L’identité personnelle à l’épreuve de l’expérience concentrationnaire: essai de microanalyse de Si c’est un homme de Primo Levi

Abstract

Mainly based on the testimony of Primo Levi in Si c’est un homme, and through a perspective inspired by the “interactionist” approach of E. Goffman, this article first aims at analysing the depersonalizing methods and techniques which were implemented by the Nazi institution on the detainees of Auschwitz concentration camp. Second, the article studies the tactics, the stratagems, the savoir-faire - unevenly shared according to each prisoner’s resources - by which means the oppressed tried to “put life back together”. Our approach is completely opposed to the idea that prisoners, “like lambs sent to slaughter”, passively suffered the injunctions of the concentration institution.