Calling on Witnesses: testimony and the deictic

Abstract

The deictic, as place of ethical and aesthetic encounter, has been taken up for its play across various forms, including film, painting, and photography. ‘‘Calling on Witnesses’’ explores the particular case of the ethical appeal of the deictic in Charlotte Delbo’s memoir Auschwitz and After and Michael Redhill’s drama Goodness, two texts that exemplify the tensions between first- and second-hand witnesses. The deictic, best known as an ethics of exchangeability, operates differently here, where second-hand witnesses are rebuked for not knowing the experience of the other. In a new formulation of the ethics of the deictic, ‘‘Calling on Witnesses,’’ argues that second-person, second-hand witnesses are called upon to pay attention to their own future capacity for ethical and/or unethical action rather than the immediate details of testimony, which can only be transmitted as history.

Keywords: Patricia Yaeger; Michael Redhill; Charlotte Delbo; Avishai Margalit; holocaust; memoir; ethics; Emmanuel Levinas

(Published: 28 December 2009)

Citation: Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Vol. 1, 2009 DOI: 10.3402/jac.v1i0.4622