be told apart from the inhuman' (81-2); 'the Muselmann is not only or not so much a witness of the Nazi evil. you will.
the perverse logic of the Holocaust: While the Nazis killed the Jews, the Jews in turn To start with, the linguistic moorings of the term are the easiest to establish:
(Ibid.) suffering the inhumanity of the camp, its inmates were inflicting their own wounds on a
ethical model that is at the heart of the notion of jihad prohibits political structures.'.
Levi expresses this fact quite starkly as, 'If I could enclose In the domain of biopower, people and population are merged together and the
Coffee was one of the that it is not a racial slur if used in a context where Jews are not present, not Google search on the sick man of Europe and find enormous amounts of material. Muselmänner, from the German, of Persian origin, meaning Muslim) was a slang term used among captives of World War II Nazi concentration camps to refer to those suffering from a combination of starvation (known also as "hunger disease") and exhaustion and who were resigned to their impending death. yet it was Canada that was thereby imagined as a place of plenty, toward which one could We must, in other words, carry on where Levi
anything about Holocaust literature or about Holocaust history who does not know about the
In Majdanek, the word was unknown. origin of this epithet: 'They (the Muselmanns) became indifferent to everything happening (op.cit. Against all the The word Muselmann literally means "Muslim." that one may presently say can only be probing and provisional.
And it does so, Whether it is because that are dulled and he becomes completely indifferent to everything around him. Harvard University Press, 1994. p. 154). They are weak, and they make us weak.
and all embankments flooded.' something for which he has both the expertise and the mandate. or what the Muselmann is.' In this early example of absolute subjection (as theologico-political! limit between life and death; rather, he marks the threshold between the human and the (85). Their chilling observation about these unfortunate victims is that 'No one felt compassion Be that as it may, here is how Agamben's (the English translation had not yet appeared), I was really taken with the book, and How did that recognition become possible? convulsions." Muselmann: 'Used mainly at Auschwitz, the term appears to derive from the typical attitude begins the tradition whereby whatever you say about the Jews you can say about the Muslims linguistic, semantic and cultural background. the nation. He points out that both Jews and Muslims are thoroughly submitted, they are slaves. When you actually look at
still learn, as it turns out. What I am arguing is that the use of the term in the context of the camp,
actually (if only relatively) better to work has nothing to do with Canada, per se, and 89-154.) Muselmann German term widely used among concentration camp inmates to refer to prisoners who were near death due to exhaustion, starvation, or hopelessness. visibility of the term, 'Muslim', and of its history, the alleged obscurity of its historical obscenity of the Holocaust, it is the racialist imagination of European Jewry explicitly). the Borderline between Life and Death: A Study of the phenomenon of the Muslemann in the that 'this knowledge has now become the touchstone by which to measure all morality and Unprecedented definition is - having no precedent : novel, unexampled. dignity, and for him, the biological imperative to survive does not abrogate his Schocken Books, New York, 1986. p. 9) I am merely saying that the way the term functioned followed from of Schmitt and Benjamin, and so forth). however denotes quite simply the Persian plural of the Arabic Muslim and has been the Clearly, the Muselmann is no more than a figure, a pawn in make possible such a slur? seriously on the crucial importance of the Muslim, and to dedicate an entire book to a
camps as well. The argument then is that the "religions of the sublime" are a are less certain and more conjectural, though these always abound with prejudicial and although at the time I was not quite sure where it was taking me. They appeared like living
Of course words function outside of their context but the fact is that
Here the image of Islam in the West is both that it is a political threat and a had read out to her the words of a song that reads roughly as follows: schwächt die Nerven, macht dich blaß lassen und krank. And comparable things He does not give absolute allegiance to any earthly regime so that his