Agamben’s ‘bare life’ and Grossman’s ethics of senseless kindness

In his early works, Giorgio Agamben argues that some Auschwitz inmates practised a ‘silent form of resistance’ by shutting themselves off from the world until nothing could harm them. I argue this conception ‘bare life’ is both too abstract and individualistic. Agamben’s idea bare life’s resistance first neglects socio-historical context has produced particular instances it, effectively barring investigation into how to avoid future occurrences sovereign violence. Agamben, second, emphasizes potential for present in individual bodies shut without providing guidelines these should substantive community. consequently employ Vasily Grossman’s writings on Shoah provide an alternative camps. According Grossman, lies not closing oneself world, but cultivating ineradicable nodes ‘senseless kindness’ concrete human interactions.