Abstract
Amongst countless testimonies and narratives engendered by Shoah, the book, If this is a man, by the Italian writer, Primo Levi, stands as one of the most remarkable accounts on the horrors and monstrosities experienced in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. This essay aims at discussing the issues of violence and the body mortification found in Levi's account, which, in turn, reveal a process of reification of life whose consequences affect profoundly the relationship between the individual and his/her body as well as the body of others. The discussion is grounded on the author's narration concerning the process of human reification and degradation as well as on Horkheimer and Adorno's considerations on the relationship between enlightenment and barbarism alongside with the concepts of sovereignty and the state of biopoliticization, known as "naked life", thought by Agamben.
Key words
Shoah; mortification; body; biopoliticization; Primo Levi