‘The Concentrationary Universe: Primo Levi’s Spatial Consciousness’

Minna Vuohelainen

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    This chapter examines Levi’s writings in the light of the recent “spatial turn” in the Humanities, arguing that the Holocaust was a profoundly spatial and geographic phenomenon. Levi’s work, Vuohelainen argues, evinces a distinctive spatial consciousness, from the grassroots depictions of survival in the camps in If This Is a Man to the picaresque journey of The Truce to the widening perspectives of Moments of Reprieve and The Drowned and the Saved. The chapter explores the spatial dynamics of Levi’s writings through the theoretical work of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau, arguing for the significance of place and space in Holocaust Studies.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationInterpreting Primo Levi: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
    EditorsMinna Vuohelainen, Arthur Chapman
    Place of PublicationNew York
    PublisherPalgrave
    Pages129-145
    ISBN (Print)9781137442338
    Publication statusPublished - 2015

    Publication series

    NameItalian & Italian American Studies

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