Authoritative testimony and authoritarian discourse in Primo Levi's Se questo e un uomo.(Critical Essay) From: Italian Culture | Date: January 1, 2001| Author: Druker, Jonathan | COPYRIGHT 2001 American Association for Italian Studies. 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.Copyright information

That Primo Levi intended his 1946 Auschwitz memoir, Se questo e un uomo, to be something more than an autobiography is evident in his copious (but not exclusive) reliance on a first-person plural narrative. So far, most scholars have viewed Levi's `we' and `our' as usefully inclusive pronouns that not only evoke a chorus of victims who speak through, and thus authorize, Levi's narrator, but also facilitate the reader's participation in the retelling. (1) In using the plural, they s...