15_3_10_ICS_sentimientos

"Feelings are highly ideologically charged and in politics they are used to maintain the status quo or to end it". This is how Cynthia Franklin, professor and researcher at the University of Hawai'i (USA) expressed herself during her visit to the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra. Professor Franklin gave a lecture at seminar organized by the project 'Emotional culture and identity'which is funded by Zurich Insurance.

In the activity, entitled 'Affect, Ideology and the Eichmann Trial', Cynthia Franklin explained the relationship between ideologically charged feelings and their use for political purposes, connecting it to the controversy surrounding the philosopher Hannah Arendt and the repression of the anti-Zionist speech , which for some is an anti-Semitic speech .

Hanna Arendt and the trial of Adolf Eichmann

According to Cynthia Franklin, the 1961 trial of Nazi SS lieutenant colonel Adolf Eichmann was used by Israeli politicians to strengthen the legitimacy and existence of the State of Israel internally and externally.

"The trial of a person who had committed great atrocities," she noted, "was also used as a political theater. Hannah Arendt, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Study in the Banality of Evil, harshly criticized Israel for having used a political trial as a state-building project ."

For the University of Hawai'i professor and researcher, the most controversial aspect of Hannah Arendt's words was their ironic tone. "Personally," she noted, "I think they misunderstood what she meant, which was more of a call to all citizens to think about how they participate by sustaining the Structures of violence and human rights abuses.