De oerkreet van Louis-Ferdinand Céline: The Primal Scream of Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The article pits the controversial oeuvre of French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline against the contemporary discussion on wokeness. The question is not whether Céline is still ‘acceptable’, but how we can understand his mysogeny and anti-Semitism from his literature. It is argued that it is impossible to keep his literary work and his anti-Semitism separate. The relationship between Céline and the Jewish literary scholar Milton Hindus, who tried to penetrate Celine’s anti-Semitism early on, is discussed. Finally, through the philosophy of Julia Kristeva and through a comparison with Antonine Artaud’s writing, an attempt is made to understand Céline’s anti-Semitism literarily.