Hypatia (2020), 35, 626–645 doi:10.1017/hyp.2020.41 ARTICLE The Production of the Muselmann and the Singularity of Auschwitz: A Critique of Adriana Cavarero’s Account of the “Auschwitz Event” Leonhard Riep Universität Leipzig, Institut für Philosophie, Beethovenstraße 15, 04107 Leipzig, Germany Corresponding author.
[email protected] (Received 19 September 2019; revised 26 March 2020; accepted 15 April 2020) Abstract Feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero claims in her book Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence that the core of the horror of Auschwitz is constituted by the fig- ure of the Muselmann. I argue that Cavarero’s lack of an accurate historical engagement with this figure in particular and with Auschwitz in general leads her to a speculative turn, thereby universalizing the phenomenon of the Muselmann by making it the example of Auschwitz, and moreover, the key factor to explain its singularity. I show that the phe- nomenon of the Muselmann, although a particular horrible effect of Auschwitz, is not limited to this concentration and extermination camp system. Consequently, the charac- teristic that makes Auschwitz a unicum cannot be found in the Muselmann. Rather, as I elucidate, the singularity of Auschwitz and the Shoah in general must be understood in relation to the true goal of this camp: the final extermination of European Jewry. In Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence and in “‘Destroy Your Sight with a New Gorgon’: Mass Atrocity and the Phenomenology of Horror” (Cavarero 2009; 2018), Adriana Cavarero tries not only to analyze the specific structure of horror, but also to give an account of a particular horrible event: “Any present-day reflection on horror must, sooner or later, come to terms with Auschwitz” (Cavarero 2009, 34).