Gérard Rabinovitch

Using his notion of "destructiveness", Gérard Rabinovitch discusses and criticizes the central thesis of Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust, and suggests that we must go beyond the categories of instrumental reason and action. Using Freudian terms, Gérard Rabinovitch, puts forth the philosophical proposition that the Leviathan could, by excessive constraint, stand for "morbid attachments", and the Behemoth for "thanatophiliac detachments" while pointing up the nuances between attachments and detachments in life: "The distinction lies not between attachment and detachment, but in the morbid scenario or the erotic dynamic which animates them." The idea of destructiveness allows Gérard Rabinovitch to perceive, articulate and think about the similarities and differences between the practical modalities and conditions that gave rise to the Shoah and the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Gérard Rabinovitch (born 1948, Paris) is a French philosopher and sociologist. He is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), member of the Center for Research on Sense, Ethics, Society and of the Center for Research on Psychoanalysis, Medicine and Society, at the University of Paris VII-Denis Diderot. He is also a regular visiting faculty member at the University of Minas Gerais (Brazil).

Gérard Rabinovitch was born in Paris, France in 1948. He is the son of the resistance fighter Léopold Rabinovitch (1922-2009) who was a member of the FTP-MOI group, Compagnie Carmagnole-Liberté, deported as a Résistant to Dachau in 1944, and of Anna née Portnoï, who was a hidden child in France during WWII. Since 2008, Gérard Rabinovitch has been the Secretary General of the Prix Francine and Antoine Bernheim for Arts, Letters and Sciences.