The Infinite Task: Being-In-Common in Robert Antelme's L'Espece humaine

Abstract

L'Espèce humaine, Robert Antelme's 1947 memoir chronicling his year in a German labour camp, was read, in its initial reception, as a reflection on alterity: the human subject, stripped of the capacity to speak and reduced to eating scraps of food, is revealed as the Other. Against these readings, contemporary critics have argued that alterity is not quite so central to Antelme's work, and that the text should instead be read as a triumph of the subject that survives the experiences of the camps. Pushing this debate further, this essay argues that the significance of Antelme's text lies in its configuring of relations beyond the logic of subjectivity and prior to an ethical demand. The essay thus offers a reading that recognizes the ‘unity of the species’ as an ontological given rather than a project realized or affirmed on the basis of transcendent notions such as fraternity or a shared humanity. To this end, the reading draws heavily on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and in particular on his efforts to rethink the fact of our shared existence in the wake of the catastrophes of the twentieth century. Finally the essay argues that such a reading has important consequences for our status as readers and the possibility of testimony.