Rebuilding culture after mass murder is itself barbaric negation.

Evidence

The idea that after this war life will continue ‘normally’ or even that culture might be ‘rebuilt’ – as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its negation – is idiotic. Millions of Jews have been murdered, and this is to be seen as an interlude and not the catastrophe itself. What more is this culture waiting for? And even if countless people still have time to wait, is it conceivable that what happened in Europe will have no consequences, that the quantity of victims will not be transformed into a new quality of society at large, barbarism? — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 69

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The demand that catastrophe end thought’s easy resumption — ‘not an interlude but the catastrophe itself’ — is a standing corrective to every return to normal.
• SEED: Essay angle: the moral status of ‘returning to normal’ after any catastrophe, drawing the quantity-into-quality transformation of victims into barbarism.
• XREF: connects to: Killings began with cultural elites to erase communal memory — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and…, 97; Cultural destruction was performed to make later denial plausible — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and…, 384; Strip a people of their historical sanctity to make them killable without dignity — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 518

Broader Connections

• Killings began with cultural elites to erase communal memory #expands (0.80) — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 97
• Strip a people of their historical sanctity to make them killable without dignity #expands (0.78) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 518
• Cultural destruction was performed to make later denial plausible #expands (0.75) — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 384