The Grey Bond: Notes on Life, Power, and Evil in Primo Levi

Simona Forti’s chapter demonstrates the philosophical value of Levi’s work by ‘thinking with’ If This a Man and The Drowned and the Saved. The chapter elaborates on Levi’s account of power, highlighting how Levi’s secular and materialist analysis of the concentrationary experience enables us to deconstruct the very structure of dualism, going beyond the rigid dichotomies of mind–body, absolute evil–absolute good, pure victim–wicked perpetrator. As Forti argues, Levi manages to provide a fine-grained dissection of the microphysics of power without collapsing essential ethical categories and historical distinctions. The dialogue between Levi and Forti thus sheds light on the competitive nature of life and on how connivance with power props up regimes of violence and oppression.