Original scientific paper

Telos of the Camp

Zoran Kurelić ; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

In this paper the author presents Hannah Arendt’s warning that totalitarian
solutions may outlive totalitarian regimes and Giorgio Agamben’s thesis
that Auschwitz and Omarska are essentially the same. If they were right, as
Kurelić tries to show, the reincarnations of totalitarian spirit are the exact opposite
of what the European Union was designed to be. The prevention of the
WWII-type horrors on the continent was one of the self-understood foundations
of the entire project. We now know that, as far as preventing wars in Europe
goes, the project is seriously flawed. In that respect the European failure
should serve as a troubling example for those who think about global prevention
of anti-human behavior. Kurelić argues that evil is the unintended telos of
the camp, and that Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism still explains more than
Agamben’s predatory biopolitics.

Keywords

(concentration, extermination) camp; sovereignty; radical evil; biopolitics; state of exception

Hrčak ID:

50932

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/50932

Publication date:

12.3.2010.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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