Rights sold to the English World (Seagull Books)
Under option in: Argentina, Brazil, Catalonia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain
“A civilization that forgets its past is condemned to relive it. It is with this maxim – pronounced by the American philosopher George Santayana in the early Twentieth Century – firmly in mind that our civilization has instituted and institutionalized the memory of how the Jews of Europe were exterminated. But now an unexpected problem has emerged for this civilization: not that the crime has been forgotten, but everything else has. Hitler pervades the topic and no one else, or almost no one, stays on in the popular imagination.
The supreme wrongdoer is in the process of claiming the throne of memory for himself alone.
In this society where constant accusations and insistent expiation take turns in tackling “history’s darkest hours”, I sometimes find myself dreaming of memories with no banner to wave, a modest, discreet, silent, pedestrian memory or one that makes no more noise than
turning the pages in the personal colloquium of reading.”
Alain Finkielkraut
This book comprises Alain Finkielkraut’s key programs for “Répliques” (France Culture)
devoted to Nazism and the genocide of the Jews.
Alain Finkielkraut lectures at the prestigious École polytechnique. He presents the show “Répliques” for France Culture. He is the author of Nouveau désordre amoureux (Seuil, 1977), La défaite de la pensée (Gallimard, 1987) and, more recently, Un coeur intelligent (Stock, 2009, translated into 11 languages). L’interminable écriture de l’Extermination is the Forth volume of the “Répliques” Series.
Dans cette société de l’accusation perpétuelle et de l’expiation tapageuse qui arraisonne à tour de bras les fameuses heures les plus sombres de notre histoire, je me prends parfois à rêver d’une mémoire sans oriflamme ni destrier, d’une mémoire pédestre, modeste, discrète, silencieuse ou qui ne fasse pas d’autre bruit que les pages que l’on tourne dans le colloque singulier de la lecture.
Comment parler de la Shoah sans tout mélanger ni sacrifier les exigences du jour ? Quelles leçons tirer de cet événement proprement incroyable ? Comment penser le mal, la radicalité du mal, la banalité du mal, l’industrialisation du mal, sans abandonner au mal tout l’espace de l’immortalité ? Ces dialogues que voici sont nés de ces interrogations et de ce scrupule. »
Alain Finkielkraut