Robert Antelme and Innovation

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Notes

1. I refer to the Häftling narrator (who is never named in the text) as Robert.

2. This clause does not imply that Antelme claims this coinage to be original, as indeed it was not; Holocaust survivors’ memoirs often refer to the collaborating “aristocracy.” See for example Primo Levi, If This is a Man/Survival in Auschwitz and David Rousset, L’univers concentrationnaire.

3. As regards no-man's-lands, Checkpoint Charlie might be considered a shared space of complementary biopoliticizations. On both sides of the border, in both kinds of political structure, the body itself is the ultimate political expression.

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Notes on contributors

Marina Davies

With an Introduction by Ora Avni