Testimony/Bearing Witness

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

The collection by Sybille Krämer 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.

• Introduction / Part I: Historical Perspectives / 1. The Presence of the Witness, Francois Hartog/ 2. The Debate on Testimonies Concerning Miracles and History in 17th-18th Century France, Michèle Bokobza Kahan/ 3. Enlightenment Perspectives on the Problem of Testimony, Axel Gelfert/ Part II: International Sites / 4. Testimony in Light of the Khmer Rouge Trials - Reflections of a Judge Involved, Marcel Lemonde / 5. The Armenian Case - Bearing Witness by mediation of the Second or Third Generation, Janine Altounian / 6. Testimonies in the Spaces of Promoting and Opposing Violent Extremism, Stevan Weine/ Part III: Holocaust- Paradigm and Intersection of Survivior Testimony and Philosophical Epistemology / 7. The Power and Perils of Being Believed, Benjamin McMyler / 8. The Testimony of the Traumatic Witness: The Tension between the Therapeutic Act and the Loss of Words and Their Meaning, Zohar Rubinstein / 9. Analysing Holocaust Survivor Testimony: Certainties, Scepticism, Relativism, Martin Kusch / 10. Probing