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Article: Chemical contaminations: allegory and alterity in Primo Levi's Il sistema periodico.(Holocaust Literature and Culture)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Italica
- Article date:
- September 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 American Association of Teachers of Italian. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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What if differing rather than consensus were the issue for thinking?--(Jean-Francois Lyotard, Le differand)
Despite a title that alludes to one of the principle scientific systems of classifying knowledge--namely, Mendeleev's categorization of the chemical elements--Primo Levi's Il sistema periodico (1975) is a thoroughly heterogeneous text that defies easy categories. In this text, Levi highlights the interdependence of scientific and philosophical discourses, blurs the genres of autobiography and fiction, and relentlessly points to the impossibility of arriving at the elemental or the pure in any field. (l) Loosely based on the author's career as a chemist, the ...