Adolf Eichmann Was Not an Obedient Bureaucrat. Uses of Arendt’s Eichmann to Think about Argentine Represores

Abstract

The aim of this article is to produce a critical review of the use of “Arendt’s Eichmann” within the literature dedicated to study the recent violent past in Argentina with the goal of opening up the possibility to new questions about that past. In this vein, we shall analyze four problems drawn from the bibliography: personal responsibility, the figure of the perpetrator, grounds for legal punishment and the relationship between law and morality, and the effects of crime on the perpetrators. According to our interpretation, the interest of Arendt’s analysis starts there where she found in Eichmann not an obedient bureaucrat but someone without a criminal intention and with moral aspirations and abided by the law, therefore someone without a guilty conscience about his deeds.