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

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

by Sybille Kramer (Editor)

Synopsis

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.

$62.32

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
Published: 16 Mar 2019

ISBN 10: 1783489766
ISBN 13: 9781783489763

Media Reviews
The collection by Sybille Kramer 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 Kramer is former Professor of Philosophy at Freie Universitat Berlin and from 2019 she will hold a senior professorship at Leuphana University Lueneburg. Sigrid Weigel is former Director of the Zentrum fur Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL) in Berlin.