THE POWER(LESS) OF LANGUAGE: TESTIMONY AND EXCEPTION IN THE WORK OF PRIMO LEVI

Abstract

The objective of this study is to analyze, from the work of Primo Levi, the testimonial writing statute and the difficulties it poses in relation to their use, especially by historiography (which implies thinking, from the discussions launched in the course Files Literary the archiving strategies and critical). Starting from the testimony of a the Jewish extermination survivor by the Third Reich, we try to think about the relationship between narrative and event, as well as to what extent the aporias raised by the testimonial narratives point to the testimony like the threshold of historiography, and like all the difficulties of the first can be expansive to the second. In this sense, it is considered the testimonial act full of complexities that dismantling the facility they wish to see in the narrative the literal transposition of experience and sees the precariousness of the testimony (balanced on a double doubt) the power(less) even of the language intends to respond to the intolerable.