ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

This seminar explores the concept of testimony beyond humanist interpretations of what it means to witness pain or injustice. In the humanist tradition, witnessing has often been construed ideally as the act of a self-identical subject, whose testimony would reflect an “I” that was fully present at the event(s) in question, and whose speech therefore establishes the conditions under which truth can be ascertained and a judgment can be rendered. These presuppositions belie the complex relationship between experience and representation (including memory), and also the infinite nature of justice, which cannot be reduced to a closed circuit of restitution and appropriation. The papers in this seminar explore ways in which the experience of witnessing exceeds the subject and its cultural, social and political correlates—the legal system, social constructions of identity, and the nation—and thereby allows us to rethink how we relate to human and non-human others (including the dead and disappeared), and consequently to the possibility of justice.

Friday, March 24

Susan Derwin, UC Santa Barbara
“‘This Beautiful Concentration Camp’: Imre Kertész on Accommodation”
Patrick Dove, Indiana University
“Technics of Memory”
Kate Jenckes, University of Michigan
“Witnessing Beneath the Feet of Language”

Saturday, March 25

Ranji Khana, Duke University
“Indignity”
Samir Haddad, Northwestern University
“Derrida’s Natures”
Jennifer Rhee, Duke University
“Desire and Photographic Visuality”
Shari Goldberg, SUNY Albany
“The Quietest Testimony”