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Tomasz Majewski

Testimony: Between the Inside and the Outside of Language 1

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The issu e I w ou ld like to explore here is the lin gu istic status o f testim on y as form ulated b y Giorgio Agam ben.

I w ill not analyze testim ony as a separate sort o f discur­

sive practice, n eith er w ill I explore the qu estion o f the perform ative character o f sim ilar form s o f expression or delve into the pragm atic consequences o f the act o f te s ­ tim on y (extensively exam in ed b y the liked o f Shoshana Felm an and D ori Laub). The paper w ill also disregard the issue of belief, w ritten or spoken accounts, predicates and referencing these form s o f expression. A gam ben's delib­

erations are o f particular interest to m e given their focus on abandoning the w idespread conviction that testim ony w eighed after the H olocaust refers to unnam able and in ­ tangible realities outside the realm o f language, w hile the act o f b earin g w itn ess o f the Shoah w ould be an extrem e case o f the act o f speech. A gam b en treats the n otion o f im p o ssib ility o f sp eakin g ad van ced b y p sych o a n alyti­

cal discourse seriously, thus linking it w ith the em pirical

1 The p a p e r is an e x te n d e d v e rsio n o f th e le ctu re g iven a t th e 3 4 th T h e ­ o ry o f L iteratu re C o n fe re n c e L iterary R epresenta tions o f Experience, held in S e p t e m b e r o f 20 06 in G d a n sk -S o b ie sz e w o .

Tomasz

M ajew ski - cultural and film stu dies scholar, p rofessor in th e D ep a rtm e n t o f th e A nth rop ology o f Literature and Cultural Stu dies a t th e Jagiellonian U niversity in Krakow.

Au thor o f nu m erou s articles devoted to th e issu es o f collective m em ory, d o c u m en ta ry and an im ation film, th eo ry o f popular culture, etc. He has recen tly published Dialektyczne feerie.

Szkoła frankfurcka i kultura popularna (2011).

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TO M AS Z M A JE W S KI t e s t i m o n y: b e t w e e n t h e i n s i d e.. 31

fact o f testim onies com ing into being, their linguistic existence. The realized em b od im en t o f the im p o ssib le is, in A gam b en 's perspective, m ore w orth y o f attention th at the recurrin g th e sis p o sitin g the in e x p re ssib ility o f lim i- n al experiences. Testim onies exist, th ey w ere given, and language w as used to convey w h at once w as thought im possible to recount. A s a result, w e can­

n o t explore the issu e s revolvin g around the con cept o f te stim o n y w ith ou t reexam inin g the problem o f language/speech and w ithout investigating how the realization o f such im possib le expression s affects the issue o f language.

From the linguistic perspective, language reveals its aporetic character, h id ­ den in its quotidian usage. We w ill not grasp “w h at” testim on y speaks about u n til w e com e to un d erstan d w h at it m eans in their case to, as C elan put it,

“just speak.” A gam b en w rites:

In this language, a language that survives the subjects w ho spoke it coin­

cides w ith a speaker w ho rem ains beyond it. ... so the speech o f the w itn ess b ears w itn e ss to a tim e in w h ich h u m an b ein gs did n o t y e t speak; and so the testim on y o f hum an b eings attests to a tim e in w h ich th ey w ere not yet hum an.2(162)

A gam ben's thesis, w hose shape I w ill be follow ing herein, w ould, at least in m y opinion, argue the follow ing: if the structure o f testim ony is b ased on realizing the radical im possibility of expression experienced by som eone who is “capable o f speaking,” as w e ll as on the relation sh ip b etw een the hum an and the inhum an, then the crack at its h eart w ill not be the lim it, but rather a hidden principle o f the existence o f language.

In 1964, during an interview aired b y the G erm an T V channel ZDF, Günter Gaus asked Hannah Arendt whether som ething has rem ained in her innerm ost personal experience o f pre-N azi Europe: “W hat rem ains? The m other tongue rem ains (Was bleibt? Es bleibt die Muttersprache.)’’ Not m em ories o f events or even fully-form ed personalities but language, both m edium and m essage, is w hat rem ains after the identity o f its speaker perishes. W hat, then, is that language- rem nant - asks Giorgio A gam ben in reference to A ren d ts reply - w h at does it m ean to speak a language that's alm ost entirely a relic, and h o w can a lan ­ guage survive its speakers? In his desire to reexam ine the issue o f bearing w it­

ness, the articulation o f experience, and the linguistic structure o f testim ony, the author o f the Homo Sacer triptych sketches, it its final installm ent, Quel che resta di Auschwitz? (Remnants o f Auschwitz), an im age o f language as a field where anom ie clashes w ith norm , innovation clashes w ith conservative tendencies inherent in the gram matical system, in which the point where tensions intersect

2 G. A g a m b e n , R em nants o f Auschw itz: The W itness and the A rch ive (N ew York: Z o n e B ooks, 2002). U n less s ta te d o th e rw ise , fro m h ere o n w a rd s th e lo c a tio n s o f all th e q u o te s fro m this b o ok w ill be p la ce d in th e m ain b o d y o f th e article.

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determines, as structural locus, the position o f the speaking subject, i.e. the place o f those who, as Agam ben puts it, decide what can and cannot be said, therefore decide not only the sem antics o f their ow n speech, but also, if taken to an ex ­ trem e, adjudicate as to w hat is expressible in language and w hat is not.

The end o f this dialectic o f the expression and the expressed, the express­

ible and the in exp ressible, anom ie and the n orm w ou ld m ean the death o f language brought about b y abrogation o f the prospects for the em ergence of the subject o f speech. Language dies w h en the relationship betw een “norm ” (D ante's grammatica - sch olastic Latin) and anom ie (the vo id o f un nam ed experience) breaks down in the subject, thus transform ing langue into a “whole th at is closed and lacking all e x te rio rity” into a corpus o f realized, fu lfilled statem ents. “We thus say o f a dead language that it is no longer spoken, that is, that in it it is im possible to assign the position o f a subject.” (160) For the author speaking a dead language, assigning him self such a position would sig­

n ify a m om ent in w hich, as A gam b en w rites, this “curious auctor, w ho author­

izes an absolute im p o ssib ility o f speaking and sum m ons it to speech,” thus paradoxically givin g “his voice and blood to the sh adow o f a dead language, so that it m ay return - as such - to speech.” (16 1) This isolated act, typical for the literary praxis o f Latin poets, m akes it possible for language to survive the death o f its subjects; its tran sm ission , how ever, takes place via the corpus of w hat h as b een said or is evoked by the archive's records, w h ich still does not m ake it a living language. In this particular case, the “archive” is neither the dust of the libraries nor the collections contained w ithin, but rather an asso rt­

m ent o f rules that define the event o f discourse - its em ergence. A ccording to Foucault, from w h om A gam b en borrow ed the term , it situates itse lf in the sphere o f casual determ inants, in the h istorical reality b etw een pure langue understood as a system o f constructing possible sentences and the corpus col­

lecting w hat has already been said. The archive, the “m ass of the non-sem antic in scribed in every m ean in gfu l discourse as a function o f its en u nciation” is only the “m argin encircling and lim iting every concrete act o f speech,” w hile b ein g “the u n said or sayable in scribed in everythin g said b y virtue o f being en u n ciated ” (14 3-4 4 4 ). Foucault calls th is record o f the u n sa id “h isto rical a priori,” that is a place from w h ich the archeology o f discourse can question the already said at the level o f its factual existence in stead o f pure linguistic p otentiality.3 The on ly true m iracle o f lin gu istic resurrection, as A gam b en suggests, took place in the case o f m odern Hebrew, w here a linguistic com ­ m unity, after experiencing a h istorical traum a, placed itse lf contem porarily in the position o f a subject w ith in a langue that w as heretofore dead, that is it survived only as an archive and the corpus o f traditional texts. The com m unity

3 c f M. F o u c a u lt, The A rch eolog y ofK no w led g e (N ew York: P an th e o n , 19 72), 126.

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em erged in place o f the subject as a new collective identity, a collective “w e ” delivered from m u ten ess (H ebrew b ecam e a livin g language on ly after its speakers experienced the H olocaust, w hich deprived them o f their ow n other- language locus, their prior linguistic identity).

This pattern o f argum entation, reconstructed here very perfunctorily, p re­

cedes Agam ben's final attem pt at defining testimony. Undeterred in his efforts to reinterpret the notion, A gam b en w rites:

To bear witness is to place oneself in one's own language in the position of those who have lost it, to establish oneself in a living language as it were dead, or in a dead language as if it w ere living - in any case, outside both the archive and the corpus of w hat has already been said. (161)

Note that each o f the form ulations used by the w riter indicates aporia in ­ scribed into the very structure o f testim ony (which is not equivalent, however, w ith its negation), w hich m oulds it into an articulation taking place not only from a p osition o f in ability but also a logical im possibility. The im possibility seem s to prim arily constitute the act o f testim on y b y situ ating the w itn ess in the role o f the sub ject o f speech “in ” language, in a system o f ru les and gram m atical norm s, b y establishing a relation betw een his/her act o f speech and the u n said (anom ie). Testim ony as the “p o ssib ility o f b earin g w itn e ss”

about the unsaid places itself outside the historical accum ulation o f discourse layers and m utable circum stances, in itially em bodying a certain p ossib ility o f language, that is the existence o f a purely p otential locus o f the subject of speech in the face o f em pirically con firm ed im p o ssib ility o f assu m in g said position b y any survivor. O n the other hand, the existence o f th at potential locus w ith in language w ould legitim ize the act o f b earin g w itn ess for those deprived o f their language (M uslim s, victim s o f the gas cham bers), and thus allow the position in g o f o n e se lf w ith in language “in th eir p lace ” - voiding, as I un derstand it, the charge o f fictionalization (leveled b y the m ore radical students o f Lacan, like C laude Lanzm ann) and legitim izing the testim onial role o f literature and, to put it m ore broadly, art. The lin guistic structure o f

“bearing w itn ess for” does not contain and neither can it guarantee a positive reference to the “substan ce” o f u n said experience - given that w e are dealing here w ith the sam e aporia that Jean-Fran ^ois Lyotard accurately diagnosed in his ironic p araphrases o f argum ents em ployed b y A uschw itz n egationists that he included in Le Differend:

You are informed that human beings endowed with language w ere placed in a situation such that none of them is now able to tell about it. M ost of them disappeared then, and the survivors rarely speak about it. W hen

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they do speak about it, their testim ony bears only upon a minute part of this situation. H ow can you know that the situation itself existed? That it is not the fruit of your informant's im agination? Either the situation did not exist as such. Or else it did exist, in w hich case your informant's te s­

tim ony is false, either because he or she should have disappeared, or else because he or she should remain silent ... To have “really seen with his own eyes” a gas chamber would be the condition w hich gives one the author­

ity to say it exists and to persuade the unbeliever. Yet it is still necessary to prove that the gas chamber w as used to kill at the tim e it w as seen. The only acceptable proof that it w as used to kill is that one died from it. But if one is dead, one cannot testify that it is on account of the gas chamber.4

If the structure o f testim o n y im p licitly contains som ething like the im ­ p ossib ility o f b earin g w itn ess, then, as A gam b en claim s, it is n o t due to the im possib ility o f assum ing a specific existential and cognitive attitude (of b e ­ in g in side the experience o f death and retu rn ing therefrom ) but rather due to the strictly linguistic nature o f testim ony. For A gam ben, testim on y situ ­ ates itse lf from the very begin n in g w ith in a very disturbing turning point - in congruen ce - b etw een the p o ssib ility o f speech and the act o f speaking, betw een langue and archive, b eing the reverse o f a situation that any subject o f speech can find h im s e lf in, one th at deprives h im o f h is ab ility to speak, to express som ething, despite h im being “in the right” to do so as a subject of speech situated w ith in language. The situation dem onstrates that assum ing the subjective position in a language is alw ays im plicitly related to the p o ­ ten tial divesting o f language, to b ein g alienated “w ith in it,” to the recession o f one's ow n speech, and thanks to this structure (which allow s the speaker to locate h im se lf in the locus o f “speaking” from inside o f a dead language) the speech o f the w itn ess m ay bear “w itn ess to a tim e in w hich hum an beings did not y e t speak [...] attest to a tim e in w h ich th ey w ere n o t y e t hum an.” (162) B earing w itn ess, as placing o n eself in language in the position o f those who have lo st it results in the un earthin g o f the relationsh ip b etw een the langue and the contingency, the incidental character o f individual existence (the real p o ssib ility o f h im or h er n o t e xistin g at all), w h ich m akes their em ergence in place o f the subject o f speech an absolutely singular event, one that takes place outside any sort o f archive or corpus o f enunciations. C ontingency as the occurrence o f language in a subject, w rites A gam ben, “is different from actual discourse's utterance or non-utterance, its speaking or not speaking, its p ro­

duction or non -produ ction as a statem ent. It concerns the subject's capacity

4 J.F. Lyotard, The D ifferend: Phrases in D ispute (M in neapo lis: U n ive rsity o f M in n eso ta P ress, 19 88), 3.

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to have or n o t to have lan g u age” (14 5). It is not, th erefore, sim p ly another logical m odality, alongside possibility, im possibility, and n ecessity; it is the

“actual giving o f a possibility, the w a y in w hich a p otentiality exists as such.”

(pp. 14 5 - 14 6 ). Since “te stim o n y” - the nam e given to the placem en t o f the subject in a certain linguistic chasm, a rift in w hich the possibility o f speech is realized as such - is the relationship betw een the possibility of speech and the act o f speech (enunciation) - and not just the relationship b etw een w hat has rem ained and that w hich w ent unsaid (the dim ension defined b y the archive) - then the insignificant hum an existence becom es the reason that ultim ately decides, tim e and tim e again, w hether or not a language w ill prevail.

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In light of the above, it should not com e as a surprise that A gam b en decided to associate the gesture o f bearing w itn ess w ith true poetic gestures, and la n ­ guage o f the p o et w ith the rem ainder, w ith w h at rem ain s (as “scath eless is the song”) after the test o f possib ility and im possib ility o f speech is through and that's w h y it can bear w itn ess for us. A lthough the author o f Homo Sacer quotes a sentence from H orderlin to support his ideas o f the deep id en tity of speech in testim ony and poetry (“Was bleibt aber, stiften die Dichter” - “W hat rem ains is w hat the poets found”), I w ould rather suggest to a speech by Paul C elan delivered at the G e rm a n city o f B rem en in 19 5 8 , a speech touching, albeit from a different angle, upon the issue o f language as the “rem n ant” that survived the inferno:

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: lan ­ guage. Yes, language. In spite o f everything, it rem ained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave m e no w ords for w hat w as happening, but w ent through it. Went through and could resurface, ‘enriched' by it all.5

The secret o f the poet's language lies in the state o f regression , the lo ss o f elocution, and the ease o f expression . Lan guage “en rich ed” w ith recurrin g periods o f m u ten ess is the language o f the “stutterer,” language that's co n ­ stantly regressin g in ap h asia - therefore this is its ken osis. To put it d iffe r­

ently, it is the salvaged (rem aining, residual) im p ossib ility o f speech w ithin language and the tran sitio n o f the u n sayab le into the act o f speech th at it

5 P. C elan , "S p e e c h on th e O c c a sio n o f R eceivin g th e L iteratu re Prize o f th e Free H a n se a tic City o f B re m e n ” in P. C elan , C ollected Prose, tra n s. R. W aldrop (N ew York: R o u tle d g e , 2003), 34.

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incurs. Language can testify to the im possib ility o f speech, because language itse lf bears w itn ess to/bears the stam p o f pow erlessness (m uteness), w hich is not “a rich, difficu lt germ in ation ,” b u t the fringe, “a distrib u tion o f gaps, voids, absences, lim its, divisions,” the shift o f the interior o f the language in relation to its exterior.6

The traces o f anom ie w ithing language, as diagnosed b y Celan, allow the return o f the issue o f subject in validated in The Archeology o f Knowledge and approach it again via “the event o f discourse,” starting from the aporia o f the possibility/im possibility o f speech, w hich is also referenced, albeit in another way, as A gam ben rem arks, b y Foucault's fam ous question: “M any other form s o f statem ent are to be found in the discourse o f nineteenth -century doctors.

W h at is it th at lin ks th em togeth er? W h at n e ce ssity b in d s th em together?

W hy these and not oth ers?”7

In the relation betw een w hat is said and its taking place, it w as possible to bracket the subject of enunciation, since speech had already taken place.

But the relation between language and its existence, between langue and the archive, demands subjectivity as that which, in its very possibility of speech, bears witness to an impossibility of speech. This is w hy subjectivity appears as witness; this is why it can speak for those who cannot speak. Testimony is a potentiality that becomes actual through an impotentiality of speech; it is, moreover, an impossibility that gives itself existence through a possibility of speaking. These two movements cannot be identified either with a subject or with a consciousness; yet they cannot be divided into two incommunica­

ble substances. Their inseparable intimacy is testim ony (Agamben 145-6).

A s the subject o f speech and the paradoxical “subject o f language,” the poet - an author par excellence - does not em erge as a result of the expression o f the idiom o f experience, but appears as, m ay I risk the expression, the inner locus o f the linguistic exterior, salvaging langue in the im p ossib ility o f speech and salvaging the im possib ility o f speech (anom ie) in the area if language. “Can w e perhaps n ow locate the strangeness, the place w here the person w a s able to set him self free as an - estranged - I?”8 Poetic testim ony is a polar opposite o f the exp ression o f the “in terior o f the subject,” therefore C elan con siders b earin g w itn ess as structure (as “speakin g for others,”fremder) to be ta n ta ­ m ount to abandoning humanity, desubjectification, or to put it m ore precisely,

6 M. F o u cau lt, The A rch eo lo g y o f Know ledge, 119 . 7 ibid., 50.

8 P. C ela n , "T h e M eridian” in P. C elan , C o llected Prose, 46.

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in the w ords o f C elan h im self: “going beyond w h at is hum an, stepping into a realm w hich is turned tow ard the hum an, but uncanny.” A rt that is fam iliar w ith the “possib ility o f strangeness” and contains traces o f “un cann iness” (das Unheimliche) rem ains w ell-ro o ted in that particular realm .9

In the concept o f lan g u age-as-rem n an t, w e should also look for the “p o ­ te n tia lity o f sp eech ” and the (im )p o ssib ility o f parole. “ O n the b a sis o f the gram m ar and o f the w ealth o f vo cabu lary available at a given period, there are, in total, relatively fe w things th at are said,” and our fu ndam ental q u es­

tions con cerning the status o f testim o n y revolve around the particular cir­

cum stances that decide the unique character o f this “n o n -fillin g o f the field o f possible form ulations as it is opened up b y the language.”10 The subjective position in the field o f p o ssib ility o f the langue is a place, w h ere w e happen upon “lo w ly lives reduced to ash es in the fe w p h rases th at h ave destroyed them ,”n and w hose resurrection via m eans o f linguistic analysis w as, accord­

ing to A gam ben, Foucault's greatest desire (which he confessed to only once, in The Life o f Infamous Men). The n o n -fillin g o f the field o f possib le fo rm u la­

tio n s (the sayab le-y et-u n sa id , register o f the archive) show n, as A gam b en w rites, to the gaze shifting from “the site o f enunciation not tow ards the act o f speech, but tow ard langue as such: that is, o f articulating an in side and an outside n o t only in the plane o f language and actu al discourse, b u t also in the plane o f language as p ote n tiality o f sp eech ” (145) decides w h eth er the enunciatory dim en sion w ill be revealed, one that extends outside the system o f statem en ts o f a realized discourse. In this case, A gam b en clearly follow s the thoughts o f Benveniste and Foucault, for w h om the concept o f form ula­

tion as enunciation is not b ased on the analysis o f “the relations betw een the author and w h at he says (or w an ted to say, or said w ith ou t w an tin g to); but in determ ining w hat p osition can and m ust be occupied by any individual if he is to be the subject o f it.12 The enunciative level - to use the nom enclature provided by The Archeology ofKnowledge - is “at the lim it o f language,” although it is not “the enigm atic, silent rem ainder that it [the language - ir.] does not translate.” The enunciation defines only “the m odality o f its appearance: its periphery rather than its internal organization.’^3

9 ibid., 42

10 M. F o u cau lt, The A rch eo lo g y ofKnow ledge, 119 .

11 M . F o u cau lt, "The Life o f In fam ou s M en ” in M. F o u c a u lt, Power, Truth, Strategy, e d . M eagh an M orris and Paul P a tto n (Sydn ey: Feral P u b licatio n s, 2006), 77.

12 M . F o u cau lt, The A rch eo lo g y ofKnow ledge, 95.

13 ibid., 112.

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A re m ark ab ly sim ilar th ou ght can be found in the w o rk o f Paul C elan.

A p o e m is the so rt o f e n u n ciatio n th at “h old s its grou n d on its o w n m a r­

gin . In ord er to endu re, it c o n sta n tly calls an d p u lls it s e lf b ack fro m an

‘a lre a d y -n o -m o re ' into a ‘s till-h e re ,'” th e latter o f w h ich m a y “o n ly m ean sp eak in g ,” “n o t lan g u age as such, b u t re sp o n d in g and - n o t ju s t v e rb a lly - ‘co rresp o n d in g' to so m eth in g.” F rom the p e rsp e ctiv e o f “o n ly ... sp e a k ­ in g ” - the “p o ssib ilities ... im m ersed in the m em o ry o f in d ivid u al” becom e a lan g u age “ se t free u n d e r the sig n o f ... the lim its draw n b y lan g u age,”14 that is th e p re v io u sly discard ed silen t su b stan ce o f experien ce. The poem as a sin gular en u nciation is “one p erson's language b ecom e shape,’”15 w hich tran sp ire s on ly w h e n th a t sam e lan guage, i f w e look ou t from its in terior tow ards the “perip h ery o f enu nciation,” w ith d raw s and reced es. For C elan, the m o st in n er essence o f the p oem is its presence in the present, “unique, m o m e n ta ry ” (b ein g outside th em arch ive and corpus, resp e ctiv e ly), b ein g

“lo n e ly ” (w hich I u n d erstan d as sin gularity, con stitu ted b y the p o ssib ility o f non existen ce) and “en route,”i® co n stan tly in search o f the vis-a-vis, “this other tow ards w hich it is h eadin g”™ and its need of the Other. This la st char­

acteristic, w h en u sed to describe the act o f b earin g w itn ess, m ay tran slate to the “ desire to speak to the Other,” w h ich Prim o Levi, in h is con versation w ith Ferdinando C am on, illu strated in the fo llow in g w ay:

Back then, in the concentration cam p, I often had a dream : I dream ed that I'd returned, come hom e to m y family, told them about it, and nobody listened.

The p erson standing in front o f m e doesn't stay to hear, he turns around and goes away. I told this dream to m y friends in the concentration cam p, and they said, ”It happens to us too.”

And later I found it mentioned, in the very sam e way, by other survivors, who've written about their experiences. ... But this dream of talking about it w as certainly comparable to the dream of Tantalus, w hich w as of “eat- in g-alm ost,” of being able to bring food to one's mouth but not succeed­

ing in biting into it. It's the dream of a prim ary need, the need to eat and drink. So w as the need to talk about it.™

14 P. C ela n , "T h e M eridian ,” 49.

15 ibid.

16 ibid.

17 ibid.

18 P. Levi, F. C am o n , C onversations with Prim o Levi (M arlboro: M arlb oro P re ss, 19 8 9), 42

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TO M AS Z M A JE W S KI t e s t i m o n y: b e t w e e n t h e i n s i d e.. 39

Clearly, the im p o ssib ility o f b earin g w itn ess m ay b e perceived in a w ay th at is o s te n s ib ly v e ry d iffe re n t from th e p o s sib ility or im p o s s ib ility o f h avin g a lan gu age. W hen it com es to an alyzin g the cogn itive p o sitio n s in situ ation s d escribed b y Sh o sh an a Felm an and D ori Laub as “ events w it h ­ out a w itn ess,” such an in terp retation seem s to b e an e sp ecially im portan t altern ative to solutions p ro po sed b y A gam b en . Lest w e forget, in h is essay A n Event Without a Witness Laub id en tified three p ossib le p o sitio n s one can assu m e to w ard s the exp erien ce o f the H olocau st: b ear w itn e ss to o n e se lf as a p a rt o f a lim in a l exp e rie n ce , b ein g a w itn e s s te s tify in g to an Other, b ein g a w itn ess o f som eone else's testim ony. The first position , w h ich c a r­

ries the g reatest am oun t o f cred ib ility in W estern culture, th at is b ein g an e yew itn ess o f a g iven event, is, according to Laub, is the m o st susceptible to deform ation:

In addition, it w as inconceivable that any historical insider could remove herself sufficiently from the contaminating power of the event so as to re­

m ain a fully lucid, unaffected w itness, that is, to be sufficiently detached from the inside, so as to stay entirely outside of the trapping toles, and the consequent identities, either of the victim or the executioner. No observer could rem ain untainted, that is, maintain an integrity - a wholeness and separateness - that could keep itself uncomprom ised, unharmed, by his or her very w itnessing.19

A ccording to the A m erican psychoanalyst, the gradual atrophying o f the ability to b ear w itn ess concerns perpetrators and victim s alike, although for different reasons:

The perpetrators, in their attempt to rationalize the unprecedented scope of the destructiveness, brutally im posed upon their victim s a delusional ideology w hose grandiose coercive pressure totally excluded and elim i­

nated the p ossib ility o f an unviolated, unencum bered, and thus sane, point of reference in the w itness. ... It w as not only the reality of the situ­

ation and the lack of responsiveness of bystanders or the world that ac­

counts for the fact that history w as taking place w ith no w itness: it w as also the very circum stance of being inside the event that made unthinkable the very notion that a w itness could exist, that is, someone who could step outside o f the coercively totalitarian and dehum anizing fram e of refer­

ence in w hich the event w as taking place, and provide an independent

19 Sh . Felm an and D. Laub, Testim ony: C rises o f W itnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and H istory (N ew York— Lon don: R o u tle d g e , 2002), 81.

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frame of reference through which the event could be observed. One might say that there was, thus, historically no w itness to the Holocaust, either from outside or from inside the event.20

To explain the concept o f a w itn ess existing in side the m urderous event, an event obliterating the fundam ental capability to “be tow ards one an oth ­ er,” Laub adds th at the experien ce o f the H olocau st se em s to us a u n iverse w h e re in im ag in in g an O ther w a s sim p ly no longer p o ssib le. “ The w a s no longer an other to w h ich one could say ‘Thou' in the hope o f b ein g heard, o f b ein g recognized as a subject, o f b ein g answ ered.”2i W hen one cannot even address an O ther w ith a “Thou,” th en one cannot say “th o u ” even to o n eself and therefore cannot “b ear w itn ess to oneself.”22 V ictim s are m ute because their testim on y to us is an account o f exclusion from the w orld o f h um an b e ­ ings, the internalization of the non -person status. The survivors find that their experiences aren't com m unicable even to them selves, as speaking o f these events is in h eren tly linked w ith the loss o f one's id en tity or the collapse o f the b asic fram ew orks o f the hum an condition that allow for self-know ledge, thus rendering the narrative im possible to com m unicate.

It is not really possible to tell the truth, to testify, from the outside. Neither is it possible, as w e have seen, to testify from the inside. I w ould su g­

gest that the im possible position and the testim onial effort o f the film as a w hole is to be, precisely, neither sim ply inside nor sim ply outside, but paradoxically, both inside and outside: to create a connection that did not exist during the w ar and does not exist today, between the inside and the outside - to set them both in motion and in dialogue with one another.23

The author ponders this relationship, or, in other w ords, this connection betw een the “in sid e” and the “outside” u sin g the exam ple o f Jan Karski's ac­

count o f the W arsaw ghetto. Later, w h en tryin g to establish w h at m akes the strength o f the testim on y in Lanzm ann's m ovie, Felm an states that it “is not the w ords but the equivocal, puzzling, relation betw een w ords and voice, the interaction, that is, b etw een w ords, voice, rhythm , m elody, im ages, w riting, and silence. Each testim ony speaks to us beyond its w ords, beyond its melody,

20 ibid.

21 ibid., 82.

22 ibid.

23 ibid., 232.

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TO M AS Z M A JE W S K i t e s t i m o n y: b e t w e e n t h e i n s i d e.. 41

like the unique perform an ce o f a sin ging.”24 T estim on y is located here b e ­ tw e en language and w hat's b eyon d it. It does n o t take place in the ten sion betw een the p ossib ility and im possib ility o f speech, but b etw een speech and w h at is displaced from it; w h a t resu rfaces n o t in language its e lf b u t in its pauses, inflections, in tonations, in other w ords, as a strictly m elic sym ptom o f som ethin g m ute, extralin gu istic. A g am b e n treated th is d iagn o sis w ith slight detachm ent, claim in g it “derives an aesthetic p ossib ility from a lo g i­

cal im p ossib ility” through an illegitim ate “recourse to the m etaphor o f song.”

(36) In Felm an and Laub's interpretation testim ony is conveyed, as w e should strongly em phasize, by the strictly aesthetic qualities o f language - rhythm, intonation, melody, dissonances, and assonances, and considering this a dan­

gerous ten den cy tow ards the “aestheticization o f testim o n y” should n o t be treated as an exaggeration. C ontrary to the authors' intentions, this aesth eti­

cization is a direct consequence o f relocating the stutter, the inhum an, and the heterogeneous outside the realm o f language.

Com ing back to the conclusion I anticipated in the beginning o f this article, I w ould like to say that from A gam ben's perspective, the subject o f testim o ­ nial speech m ay com m unicate the im possible testim ony o f desubjectification, because both the subject o f speech and language its e lf are, to som e degree, con stitutively fractured. In language as the area o f p ossib ility o f speech, w e have to - as dem onstrated b y the case o f testim ony - to learn how to d istin ­ gu ish im p o ssib ility as a separate p art o f the field. Likew ise, w e should have the courage to designate the indelible inhum an part in every hum an subject.

O nly th en can w e m ake som e sen se o f the puzzling fact th at “the speech o f the w itn ess bears w itn ess to a tim e in w hich hum an beings did not yet speak;

and so the testim o n y o f hum an b eings attests to a tim e in w h ich th ey w ere not ye t hum an.” (162)

Translation: Jan Szelqgiewicz

24 ibid., 277-278.

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