Testimony/Bearing Witness: Epistemology, Ethics, History and Culture

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What is the epistemological value of testimony What role does language, images, and memory play in its construction What is the relationship between the person who attests and those who listen Is bearing witness a concept that is exclusively based in interpersonal relations Or are there other modes of communicating or mediating to constitute a constellation of testimony Testimony/Bearing Witness establishes a dialogue between the different approaches to testimony in epistemology, historiography, law, art, media studies and psychiatry. With examples including the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge and the Armenian genocide the volume discusses the chances and limits of communicating epistemological and ethical, philosophical and cultural-historical, past and present perspectives on the phenomenon and concept of bearing witness.

Reviews

The collection by Sybille Krmer and Sigrid Weigel on experience, meaning and notions of testimony/bearing witness strike straight at the heart of fundamental epistemological questions of calamity and its philosophical and cultural repercussions. From the objective perspective(s) of subjectivity up to the social constellation of testifying, the transformations of existential bearing unto judgment, and of judgement unto knowledge are scrutinized in a multitude of most enlightening approaches. -- Dan Diner, Professor of Modern History, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Testimony references at root a witness (testis) who acts (monium). Meticulously and imaginatively compiled by Kramer and Weigel this collection offers a dazzling array of scholars from multifarious disciplines adducing theoretical testimony to the epistemological and emotional enigma of the autography of the witness. -- Peter Goodrich, Director, Program in Law and Humanities at Cardozo School of Law

Author Bio

Sybille Krmer is former Professor of Philosophy at Freie Universitt Berlin and from 2019 she will hold a senior professorship at Leuphana University Lueneburg. Sigrid Weigel is former Director of the Zentrum fr Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL) in Berlin.