The murder of the dead father: The Shoah and contemporary antisemitism

ABSTRACT

It is suggested in this paper that in the Shoah one is confronted with the abolition of the Law of the Dead Father and the re-establishing of the tyranny of the narcissistic father. In the extermination of the Jews of Europe in the Shoah, the aim was the destruction of the rules of genealogy and filiation to both mother and father that establish the social and give rise to personhood and are at the core of the oedipal structure. The rule of absolute power – the destruction of any sense of maternal care and paternal rules – leads ultimately to the creation of the abject.

Freud distinguished between two different types of obstacles to psychoanalytic treatment that are expressions of the death drive. The first is bound and is related to the superego; it is connected to the negative therapeutic reaction, masochism, and the unconscious sense of guilt. The other manifestation of the death drive is unbound and diffuse. If the first is understandable, the second, he suggests, escapes any understanding. The paper makes use of this distinction to examine Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil.

Le meurtre du père mort: La Shoah et l'antisémitisme contemporain

L'auteure de cet article émet l'idée que la Shoah nous confronte à l'abolition de la Loi du Père Mort ainsi qu'au rétablissement de la tyrannie du père narcissique. L'extermination des Juifs d'Europe durant la Shoah avait pour but de détruire les lois de la généalogie et de la filiation du côté maternel comme du côté paternel, lois qui régissent le socius, donnent naissance à la personne, et sont au cœur de la structure œdipienne. La loi du pouvoir absolu – la destruction du sens des soins maternels comme des lois paternelles – conduit en définitive à la création de l'abjection.

Freud établissait une distinction entre deux types d'obstacles à la cure analytique, qui sont des manifestations de la pulsion de mort. La première, qui témoigne d'une union des pulsions, est en relation avec le surmoi ; elle est associée à la réaction thérapeutique négative, le masochisme et le sentiment de culpabilité inconscient. L'autre manifestation de la pulsion de mort est déliée et diffuse. Si la première est intelligible, la seconde échappe à toute compréhensibilité. Cet article prend appui sur cette distinction, pour analyser la notion de la banalité du mal d'Hannah Arendt.

Die Ermordung des toten Vaters: Die Shoah und der zeitgenössische Antisemitismus

In diesem Aufsatz wird die These vertreten, dass man bei der Shoah mit der Abschaffung des Gesetzes des toten Vaters und der Wiedereinführung der Tyrannei des narzisstischen Vaters konfrontiert wird. Bei der Vernichtung der europäischen Juden in der Shoah ging es um die Zerstörung der Regeln der Genealogie und der Abstammung sowohl von der Mutter als auch vom Vater, die das Soziale begründen und die Persönlichkeit hervorbringen sowie den Kern der ödipalen Struktur bilden. Die Herrschaft der absoluten Macht - die Zerstörung jeglicher Bedeutung mütterlicher Fürsorge und väterlicher Regeln - führt letztlich zur Entstehung von Abjekten.

Freud unterschied zwischen zwei verschiedenen Arten von Hindernissen für die psychoanalytische Behandlung, die Ausdruck des Todestriebs sind. Das erste ist gebunden und hängt mit dem Über-Ich zusammen; es ist mit der negativen therapeutischen Reaktion, dem Masochismus und den unbewussten Schuldgefühlen verbunden. Die andere Erscheinungsform des Todestriebs ist ungebunden und diffus. Während die erste Manifestation verständlich ist, entzieht sich die zweite, wie Freud meint, jedem Verständnis. Dieser Beitrag nutzt diese Unterscheidung, um Hannah Arendts Begriff der Banalität des Bösen zu untersuchen.

L'assassinio del padre morto. La Shoah e l'antisemitismo contemporaneo

Nel presente lavoro si suggerisce che gli eventi della Shoah mettono di fronte all'abolizione della Legge del Padre Morto e alla concomitante reintroduzione della tirannia del padre narcisistico. Nella Shoah, il fine dello sterminio degli ebrei d'Europa era la distruzione delle regole di genealogia e filiazione (rispetto sia alla madre sia al padre) che stanno alla base del sociale, danno luogo al nostro senso di essere persone e sono al cuore della struttura edipica. La regola del potere assoluto - la distruzione di qualsiasi senso di cura materna e di regole paterne - porta in ultima analisi alla creazione dell'abietto.

Freud distingueva tra due diversi tipi di ostacoli al trattamento psicoanalitico, entrambi espressioni della pulsione di morte. Il primo è legato e si relaziona al Superio: è connesso alla reazione terapeutica negativa, al masochismo e al senso di colpa inconscio. L'altra manifestazione della pulsione di morte è slegata e diffusa. Secondo Freud è possibile capire il primo tipo di fenomeno, mentre il secondo sfuggirebbe a qualsiasi compresione. L'articolo ricorrerà a questa distinzione per esaminare il concetto di banalità del male di Hannah Arend.

El asesinato del padre muerto: la Shoah y el antisemitismo contemporáneo

En este artículo se sugiere que en la Shoah uno es confrontado con la abolición de la ley del padre muerto y el restablecimiento de la tiranía del padre narcisista. El objetivo del exterminio de los judíos de Europa en la Shoah fue la destrucción de las reglas de la genealogía y de la filiación a la madre y al padre, que establecen lo social y dan origen a la condición de persona y se encuentran en el centro de la estructura edípica. El dominio del poder absoluto —la destrucción de todo sentido de cuidado materno y ley paterna— conduce, en última instancia, a la creación de lo abyecto.

Freud distinguió dos tipos de obstáculo para el tratamiento psicoanalítico que son expresión de la pulsión de muerte. El primero es ligado y se relaciona con el superyó; está vinculado con la reacción terapéutica negativa, el masoquismo y el sentimiento de culpa inconsciente. La otra manifestación de la pulsión de muerte es no ligada y difusa. Si el primero es comprensible, el segundo, sugiere la autora, escapa a toda comprensión. En el artículo se utiliza esta distinción para analizar el concepto de banalidad del mal de Hannah Arendt.

KEYWORDS:

• “banality of evil”
• Murdered father
• Dead father

Notes

1 I would like to thank the Editors and my anonymous readers for their many comments, which enabled me to clarify my arguments.

2 It was only at the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), that Pope Paul VI issued the declaration, Nostra Aetate, repudiating the previous doctrine of collective Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus. It declared that the accusation could not be made “against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today”. Nevertheless, a number of groups within the Catholic Church reject the declaration of the Second Vatican Council and continue to support the charge of Jewish deicide. After the Second World War Jules Isaac, a French–Jewish historian and Holocaust survivor, documented the antisemitic traditions that existed in the Catholic Church’s liturgy. However, in 2011 Pope Benedict, in his book Jesus of Nazareth, Part II, was still discussing that there is no basis in scripture for the argument that the Jewish people were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_deicide).

3 Gambel gives an illustration in a 2007 interview by Father Desbois with Ukrainians who had been either participants in or witnesses of massacres of Jews during the Second World War: many explained that in the same way that Jesus had walked to the cross surrounded by Jews, so it had been the turn of the Jews to be killed surrounded by Christians (Gambel 2017, 5).

4 https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion

5 An earlier document, known as “The Rabbi’s Speech” and originally published as a chapter in an 1868 novel by Sir John Retcliffe, the pseudonym of Hermann Goedsche, tells the story of a meeting of Jews plotting world domination (in Julius 2010, 55). It was printed as a pamphlet in St Petersburg four years later and was published in Moscow, Odessa and Prague, arriving in Paris in 1881 (55–56).

6 Sofsky’s book was awarded the Geschwister-Scholl Prize in Germany in 1993.

7 In his Foreword to Ira Brenner’s 2020 book, The Handbook of Holocaust Studies, Akhtar indicates that, according to a 2018 study amongst American adults, 41% of people interviewed did not recognize the name Auschwitz (Akhtar 2020, p. xvii).

8 Among some of the main texts I have consulted, I note Delaney (1998), Kierkegaard (1843), Levenson (1993), Davis (2006), Spiegel (2007), Wellisch (1954), Yerushalmi (1991) and Zornberg (2009). In this article I am proposing an interpretation to this story that differs from those offered by these authors.

9 Rashi (Shlomo Ytzakhi, 1040–1105) is famous for his scholarly commentary on the Talmud and Tanah. He is viewed as the “father” of all commentators, as he wrote the first comprehensive commentary on the Talmud.

10 The concentration camps were established by two organizations of the NSdAP, the Nazi party. In 1933 the camps were built and operated by the SA (Sturmabteilung of the NSdAP: the SA was the paramilitary wing the NSdAP). From 1934 on, the camps were operated by the SS (Schutzstaffel: a tougher and more cruel military-like organisation of the party for Hitler’s personal protection) (Hilberg 1973). The SS constituted a state within a state; one could thus say that the concentration camps were, in a way, extraterritorial – outside the jurisdiction of an ordinary court of law. In parallel with this it is important to underline the fact that the first Jews to be targeted for deportation and liquidation throughout Europe were those declared “stateless” Jews – those who did not have a father/nation that would protect them (Arendt 2006, 169, 172, 182).

11 In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews of their citizenship. It has been suggested, however, that it is Kristallnacht that can be considered as the turning point in the Nazi regime and the beginning of the Holocaust. Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews carried out on 9–10 November 1938 by SA (Sturmabteilung) paramilitary forces and civilians throughout Nazi Germany. Over 1400 synagogues and prayer rooms, many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7000 Jewish shops and 29 department stores were damaged and, in many cases, destroyed. More than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, primarily Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings and attacked men, women and children with sledgehammers. Hundreds of Jews were killed (Gilbert 2006; Steinweis 2009, 3; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht).

12 The term jouissance has been largely left, as untranslatable, in the English editions of Lacan’s work. It implies the notion of excess. In his structural model of the mind, Freud had established a link between sexuality, repetition and trauma through the discovery that there is something that he designates “beyond the pleasure principle”. The activity of discharge is now linked not to the pleasure principle, but to the Nirvana principle – the aim of reaching a state of “nought” tensions that he linked to the death drives. I am suggesting the aspect of jouissance in this unhinged violence.

13 The Nazis referred to Auschwitz as “anus mundi” (Rubenstein 1996). Rubenstein quotes from Norman O. Brown, who discussed the anal characteristics of the devil (1996, 52) – the association between the devil’s sulphurous fumes and faecal stench. The anus mundi was the devil’s habitat: the camps were the ultimate expression of the creation of a faecal world for the Jews as devils turned into faeces. The camps, he says, smelled of human decay. Corpses were left in large numbers to deteriorate unburied (57). In Nazi propaganda Jews were identified with vermin, insects, the very targets for insecticides like Zyklon B. The images of the packed trains on the way to the extermination camps point to the total annihilation of body boundaries, markers of personhood.

14 Hilberg (1973) offers a detailed account of the administrative and technical aspects of the “machinery of destruction” put in place by the Nazis.

15 What French literature refers to le mal has been translated, in English, as evil. Le mal has, however, a wider meaning, without the religious connotation of the word evil: it refers to pain, suffering, bad, as well as evil.

16 Otto Adolf Eichmann was head of the Department IV B4 in the Reich security services and in charge of Jewish Affairs and Evacuation. He was in charge of expelling Vienna’s Jews from Austria and then engineered the systematic murder of the majority of European Jewry. In 1944, weeks before the Red Army marched on Budapest, he reactivated the Auschwitz crematoria to add 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the victims. He was apprehended in 1960 and extradited to Israel. Arendt travelled to Israel as a reporter for The New Yorker, in which she published five reports on the trial; her book reporting on the trial, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, appeared in 1963.

17 I believe that Arendt could not fully engage with the paradigmatic importance of this trial and the significance of the fact that, for the first time, the victims could themselves confront their perpetrators and become the narrators of their own traumatic history. The literature that discusses Arendt’s controversial book is vast. I have been particularly taken by Shoshana Felman’s analysis. In her words, the function of the trial was “to create a legal narrative, a legal language, and a legal culture that was not yet in existence, but that became essential for the articulation of the unprecedented nature of the genocidal crime” (2002, 129).

18 The feminization of the Jews is present throughout the antisemitic literature. A poignant account is given by Susan Faludi (2017), reflecting on the transition of her father. She examines the context of extreme antisemitism in twentieth-century Hungary. Jewish men were seen as effeminate, not as proper men:

Jewish men were said to be plagued by the female ailments of hysteria and neurasthenia, prone to fainting spells and tubercular pallor … lacking in reproductive vigour, afflicted with venereal disease, and beset by sexual ‘abnormalities’ of an effeminate and submissive nature. … Jewish men [were] considered dangerous precisely because their weakness required them to prey on the vitality of healthier races. … In Hungary, by conflating effeminacy and aggression through the body of the Jewish man, blood libel served as a linchpin between religious hatred and sexual phobia” (280).

Faludi quotes Ander Gilman: “‘Modern Jewishness became as much a category of gender as race’” (281).

19 The following is Trotsky’s (1931) utterly horrifying description of a pogrom (probably in Odessa):

Everyone knows about a coming pogrom in advance. Pogrom proclamations are distributed, bloodthirsty articles come out in the official Provincial Gazettes, sometimes a special newspaper begins to appear. … When the ground has been prepared, a visiting company of “specialists” appears. They spread sinister rumours among the ignorant masses: the Jews are planning an attack on the Russians … To start with a few windows are smashed, a few passers-by beaten up; the wreckers enter every tavern on their way and drink, drink, drink. The band never stops playing “God Save the Tsar”, that hymn of the pogroms. … A trembling slave an hour ago, hounded by police and starvation, he now feels himself an unlimited despot. Everything is allowed to him, he is capable of anything, he is the master of property and honour, of life and death. If he wants to, he can throw an old woman out of a third-floor window together with a grand piano, he can smash a chair against a baby’s head, rape a little girl while the entire crowd looks on, hammer a nail into a living human body. … He exterminates whole families, he pours petrol over a house, transforms it into a mass of flames, and if anyone attempts to escape, he finishes him off with a cudgel. A savage horde comes tearing into an Armenian alms house, knifing old people, sick people, women, children. … God save the Tsar! … During this black October bacchanalia, compared with which St Bartholomew’s night looks like the most innocent piece of theatre, 3,500 to 4,000 people were killed and as many as 10,000 maimed in 100 towns. (26–29, emphasis added)