Auschwitz demanded a language translation that reinscribes familiar meanings to the point of rupture

Evidence

Moni, the boy whose perspective is followed in third-person narration, figures a challenge of language: He must fit the image of the Piepel, the sexual slave of “Prominents,” block chiefs and kapos. He also figures a challenge to the reader, who must read words such as “life” and “love” and translate them into “Auschwitz life” and “Auschwitz love.” Bread, in Auschwitz, is “Auschwitz bread,” and sky is ”Auschwitz sky,” and the days and the nights mark ”Auschwitz weeks” while one breathes, perhaps, ”Auschwitz air.” Yet this constant and necessary translation is predicated on a reinscription of a familiar meaning, to the point of a rupture that must, however, fail, reinscribing therefore an understanding that is as unavoidable as it is unbearable. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 726

Categorization

• DEFINE: Anidjar’s method for reading the camp as a linguistic-semantic problem folds into his broader political-theology bridge argument.