Abstract

BARBOSA, Maria Nadeje Pereira  and  KUPERMANN, Daniel. Working through and currentness of the trauma in Primo Levi. Ide (São Paulo) [online]. 2018, vol.40, n.65, pp. 191-205. ISSN 0101-3106.

This article presents an analysis of the interrelation among memory, trauma, and working through in the testimony of Primo Levi as from Freud's reflections in Letter 52 and his conception of trauma in Beyond the pleasure principle. The authors intend to show that there was a certain turning point in Primo Levi's course as a former deportee, in the 1980s, defined by the reactivation of the basic representations of his experience in extermination camps, potentially able to create “new traumas” that reached their culminating point in his suicide. The conclusion is that there will always be immanent remains of the catastrophe experienced in Auschwitz, with no possibility of working through, and that it is up to culture to carry on the duty of memory.

Keywords : Primo Levi; Freud; Shoah; Testimony; Trauma.

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