Book Reviews : WOLFGANG SOFSKY, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (William Templer trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, 356 pp., $29.95
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399800700413 |
| Author | David Fraser |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
586
be
that
it
continues
to
devote
much
of
its
energies
to
opposing
gay
rights,
as
a
national
organization
it
has
deliberately
downplayed
the
issue.
Why?
Finally,
while
Herman
rejects
the
equation
of
the
Christian
Right
with
the
extreme
right,
she
does
suggest
that
its
anti-gay
’themes
of
disease
and
seduction
are
strongly
reminiscent
of
older,
anti-Semitic
discourses’
(p.
79)
and
that
the
claim
that
on
average
gay
men
have
a
high
income
’plays
to
preexisting
anti-Semitic
ideologies’
(p.
125).
This
is
a
complex
ques-
tion
(one
writer,
for
instance,
has
even
argued
that
anti-fascist
language
is
saturated
with
notions
of
fascists
as
germs
or
vermin)
but
all
I
would
want
to
argue
here
is
that
just
as
populist
attacks
on
groups
as
privileged
or
conspiratorial
are
common
on
the
extreme
right
but
not
only
located
there,
so
constructions
of
gays
that,
in
some
ways,
resemble
those
of
Jews
need
not
have
a
root
in
anti-semitism.
The
rise
of
an
anti-gay
agenda
has
proved
to
be
a
significant
part
of
American
poli-
tics
in
recent
years.
In
examining
how
it
has
been
constructed,
Herman
has
produced
an
excellent
study.
That
it
should
provoke
argument
as
well
as
admiration
is
a
measure
of
its
achievement.
MARTIN
DURHAM
Department
of Politics
and
American
Studies,
University
of
Wolverhampton,
UK
WOLFGANG
SOFSKY,
The
Order
of
Terror:
The
Concentration
Camp
(William
Templer
trans.).
Princeton:
Princeton
University
Press,
1997, 356
pp.,
$29.95.
Conflicting
images
seem
to
haunt
our
historical
understanding
of
the
Holocaust.
On
the
one
hand,
the
destruction
of
European
Jewry
by
the
Nazis
and
their
allies
is
incomprehensible.
On
the
other,
many
of
the
institutional
and
epistemological
struc-
tures
which
made
the
Holocaust
happen
fit
easily
into
the
structural
and
ideological
continuities
of
modernity.
Wolfgang
Sofsky’s
The
Order
of
Terror:
The
Concentration
Camp
fits
uncomfort-
ably
astride
both
sides
of
our
collective
imaginary
of
the
Shoah.
The
author
describes
in
often
minute
detail
the
structure,
organization
and
daily
operational
routine
of
the
Nazi
concentration
camp
which
he
clearly
and
explicitly
places
into
the
dominant
sociology
of
modernity,
with
its
emphasis
on
the
state
monopoly
of
violence,
the
bureaucratization
and
rationalization
of
existence
and
a
Foucauldian
dispersion
of
sites
of
surveillance,
discipline
and
control.
He
then
proceeds
to
the
second,
perhaps
more
vital,
ideological
point
which
underpins
the
historical
reimagining
of
the
Holo-
caust
necessary
for
us
to
continue
to
live
’after
Auschwitz’,
or
in
Sofsky’s
case,
’after
Dachau’.
In
the
concentration
camp,
Sofsky
finds
a
point
of
rupture
with
modern
organiz-
ational
and
penological
theory
and
practice.
While
modern
systems
of
control
and
surveillance
of
the
deviant
are
informed
by
a
symbiotic
relationship
between
power
and
resistance,
the
concentration
camp
operates
beyond
this
modernist
dynamic
of
power.
For
Sofsky,
’the
caesura
in
the
history
of
power
is
unmistakable’
(p.
279).
In
the
Nazi
concentration
camp,
there
operated
a
system
of absolute
power.
Here
resist-
ance
was
both
unnecessary
and
impossible.
In
a
sense,
then,
Dachau
becomes
almost
’post’
modern,
throwing
off
the
organizational
and
structural
constraints
imposed
by
definition
on
modern
penal
institutions.
In
the
concentration
camp,
the
social
struc-
tures
and
hierarchies
which
flow
downward
from
the
SS
personnel
to
be
replicated
in
the
ordering
of
the
relationships
among
prisoners,
from
the
kapos
to
the
walking
dead,
create
a
new
form
of
power,
absolute
power,
to
which
resistance
is
irrelevant:
’Absol-
ute
power
does
not
obey
the
pattern
of
purposeful,
result-oriented
action.
It
is
pur-
poseless ;
not
poesis,
but
negative
praxis’
(p.
21).
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