Description
Book SynopsisWitnessing Witnessing approaches Holocaust survivor testimony by focusing attention on those who receive it. It challenges current theoretical views about trauma and the Holocaust that tend to silence the voices of survivors, and seeks to show how making these voices heard requires a practice of community.
Trade Review"In a series of illuminating reinterpretations and trenchant critiques of classic texts, Witnessing 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 ". . 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
