Dan Diner - Memory displaced: Re-reading Jean Améry's "Torture"
Améry invokes the philosophy of de Sade as interpreted by Georges Bataille. The sadist, as Améry puts it, "had to torture, to destroy, in order to be great in bearing the suffering of others. He had to be capable of handling torture instruments, so that Himmler would assure him his Maturity Certificate in History. Later generations would admire him for having obliterated his feelings of mercy."..According to Améry, torture proves itself not just to be "an accidental quality of this Third Reich, but its essence". Moreover, he categorically affirms that: "It was precisely in torture that the Third Reich materialized in all the density of its being". And finally: torture was certainly "no invention of German National Socialism. But it was its apotheosis."..
Back in the 1960s, Jean Améry's "Torture" (1965) was required reading. The line "Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world" had an exceptional persuasive intensity. In his iconic text, composed twenty-two years after being subjected to the torment of torture, Améry reflects on the pain inflicted on his body and soul. He develops a sort of anthropology of agony, scrutinizing the modes and manners of a deliberate and maliciously executed violence, one that rips through the layers of the flesh, wilfully rends the body's limbs, engendering abysmal suffering. The procedure starts with a first and definitive blow, shattering the human being's elementary trust in the world. Reflecting on its foundationally destructive impact in devastating man's personality, Améry writes: "The first blow brings home to the prisoner that he is helpless, and thus it already contains in the bud everything that is to come."
Améry's essay presents a philosophy of pain remembered, of pain brutally inflicted on his body. In July 1943, after being arrested as an anti-Nazi resister, he was removed to Fort Breendonck, located between Antwerp and Brussels. There he was subjected to torture – a site of memory emblemized by W.G. Sebald in his novella Austerlitz, in allusion to Améry's existential experience there.
"There I experienced it: torture," writes Améry. Yet the pain was not inflicted upon him randomly. The purpose of the torment directed at his body was to break his will as a political opponent to the regime, to compel him to betray his associates, his comrades. The torture carried out on the prisoner Améry was inflicted on a person who had chosen to resist – something that happens all the time and everywhere. Améry writes: "Somewhere, someone is crying out under torture. Perhaps in this hour, this second." For him, the pain was exemplary, but by far not exceptional. All the more resolute and ultimate, therefore, was his judgment: "Torture is the most horrible event a human being can retain within himself".
Re-read decades later, however, the text strikes us as odd. First and foremost because Améry goes beyond philosophical reflection & anthropological comprehension of the phenomenon of torture, culminating as it does in the fundamental loss of human trust in the world, to expose torture as the very core of Nazism. According to Améry, torture proves itself not just to be "an accidental quality of this Third Reich, but its essence". Moreover, he categorically affirms that: "It was precisely in torture that the Third Reich materialized in all the density of its being".
Back in the 1960s, Jean Améry's "Torture" (1965) was required reading. The line "Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world" had an exceptional persuasive intensity. In his iconic text, composed twenty-two years after being subjected to the torment of torture, Améry reflects on the pain inflicted on his body and soul. He develops a sort of anthropology of agony, scrutinizing the modes and manners of a deliberate and maliciously executed violence, one that rips through the layers of the flesh, wilfully rends the body's limbs, engendering abysmal suffering. The procedure starts with a first and definitive blow, shattering the human being's elementary trust in the world. Reflecting on its foundationally destructive impact in devastating man's personality, Améry writes: "The first blow brings home to the prisoner that he is helpless, and thus it already contains in the bud everything that is to come."
Améry's essay presents a philosophy of pain remembered, of pain brutally inflicted on his body. In July 1943, after being arrested as an anti-Nazi resister, he was removed to Fort Breendonck, located between Antwerp and Brussels. There he was subjected to torture – a site of memory emblemized by W.G. Sebald in his novella Austerlitz, in allusion to Améry's existential experience there.
"There I experienced it: torture," writes Améry. Yet the pain was not inflicted upon him randomly. The purpose of the torment directed at his body was to break his will as a political opponent to the regime, to compel him to betray his associates, his comrades. The torture carried out on the prisoner Améry was inflicted on a person who had chosen to resist – something that happens all the time and everywhere. Améry writes: "Somewhere, someone is crying out under torture. Perhaps in this hour, this second." For him, the pain was exemplary, but by far not exceptional. All the more resolute and ultimate, therefore, was his judgment: "Torture is the most horrible event a human being can retain within himself".
Re-read decades later, however, the text strikes us as odd. First and foremost because Améry goes beyond philosophical reflection & anthropological comprehension of the phenomenon of torture, culminating as it does in the fundamental loss of human trust in the world, to expose torture as the very core of Nazism. According to Améry, torture proves itself not just to be "an accidental quality of this Third Reich, but its essence". Moreover, he categorically affirms that: "It was precisely in torture that the Third Reich materialized in all the density of its being". And finally: torture was certainly "no invention of German National Socialism. But it was its apotheosis." This sweeping statement is surprising. It is perplexing in its basic reference as well as in the light of further writings by Améry, who after all was a prisoner in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, though not of Birkenau. The latter would have excluded any chance of later testimony.
After careful further readings of Améry's iconic text on torture, the creeping impression asserts itself that his reflections on the pain inflicted on his body and soul demand, to a certain extent, that another, different experience – the experience of mere destruction, of annihilation, which, as we know, was the real essence of Nazism – be overwritten. The fate of the Jew Améry, powerfully argued in his other writings, is, in the text on torture, altered by the fate of Améry as political resistor. Both experiences seem to oppose each other in moral range and philosophical meaning...
After careful further readings of Améry's iconic text on torture, the creeping impression asserts itself that his reflections on the pain inflicted on his body and soul demand, to a certain extent, that another, different experience – the experience of mere destruction, of annihilation, which, as we know, was the real essence of Nazism – be overwritten. The fate of the Jew Améry, powerfully argued in his other writings, is, in the text on torture, altered by the fate of Améry as political resistor. Both experiences seem to oppose each other in moral range and philosophical meaning...
Read more: https://www.eurozine.com/memory-displaced/
