• __Modernity, Culture and 'the Jew'__

"The Ethical Uncertainty of Primo Levi" by Bryan Cheyette (268-281)Cheyette argues that traditional depictions of Primo Levi's depiction of his experiences in Auschwitz as scientifically disinterested ignores ambiguities inherent in all of Levi's writings. The scientific disinterestedness that is ascribed to Levi reduces the disturbing aspect of his writing by placing it within a system (of good vs. evil, of unproblematic representation, etc.), which is - at its extreme - representative of Fascism. (Cheyette makes the distinction between the "certainties of Fascism" and uncertainty in Levi's conception of chemistry as "a mess...full of mysteries," 279 [Levi quote from __Periodic Table__, 60]. Think also about Arendt's "banality of evil" and Adorno's reified society as ways of getting at the same problem. In a world that is entirely certain, in which all problems are black and white [they move me up in commercial society or do not], thinking about the problems brought up by an atrocity like the Shoah becomes foreign.)