Abstract

MIELI, Paola. A silver martian: normality and segregation in Primo Levi's Sleeping Beauty in the fridge. Tempo psicanal. [online]. 2013, vol.45, n.1, pp. 179-201. ISSN 0101-4838.

In his testimony as a survivor, in the "necessity" that moved him to become a writer and make his experience known, Primo Levi has transmitted the devastating effects of the de-subjectivising experience in the Extermination Camps. Reflecting upon the causes and the implications of this " immense biological and social experiment," as he defines it, Levi the story teller, on the other hand, ponders on the issue of segregation in our own times, on the heritage the camps have bequeathed on the present, establishing a disquieting continuity between past aberrations and present normality, showing beyond any doubt how the present is subtly interwoven by the logic of the past. In his play Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge, Levi shows with great acumen and perspicacity the strict relationship between science, new technologies, and subjective alienation, as well as the ways in which normality, and the tranquility of a prosperous life, are in fact the product of a bio-political normativity, universally accepted with careless complicity.

Keywords : alienation; segregation; dehumanization; grey zone; science; technology.

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