Hannah Arendt Center presents:
Judging in Dark Times: The Brasillach and Eichmann Trials
A Lunchtime Talk by Lori Marso
Thursday, March 31, 2011
McCarthy House
1:10 pm – 2:30 am
This event occurred on:
Thu. March 31, 1:10 pm
Judging in Dark Times:
The Brasillach and Eichmann Trials
by Lori Marso,
This essay returns to the most compelling case of judgment described by Hannah Arendt, that of Adolph Eichmann in Israel (1961), as well as the case of another Nazi war criminal, that of Robert Brasillach in France (1945), explored by Simone de Beauvoir. Providing political rather than juridical readings, Arendt and Beauvoir explore the problem of judging individuals as beings situated in a political order that seeks to eliminate certain forms of otherness and difference. Beauvoir’s insistence on bringing bodies into politics in her emphasis on the violation of human ambiguity as Brasillach’s crime implicitly critiques and complements Arendt’s naming of Eichmann’s crime as the attempt to violate worldly plurality.
Professor Marso is Director of Women’s and Gender Studies and professor of Political Theory, at Union College. Her books include: Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity: The Lives and Work of Intellectual Women; W Stands For Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender (W/ Michaele Ferguson); and (Un)Manly Citizens: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's and Germaine de Staël's Subversive Women.
Judging in Dark Times:
The Brasillach and Eichmann Trials
by Lori Marso,
This essay returns to the most compelling case of judgment described by Hannah Arendt, that of Adolph Eichmann in Israel (1961), as well as the case of another Nazi war criminal, that of Robert Brasillach in France (1945), explored by Simone de Beauvoir. Providing political rather than juridical readings, Arendt and Beauvoir explore the problem of judging individuals as beings situated in a political order that seeks to eliminate certain forms of otherness and difference. Beauvoir’s insistence on bringing bodies into politics in her emphasis on the violation of human ambiguity as Brasillach’s crime implicitly critiques and complements Arendt’s naming of Eichmann’s crime as the attempt to violate worldly plurality.
Professor Marso is Director of Women’s and Gender Studies and professor of Political Theory, at Union College. Her books include: Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity: The Lives and Work of Intellectual Women; W Stands For Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender (W/ Michaele Ferguson); and (Un)Manly Citizens: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's and Germaine de Staël's Subversive Women.