Primo Levi's Will to Humanism: Essentialist and Posthumanist Conceptions of the Human Being in Survival in Auschwitz

In the wake of the poststructuralist deconstruction of idealist humanism, any attempt to give an account of the human being has come to be regarded with suspicion as the imposition of a false universal. As Satya Mohanty notes, in our current antihumanist climate, "instances of positive elaboration of the human have been noticeably absent."1 A typical poststructuralist stance towards the human cited by Mohanty is that of Louis Althusser who, "fleeing from idealism," "ends up being skeptical about all claims about human nature" (90) .2 Through a reading of Primo Levi's compelling account of human existence in a Nazi concentration camp, Survival in Auschwitz, this essay seeks to reexamine …