Levi Beyond Levi: Creative Engagements with Primo Levi(10 Transnational Italian Cultures)

What do Primo Levi’s works tell us about our world? How can they help us to think about today’s global challenges? Levi Beyond Levi invites readers to rediscover Primo Levi as a thinker whose ideas continue to resonate far beyond the historical conditions in which they were written. Emphasising reading as a dialogic and creative practice, the volume shows how Levi’s reflections on violence, memory, ethics, science, and political responsibility speak directly to the world we inhabit today.

Rather than treating Levi’s work as something fixed in the past, the contributors explore how his writings travel across time and culture, opening new perspectives on urgent issues such as rising authoritarianism, the ecological crisis, and the genocide in Palestine. They highlight how contemporary writers, artists, and theorists have drawn creatively on Levi’s insights, expanding and reimagining his questions for the twenty-first century.

Through innovative and thought-provoking essays, Levi Beyond Levi positions Levi as a companion for thinking through moral and political challenges that remain unresolved. The volume invites readers to consider Levi not only as a survivor and witness, but also as a classic whose works continue to generate meaning, spark debate, and offer tools for navigating our ‘moment of danger’.

Contributors Acknowledgements References and Quotations Abbreviations of Levi’s Titles

FOREWORD Maria Anna Mariani

INTRODUCTION

Levi beyond Levi: Thinking with Primo Levi in the 21st Century Stefano Bellin

PART I: COMPARATIVE ENGAGEMENTS

1. Primo Levi and Human Equality during the Genocide in Gaza Stefano Bellin

2. Primo Levi in the Amazon: Postcolonial Genocides and the Holocaust Michele Maiolani

3. Faith in writing: Primo Levi and James Baldwin Ruth Murphy

PART II: POSTCOLONIAL ENGAGEMENTS

1. Decolonising Testimony: Primo Levi and Frederick Douglass Bryan Cheyette

2. ‘Messiness’: Maaza Mengiste looks with Primo Levi Derek Duncan

3. Primo Levi, Antisemitism, and Anti-Blackness in Italy Cristina Lombardi-Diop

PART II: PHILOSOPHICAL ENGAGEMENTS

1. The Grey Bond: Notes on Life, Power and Evil in Primo Levi Simona Forti

2. Fiction and Solicitude: Ethics and the Conditions for Survival Judith Butler

3. A Wicked God Called Life: Beyond the Deleuzian Century with Primo Levi Simone Ghelli

PART IV: ECOCRITICAL ENGAGEMENTS

1. Freedom Begins with Signs: Understanding Biosemiotics with Primo Levi ‒ and Vice Versa Serenella Iovino

2. Levi, Darwin, and the Radical Ambivalence of Human Nature Telmo Pievani

3. Primo Levi’s Transspecies Imaginary Gabriele Schwab

PART V: HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL ENGAGEMENTS

1. Epistemology and Communication: Primo Levi, Popular Science and Popular History Robert S. C. Gordon

2. Primo Levi, Arnaldo Momigliano and the Writing of History Rosa Mucignat

3. ‘Exceptions Redefine the Norm’: A Conversation with Carlo Greppi Carlo Greppi, Stefano Bellin, Simone Ghelli

AFTERWORD Reading Levi Far Beyond Levi Michael Rothberg

Index