Testimony
Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History
Shoshana Felman author Dori Laub author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published:13th Dec '91
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
In this unique collection, Yale literary critic Shoshana Felman and psychoanalyst Dori Laub examine the nature and function of memory and the act of witnessing, both in their general relation to the acts of writing and reading, and in their particular relation to the Holocaust. Moving from the literary to the visual, from the artistic to the autobiographical, and from the psychoanalytic to the historical, the book defines for the first time the trauma of the Holocaust as a radical crisis of witnessing "the unprecedented historical occurrence of...an event eliminating its own witness." Through the alternation of a literary and clinical perspective, the authors focus on the henceforth modified relation between knowledge and event, literature and evidence, speech and survival, witnessing and ethics.
"In a country like the United States, where we make a practice out of startegically erasing memories that lay bare the harsh realities of the ideology that drives our history of violence and domination, and in classrooms where we generally ignore the voices and experiences of students - a great many of whom have witnessed the brutality of the streets, poverty, racism, and discrimination - the lessons of this book are a must." -- Harvard Educational Review, Summer 1995
"In subsequent essays Felman displays her considerable literay prowess. Her analysis of Albert Camus's ThePlague and The Fall as Holocaust literature is compelling, so muchso that it drove this reader to reread these works and to read them quite differently." -- OralHistory Review
". . . a remarkable book for many reasons. Testimony endows the survivor, the victim and its witness with a sober and forceful way of attesting to the unnamable and invisible presence of its event." -- Psychoanalytic Books
ISBN: 9780415903929
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 580g
312 pages