Under-man

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches the sub-human as the necessary correlate of the superman: if there are supermen, there are sub-humans1. He takes up this point again in 2020, in a session on Proust: as soon as one posits a superman, all those who do not belong to that group are classed among the sub-humans. He locates the invention of the concept in the United States, in Stoddard, whose "underman" precedes the Nazi Untermensch2. He draws from this a remark about the criterion of this category: Stoddard also includes white socialists in it, which shows, in his view, that the distinction rests neither on colour nor on any physical given3. He develops this observation in the session "U for Übermensch" (2015). He returns to it in 2017, in a session devoted to Adotevi's "Négritude et négrologues", and again in 2020. His account remains the same from one session to the next.

1. 1U for Übermensch4 Jan 2015 · 2:35
2. 2Adotevi: Negritude and negrologists (1)17 Jun 2017 · 41:52
3. 3U for Übermensch4 Jan 2015 · 5:17

Summary produced automatically from 5 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.