The impossibility of surviving the consciousness of death through the act of bearing witness

Abstract

Is it possible to survive one’s own consciousness of death? This essay analyzes the impossibility of returning to a form of ordinary existence after experiencing the horror of a Nazi concentration camp. In order to develop this idea, this study focuses on Jorge Semprún’s autobiographical testimony La escritura o la vida, a text that, apart from accounting for the witness’ physical survival, is also an attempt to overcome the survivor’s certainty of his own finitude as a meaningful possibility. By means of reverting Martin Heidegger’s philosophical theory, Semprún tries to articulate his ontological consciousness according to inauthentic paradigms. This approach responds to the Spanish survivor’s attempt to return to an ordinary form of existence from which he intends to account for his own historicity.