A HAND TO THE DROWNING: ETHICAL LONELINESS, DE- PERSONALIZATION, AND THE DROWNED AND THE SAVED

Abstract

This paper explores Primo Levi's account of depersonalization in the Shoah (Holocaust). It divided Levi's account into three main themes: deprivation, animalization, and loneliness. It then used William James' psychology of misery and Jill Stauffer's concept of Ethical Loneliness to interpret these themes. It determined that while one might at first conceptualize personhood, and thus depersonalization, as internal and independent, Levi's experience shows that our personhood is also affected by the perceptions of others, for better and for worse. Any understanding of depersonalization that does not account for this essentially relational nature of personhood is thus incomplete.