Overview

Witnessing Witnessing focuses critical attention on those who receive the testimony of Holocaust survivors. Questioning the notion that traumatic experience is intrinsically unspeakable and that the Holocaust thus lies in a quasi-sacred realm beyond history, the book asks whether much current theory does not have the effect of silencing the voices of real historical victims. It thereby challenges widely accepted theoretical views about the representation of trauma in general and the Holocaust in particular as set forth by Giorgio Agamben, Cathy Caruth, Berel Lang, and Dori Laub. It also reconsiders, in the work of Theodor Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, reflections on ethics and aesthetics after Auschwitz as these pertain to the reception of testimony. Referring at length to videotaped testimony and to texts by Charlotte Delbo, Primo Levi, and Jorge Semprun, the book aims to make these voices heard. In doing so, it clarifies the problems that anyone receiving testimony may encounter and emphasizes the degree to which listening to survivors depends on listening to ourselves and to one another. Witnessing Witnessing seeks to show how, in the situation of address in which Holocaust survivors call upon us, we discover our own tacit assumptions about the nature of community and the very manner in which we practice it.

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9780823252732

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Reviews

Combining admirable lucidity in examining complex problems, a non-aggressive but effective mode of critique, and an impressive knowledge of the literature pertinent to the topics he treats, Trezise investigates an influential array of critical theorists and/or survivors including Dori Laub, Cathy Caruth, Berel Lang, Theodor Adorno, Charlotte Delbo, Giorgio Agamben, Primo Levi, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jorge Semprun. -Dominick LaCapra, Cornell University In a series of illuminating reinterpretations and trenchant critiques of classic texts, 'IWitnessing Witnessing' challenges fundamental assumptions about Holocaust testimony. This book will surely provoke debate and disagreement, but its profound commitment to ethical listening is inspiring. --Marianne Hirsch, author of The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust In Witnessing Witnessing, Thomas Trezise makes an eloquent plea for respecting the specificity and uniqueness of survivor testimonies, against the theoretical tendency to generalize and universalize. His fine-grained interpretations of both classic testimonies like those of Charlotte Delbo or Primo Levi and of some of the most influential theories they have inspired demonstrate his own ability to be at once respectful and critical of others' views. This book is not only a valuable intervention in the ongoing debates about representations of the Holocaust and other historical traumas; it is also a lesson in the art of careful reading. --Susan Rubin Suleiman, Harvard University . . Witnessing Witnessing' offers rich critical insight and for for continued thought, often based in the appraisal of context-this listening to those who listen to survivors. The author specifically and successfully confronts the notion that the Holocaust is unspeakable, a view that, as the author maintains, 'appears to stand in for a refusal to listen.' -H-Net Review

"""Combining admirable lucidity in examining complex problems, a non-aggressive but effective mode of critique, and an impressive knowledge of the literature pertinent to the topics he treats, Trezise investigates an influential array of critical theorists and/or survivors including Dori Laub, Cathy Caruth, Berel Lang, Theodor Adorno, Charlotte Delbo, Giorgio Agamben, Primo Levi, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jorge Semprun.""-Dominick LaCapra, Cornell University ""In a series of illuminating reinterpretations and trenchant critiques of classic texts, 'IWitnessing Witnessing' challenges fundamental assumptions about Holocaust testimony. This book will surely provoke debate and disagreement, but its profound commitment to ethical listening is inspiring.""--Marianne Hirsch, author of The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust ""In Witnessing Witnessing, Thomas Trezise makes an eloquent plea for respecting the specificity and uniqueness of survivor testimonies, against the theoretical tendency to generalize and universalize. His fine-grained interpretations of both classic testimonies like those of Charlotte Delbo or Primo Levi and of some of the most influential theories they have inspired demonstrate his own ability to be at once respectful and critical of others' views. This book is not only a valuable intervention in the ongoing debates about representations of the Holocaust and other historical traumas; it is also a lesson in the art of careful reading.""--Susan Rubin Suleiman, Harvard University "". . Witnessing Witnessing' offers rich critical insight and for for continued thought, often based in the appraisal of context-this listening to those who listen to survivors. The author specifically and successfully confronts the notion that the Holocaust is unspeakable, a view that, as the author maintains, 'appears to stand in for a refusal to listen.'"" -H-Net Review"

Author Information

Thomas Trezise is Professor of French at Princeton University, where he teaches modern French literature, literary theory, continental philosophy, and Holocaust Studies. His previous publications include Into the Breach: Samuel Beckett and the Ends of Literature, the French translation of Paul de Man's Allegories of Reading, the American edition and co-translation of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's The Subject of Philosophy, and an edited collection entitled Encounters with Levinas.

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