Abstract
The article is based on the presupposition that the so-called posthuman future is founded upon the repressed forms of the human, often referred to as non-human. It uses reflection on the figure of the concentration camp Muselmann - an extreme example of human subjectivity that proportedly defines the non-human aspect of the human and warns against a future in which both the living and the dead (bodies) are treated as waste, and life becomes unworthy of being lived. Therefore, the aim of the text is to find grounds for defending the Muselmann's humanity and to present him/her as a figure of resistance to biopower. The article posits a difference between Agamben's Muselmann as figuration of subjectivity (Remnants of Auschwitz, Homo sacer), and the more "incarnate" figures of the Muselmann in the memoir of a former Muselmann (Adolf Gawalewicz's Reflections in a Wating Room before the Gas Chamber), a scientific medical study (Antoni Kępiński The Auschwitz Refl
ections), and a work of literary fiction (Jorge Semprun Le mort qu'il faut). The aim of the analysis is to compare and problematize different representations of the Muselmann, which either demonstrate the efficacy of biopower (Agamben) or its limitations (Gawalewicz, Kępiński, Semprun). Identification and description of representations of the Muselmann in those books (the active Muselmann, the Muselmann as automaton, the Muselmann as non-human, the Muselmann as the Gorgon), makes it possible to derive two models of humanity presented in the sources: an essentialist vertical model (depth with a bottom of the non-human), and a fluid vertical model (a continuum of transgressions between the human and the non-human, through various processes of transhumanation.) The latter model demonstrates the flexible and versatile quality of being human, and suggests that it should be seen in terms of potentiality and becoming rather than in terms of an essentialist quest for definition of human nature.
ections), and a work of literary fiction (Jorge Semprun Le mort qu'il faut). The aim of the analysis is to compare and problematize different representations of the Muselmann, which either demonstrate the efficacy of biopower (Agamben) or its limitations (Gawalewicz, Kępiński, Semprun). Identification and description of representations of the Muselmann in those books (the active Muselmann, the Muselmann as automaton, the Muselmann as non-human, the Muselmann as the Gorgon), makes it possible to derive two models of humanity presented in the sources: an essentialist vertical model (depth with a bottom of the non-human), and a fluid vertical model (a continuum of transgressions between the human and the non-human, through various processes of transhumanation.) The latter model demonstrates the flexible and versatile quality of being human, and suggests that it should be seen in terms of potentiality and becoming rather than in terms of an essentialist quest for definition of human nature.