‘Operation Finale’ (2018): Adolf Eichmann and The Banality of Evil.

Nazi Adolf Eichmann standing in prisoner’s cage during reading of indictment against him at his trial for war crimes, in 1961

“The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today.”

— Theodore Adorno

The dialectic of culture and barbarism has a long, long, history. It is as old as the story of man. The theory that the Neanderthal species was wiped out by Homo Sapiens Sapiens is part of that dialectic too. That the brutish, aggressive Neanderthal were completely cleansed by a more advanced and better — adapted species who used language too communicate effectively, was an accepted construct of the past. That was until DNA science showed that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens interbred on a dynamic scale. A prehistoric ‘Master Race’ was not responsible for the extermination of another group of proto-humans.They were biologically assimilated and we are their ancestors.

But this dialectic between the forces of barbarism and culture as described by Adorno is forever inscribed within the poetry and the recording of works such as The Iliad, Greek Tragedy in particular, The Epic of Gilgamesh and last but not least that compendium of culture and barbarism, The Bible, which is of striking relevance for us in the Western…