Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History [Hardcover]

Shoshana Felman (Author), Dori Laub (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415903912 | ISBN-13: 978-0415903912 | Publication Date: December 13, 1991

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

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 The Plague 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. -- Oral History 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 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Shoshana Felman is the Thomas E. Donnelly Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale University. Dori Laub is a psychiatrist engaged in the treatment of trauma survivors and is cofounder of the Holocaust Survivors' Film Project and of the Video Archives for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 314 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (December 13, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415903912
• ISBN-13: 978-0415903912
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,451,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important books for our times, July 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (Paperback)

Testimony a brilliant and profound book. Analysing stories from the Holocaust, Felman and Laub argue the importance for society of witnessing those who have lived beyond the boundaries of existing cultural systems, and therefore their own capacity for witnessing themselves. A compelling and understated book for anyone interested in the boundaries of our own history and epistemology, and the hazards of venturing beyond them

7 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars partially uncommitted, self involved thinking, November 18, 2000

By 

alberta t. pelles (Boston, Mass.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (Paperback)

I must agree with the reader who says there is more style than substance in this book. This applies particularly to S. Felman's part of the book. D. Laub's articles are straightforward and clear, Felman's essays, however, are intellectually self involved, and convey a nervous kind of circular argumentation. This comes across as a very neurotic writing. But may be it's a sign of the times that trauma becomes a pretext for the somewhat usual textual interpretations of academic authors. May be it's also to be expected that most writers fail somewhat when they try to talk about personal or collective suffering. It is a difficult subject for sure. Read the book for its failures.

9 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars naive, furious and paranoid, July 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (Paperback)

Compared to most reflections on trauma and the holocaust (especially academic pig-headedness) this one stands out for its furious energy (often synonymous with intelligence), its naivete but also its paranoid intellectual evasiveness: in the end it doesn't know what it wants to say, which may have to do with its often tenuous, or non existent personal relation to its topic. If you like style over substance this is a definite must: Its rage still beats most academic useless blabla.