The Care of the Witness: A Contemporary History of Testimony in Crises

Description

During the twentieth century, witnessing grew to be not just a widespread solution for coping with political atrocities but also an intricate problem. As the personal experience of victims, soldiers, and aid workers acquired unparalleled authority as a source of moral and political truth, the capacity to generate adequate testimonies based on this experience was repeatedly called into question. Michal Givoni's book follows the trail of the problems, torments, and crises that became commingled with witnessing to genocide, disaster, and war over the course of the twentieth century. By juxtaposing episodes of reflexive witnessing to the Great War, the Jewish Holocaust, and third world emergencies, The Care of the Witness explores the shifting roles and responsibilities of witnesses in history and the contribution that the troubles of witnessing made to the ethical consolidation of the witness as the leading figure of nongovernmental politics. Cover Half-title page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The Ethics of Witnessing and the Politics of the Governed The Politics of Autonomous Witnessing Witnessing as a Conscious Practice of Freedom Where Ethics and Politics Intersect 2 Witnessing Beyond Politics: Testimony Theory between Auschwitz and the Crisis of Representation From the testis to the martyr From the Witness to the Subject From Testimony to the Experience of Witnessing From the Catastrophe to the Global Emergency Zones 3 Witnesses in Public: The Authority of Experience and the Critique of Testimonies Following the Great War A Fighting Truth The Composed Witness Witnessing against Literature 4 Empathic Listeners and Alarmed Spectators: Secondary Witnessing and Existential Ruin in the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies Communities of Witnessing The Inner Witness and its Rehabilitation The Alarmed Spectator and the Diminished Self From the Survivor to the Witness 5 Humanitarian Governance and Ethical Cultivation: Médecins Sans Frontières and the Advent of the Expert-Witness A New Humanitarian Rationality The Physician’s Burden Expert-Witnessing and Active Presence The Discrepancies of Global Governance Witnessing and the Humanitarian/Political Divide Conclusion Revisiting the Ethics of Witnessing Bibliography Index