Back From the Future: Primo Levi at the Ends of the World

Uri Cohen (Tel Aviv University) presents the closing session of his seminar on Primo Levi held at the Departments of History and Sociology of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. This event will take place at the Colégio Brasileiro de Altos Estudos of UFRJ. Uri Cohen’s book collecting his writings on Primo Levi will be published in November by CPL Editions.

In person attendance: Espaço Antonio Barros de Castro, Carlos Lessa e Maria da Conceição Tavares. Remote attendance by Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84783900100

This event takes place at 4:00 pm (US Time) and 5:00 pm (Brasil Time).

After returning from Auschwitz and telling his story in two foundational books of testimony, Primo Levi turned to writing and publishing works of speculative fiction across three key collections: Storie Naturali (1966), Vizio di Forma (1971), and Lilit (1981). At the time, these stories were poorly received, viewed mostly as unsuccessful attempts by an established witness to transform into a literary artist. In this talk I wish to revisit these stories, not as the reliques of a great author as much as the work of a man that has seen the future that awaits us all if we fail to consider what he had already narrated. Having seen the ultimate merger of man and machine in the death apparatus of Auschwitz, he projects the Lager into the future, trying to achieve escape velocity from its gravity. From Nazi scientists trying to develop angels out of prisoners, to the creation of a machine that writes poetry, proto social medias and personalized advertisement. Long before computers where a household fact, Levi sees the future, because he has seen the past, leaving us not only testimony but anthropologies and archaeologies of the future to help us consider, if this will be a man, if we will remain human.

Image: Tarsila do Amaral, Workers, 1933 (Acervo Artístico-Cultural dos Palácios do Governo do Estado de São Paulo.)