Rationalisation and bureaucratisation of death: A reading of Modernity and the Holocaust

Abstract

On the basis of a reading of Zygmunt Bauman’s book Modernity and the Holocaust, the aim of this article is to bring to light the link between the period of Modernity, with its defining features, and the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis in the concentration camps, showing how the latter could only have occurred within a framework of possibilities offered by the former. Starting, by way of example, with Heidegger’s disappointment at the fact that National Socialism continued the path of Modernity, I will briefly analyse the situation of the Jew before the advent of modern society and civilisation, and I will eventually conclude how the rationality and bureaucracy inherent to the modern period allowed, without contravening any of its maxims, the realisation of the Final Solution.