Drowning Ulysses: Saving Levi from Agamben’s Remnant

This article is a critique of the reading of Primo Levi's If This is a Man and The Drowned and the Saved given in Giorgio Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz. It examines Agamben's interpretation of the "gray zone" as the "territory" in which "the oppressed becomes oppressor and the executioner in turn appears as victim," and it questions Agamben's claim to have discovered "Levi's Paradox." The article develops a critique of Agamben's project by reading Levi's If This is a Man against Remnants of Auschwitz. It attempts, first, to set the record straight; but more, it attempts to articulate Levi's understanding of "the ethical and political significance" of the Shoah by discussing the philosophical importance of the literary aspects of If This is a Man overlooked or misrepresented by Agamben.