In Spite of All (Malgré tout)

Abstract

The locution <i>malgré tout</i>, ‘in spite of all’ or ‘despite everything’, is first and foremost associated with the vexed debate stirred by the exhibition <i>Mémoire des camps</i>, which was organized in Paris in 2001, and the violent reactions provoked by Didi-Huberman’s catalogue essay, “<i>l’images malgré tout</i>”, subsequently expanded into the eponymously titled book in response to the fierce criticisms. Didi-Huberman’s conception of the four photographs taken by a member of the <i>Sonderkommando</i>, the ‘special units’ of Jewish prisoners whose task it was to dispose of the corpses at Birkenau in August 1944, as acts of resistance, as visual testimonies, and as “<i>survivors</i>” (ISA, p.46), was first attacked by Claude Lanzmann, in an interview in <i>Le Monde</i> (2001), and soon followed by Gérard Wajcman in <i>Les temps modernes</i> (2001; see also Pagnoux, 2001). In his article, Wajcman accused Didi-Huberman not only of corroborating the logic of Holocaust deniers, who demand that the event is yet to be proved, but, primarily, of Christianizing the Shoah by means of images.