The Claims of Literature

A Shoshana Felman Reader

EDITED BY EMILY SUN, EYAL PERETZ, & ULRICH BAER

Fordham University Press I New York I 2007

Copyright © 2007 Fordham University Press. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced. stored in a retrieval

system. or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic
mechanical. photocopy. recording. or any other-except for brie~
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Felman. Shoshana.
The claims of literature : a Sh os h ana Felman reader {edited by Em.ily Sun, Eyal Peretz.
and Ulrich Baer.c-rsr ed.
p. em. Editors' Acknowledgments vii
Includes bibliographical references.
Introduction 1
ISBN-13:978-0-8232-2712-9 (alk. paper)
ISBN-13:978-0-8232-2713-6 (alk. paper) PART 1. WRITING AND MADNESS
1. Literature, Modern-History and c nitiicisrn.
, I. Sun, Emily.
1. Writing and Madness-From "Henry James: Madness and the
II. Peretz, Byal, 1968-
Ill. Baer. Ulrich. TV.Title. Risks of Practice (Turning the Screw of Interpretatlonl" IS
PN710.F38
809---dC22
2007 Wi D -LL 2. FoucaultfDerrida: The Madness of the Thinking/Speaking

fAJ 2007018775
Subject 51
3. "You Were Right to Leave. Arthur Rimbaud": Poetry and

Printed in the United States of America

71b Modernity 70
090807 54321
f3 g- Rimbaud with Mallarrne: Modernity. Poetry. Translation 70

7
First edition
PART 2. THE LITERARY SPEECH ACT
;po c 4. From The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juon with]. L. Austin.
or Seduction in Two Languages 111
Preface: The Promising Animal 111
The Reflections of J. 1. Austin: Between Truth and
Felicity 114
nARVARD COll.EG Beyond the Felicity Principle: The Performance of
LIBR~"v E
Humor 118
OCT 1 6 2007 RES PON SE by Stanley Cavell: Foreword to The Scandal of the
Speaking Body 132
RESPON SE by Judith Butler: Afterword to The Scandal of the
Speaking Body 142
PART 3. READING AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
5- Textuality and the Riddle of Bisexuality: Balzac. "The Girl
with the Golden Eyes" 155
v
 6. From "Competing Pregnancies: The Dream from Which
Psychoanalysis Proceeds (Freud, The Interpretation of
Dreams)" 179
RESPONSE by Juliet Mitchell: On Asking Again: What Does a
Woman Want? 201

PART 4. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE QUESTION OF LITERATURE Editors' Acknowledgments

7· To Open the Question 213
8. From "Beyond Oedipus: The Specimen Text of
Psychoanalysis" 219

9· Flaubert's Signature: The Legend of Saint Julian the

Hospitable 248

RESPONSE by Winfried Menninghaus: Holderfin's Sapphic

Wewish to thank Irad Kimhi for valuable insights that inspired u in
Mode: Revising the Myth of the Male Pindaric Seer 275
writing the introduction. The preparation of the manus~ript wa aided
PART 5. TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY
by the support of the Colgate University Research Council and the care-
10. From "TIle Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmann's ful efforts of Jason Lusthaus and Kelly McGowan. Finally. we thank
Shoah" 295 Shoshana Felman for sharing with us her personal photographS. and
RESPONSE by Julia Kristeva: For Shoshana Felman: Truth and for her assistance and encouragement at several stages of the project. [
Art 315
11. From "The Storyteller's Silence: Walter Benjamin's Dilemma
of Justice" 322
PART 6. BEYOND THE LAW

12. A Ghost in the House of Justice: Death and the Language of

the Law 351
RESPONSE by Austin Sarat: On "Missed Encounter(s)": Law's
Relationship to Violence, Death. and Disaster 387
RES PONS E by Cathy Caruth: Trauma, Justice, and the Political
Unconscious: Arendt and Felman's Journey to
Jerusalem 393

PART 7· FELMAN AS TEACHER

13· Plato's Phaedo 427

14· Between Spinoza and Lacan and Us

PhotoGallery 475
Notes on Contributors 483
Notes 485

vi I CONTENTS vii
 SHOSHANA FELMAN

10 From "The Return of the Voice:

Claude Lanzmann's Shoah"

HISTORY AND WITNESS, OR THE STORY OF AN OATH

"If someone else could have written my stories" writes Elie

r ~iesel, "I would not have written them. I have ~itten them
m order to testify. My role is the role of the wi mess .... Not to
tell. or to tell another story. is ... to commit perjury."!
To bear witness is to take responsibility for the truth: to
speak. implicitly. from within the legal pledge and the juridi-
cal imperative of the witness's oath." To testify- before a court
of law or before the court of history and of the future; to tes-
tify, likewise. before an audience of readers or spectators-is
more than simply to report a fact or an event or to relate what
has been lived, recorded. and remembered. Menl0ry is con-
jured up essentially in order to address another. to impress
upon a listener. to appeal to a community- To testify is always.
metaphorically. to take the witness stand. or to take the posi-
tion of the witness insofar as the narrative account of the wit-
ness is at once engaged in an appeal and bound by an oath. To
testify is thus not merely to narrate but to coJJ11]1..it onese~f.
and to commit the narrative. to others: to take responsibility-IIl
speech-for history or for the truth of an occurrence. f~r
something that. by definition. goes beyond the personal. 10
having general (nonpersona1) validity and consequences.
But if the essence of the testimony is impersonal (to enable
. al or literal-about
ne
a d ecision by a judge or jUry_metapho
295
 Lhe true nature of the facts of an occurrence; to enable an objective is,however, due not simply to the reproduction of events, but to the
r on truction of what history was like, irrespective of the witness] powerof the film as a work of art, to the subtlety of its philosophical
why i il that the witness's speech is so uniquely, literally irreplace- and artistic structure and to the complexity of the creative process it
able? "If omeone else could have written my stories, I would not have engages."The truth kills the possibility of fiction," said Lanzmann in
'''"It
n th m." What doe it mean that the testimony cannotbesimply ajournaIistic interview." But the truth does not kill the possibility of
report d. or narrated by another in its role as testimony? What doesit art-on the contrary, it requires it for its transmission, for its realiza-
m an that a tory-or a hisrory-s-cannot be told by someone else? tionin our consciousness as witnesses.
It i this question. I would suggest, that guides the groundbreaking Finally,Shoah embodies the capacity of art not simply to witness, but
work of Claude Lanzman n in his film Shoah (1985), and consnrutes at to roke the witness stand: the film takes responsibility for its times by
once th profound subject and the shocking power of originality ofthe enacting the significance of our era as an age of testimony. an age in
81m. which witnessing itself has undergone a major trauma. Shoah gives ~s
to witness a historical crisis of witnessing. and shows us how. out of this
" VI ION OF REALITY
crisis,witnessing becomes, in all the senses of the word. a critical
e hoah is a CUm made exclusively of testimonies: first-hand testimonies activity.
of participants in the historical experience of the Holocaust. inter- On all these different levels, Claude Lanzmann persistently asks the
viewed and filmed by Lanzrnann during the eleven years which pro same relentless question: what does it mean to be a witness? What
ceded the production of the film (1977-1985). In effect, Shoah revives doesIt , mean to be a witness of the Ho Iocaus t?. What does it mean to.
th Holo nust with such a power (a power that no previous film on the '
he a witness to the process of the fil_m.? Wh at d 0es testimony mean, If
ubjecr could attain) that it radically displaces and shakes up not only ·It IS. not simply (as we commonly perceive . It
it] th e observing ' the. record-
~
!l~ common notion we might have entertained about it, but our very ·
mg. the remembering of an event. but an utter y I unique and Ir-replace-
d
Vl. Ion of reality as uch, our very sense of what the world, culture,
currence? Wha toes
abletopographical position with respect to an oc th t
..Formance of a story a
III tory. and our life within it are all about. testimonymean, ifit is the uniqueness 0 f t Ite per)' . d t
· h· nnot be carne ou
SUllhe film is not simply, nor is it primarily a historical document 15 constituted by the fact that, like the oat. It ca
on the Holocaust Th t i h ' ' byanybodyelse?
. a IS w y, in contrast to its cinematic predecessors
on the subject it refu· . I
. ses systematIcally to use any historical, archiva
footage. It conducts its " .., THE WESTERN LAW OF EVIDENCE . ffi t
I mtefYlews, and takes Its pictures, 10 the pres-
ent. Rather than a simp! . . of the testilnony III e ec
- _. e VIew of the present, the film offers a dison- Theuniqueness of the narrative performance of the act of
enung V1SIOnof the .. . I able performance
. . h ' present, a compellingly profound and surpnsms proceedsfrom the witness's irrep ace .·th his/her own
III Ig t III to the comple' f ' . .tess's "seemg WI
It ' fiI xi ty 0 the relation between hiswry and witneSSIng. seemg-from the uniqueness of the WI n th Polish courier
I a - m about Witness' b h
whar t trig: a out the witnessing of a catastrop e. eyes." "Mr. Vitold," says the Jewish Bund leader tony ;hirty-five years
at I testLfied to is lirn i .
) an Ka rski, who reports in hlIS em . ematic tesumohi _ and persuade d
Con r tJ mlt-expenences whose overwhelming impact
an Y puts to the test th Ii . .
at the same- r- . emus of the witness and ofwimesslDg. later,in narrating how the Jewish leader urged western world. You
're orne that It co . h' . • "I know the if
the very [irni f . nstantly unsettles and puts into quesllOn un-to become a crucial WItness. th your report you
mlts a realIty. , It will streng en
Will be speaking to the English .. , .
ART AS WITNESS will be able to say: '/ saw it myself "(171),' . I tradition of the
I . d epistemologtca b fust-
Second. Shoah is a film ab n the legal, philosophIcal, an , £ mally defined y.
about film a . OUt the relation between art and witnessin~ Westernworld, witnessing is based on, and IS or titutes the most deci·
a medium that T .
hand seeing. "Eyewitness testimony "'swhatcOns lIes
understand Sho h . expands the capacity for witnessing. 0 I inDUmerab e ru
a ,We must expl h · "Lawyers have . ss
tors made to witn ? Th' are t equestion:whatareweasspecta- slVelaw of evidence in courtrooms. d nt or of the WItne .
ess. IS exp . , . f the defen a
anSlOn of what we in turn can WItneSS Involvinghearsay, the character 0
296 I TRAUMA AND TESTiMONY
E VOICE" I 297
"THE RETURN OF TH
fROM
 opinions given by the witness, and the like, which are in one way.or Thenvery slowly, the train turned off the main track and roUed
another meant to improve the fact-finding process. But more crucial '" through a wood. While he looked out-we'd been able to open
Ulan anyone of these-and possibly more crucial than all put to awindow-the old man in our compartment saw a boy ... and he
. . "s askedthe boy in signs, "Where are we?" And the kid made a funny
geLher- is the evidence of eyewitness testimony, .
Film, on the other hand. is the art par excellence that. like the court- gesture.This:(draws a finger across his throat) ...
room (although for different purposes), calls upon a witnessingbysering, Andonea'you questioned him?
, ,
How doe the film use its visual medium to reflect upon eyewitness Notin words. but in signs. we asked: "what's gomg on I?"
iere
Ie timony both as the law of evidence of its own art and as the law of Andhe made that gesture, Like this, We didn't really pay much
evidence of history? attentionto him. We couldn't figure out what he meant. (34)

VICTIMS, PERPETRATORS, BYSTANDERS: ABOUT SEEING ThePoles, unlike the jews, do see, but, as bystanders, they do not
irectl y, an d thus they overlook at once
quitelook, they avoid looking direc
Because the testimony is unique and irreplaceable, the film is an explo-
theirresponsibilityand their complicity as witnesses:
ration of the differences between heterogeneous points of view, between
testimonial stances that can neither be assimilated into, nor subsumed
Youcouldn't look there. You couldn't ta Ik to a jew ' Even going
by, one another. There is, first of all, the difference of perspectivebf.
by on the road, you couldn't look there,
tween three groups of witnesses. or three series of interviewees: the
real characters of history who, in response to Lanzmann's inquiry,play Didthey lookaway? th ff You could
Yes,vanscame and the Jews wer e moved far _er8 0 .
thei r own role as the singularly real actors of the movie. fall into three
see them, but on the sly, In sidelong glances, (97 9 )
basic categories:s those who witnessed the disaster as its victims (the
surviving Jews). those who witnessed the disaster as its perpetrators (the , that both the jews and the
ex-Nazis], those who witnessed the disaster as bystanders (the Poles), TheNazis,on the other hand. see to it C d th camps are sur-
What is at stake in this division is not simply a diversity of pointsof extermination will remain, unseen. invi
' 'sible' . the Fea z Suchomel, an
rounded,for that purpose. With. a scree n of trees. ran
view or of degrees of inlplication and emotional involvement, but the
"-guardof Treblinka, testifies:
incommensurability of different topographical and cognitive positions.
between which the discrepancy cannot be breached. More concretely, s of pine trees .... It was
what the categories in the film give to see is three different perfonnance5 Woveninto the barbed wire were branch.e screened. People
of the act of seeing, S ry thIng was ,
knownas "camouflage," . " 0 eve N thong You couldn t
COUldn't see anything to the Ie ft or nlght . 0 1 .
In effect, the victims, the bystanders. and the perpetrators are here
see through it. Impossible. (110)
differentiated not so much by what they actually see (what they all see,
although discontinuous. does in fact follow a logic of corroboration), , irr ony is unfolding, it is hard
Itis nota coincidence that as this test~mfil d secretly.
as by what and how they do not see, by what and how they fail to witness. r • who IS me S chomel agree d to
lOr usasviewersto see the WItness.
~e Jews see. but they do not understand the purpose and the desrine Nazis Franz u . ther
non of what they see: overwhelmed by loss and by deception, they are As is the case for most of th e ex- 'filmed' he agreed, In 0
,..,
•..~werLanzmann·s questions. b unt ot to be .. n that.' . as a WI'mess he
blind to the signjficance of What they witness, Richard Glazar strik-
"ords, to give a testimony, but on the condloo
I~gly narrates a moment of perception coupled with incomprehen'
lbouldnot be seen:
SIO~, an exemplary moment in which the Jews fail to read, or to
deCipher. the visual signs and the visible significance they nonethele Yi u are a very
, ' g you only Trebhnka, 0
see with their Own eyes: Afr. Suchomel, we're not dlScussm . h t TrebJinka wcs.
f mportanteyewttness, and you ca n expiatn w a

298 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY OF THE VOICE" I 299

FROM "THE RETURN
 BUf don 'r use my name. Butyou knew that the trains to Treblinka or Auschwitz were- .
0, 1 promised, , , (54) Ofcoursewe knew. I was the last district. Wi thou t me the trams
couldn'treach their destination ...
In the blurry images off aces taken by a secret camera that has to shoot Didyou know that Treblinka meant extermination?
through a variety of walls and screens, the film makes us see con- Of course not. ... How could we know? I never went to
cretely. by the compromise it unavoidab.ly inflicts upon. our act;r Treblinka. (135)
eeing (which. of necessity. becomes materially an act of seemg throug).
how the Holocaust was a historical assault on seeing and ho~,even
today. the perpetrators are still by and large invisible: "Everything:.~ You never saw a train? rked da and night.
creened. You couldn't see anything to the left or right, You coul No.never.... I never left my desk. We wo y
see through it," (132)

FICUREN In the same way, Mrs. Michelshon, wife of a Nazi schoolteacher in

('
TIle essence of the Nazi scheme is to make itself-and to make the Chelmno, answers Lansmanri's questions:
c
Jews -essentially invisible. To make the Jews invisible not m~.reIY by
I killing them, not merely by confining them to "camouflaged. mvis- Didyouseethe gas vans? I d back and forth. I
ble death camps, but by reducing even the materiality of the dead bod· No.... Yes, from the OUtSIid e.. They shutt e I only saw things
r
ies to smoke and ashes, and by reducing, furthermore, the radical never looked inside; I didn't see Jews in them.
opacity of the sight of the dead bodies, as well as the linguistic referen- fromoutside. (82)
tiality and literality of the word "corpse," to the transparency ofa pure
THE OCCURRENCE AS UNWITNESSED . rims the by-
form and to the pure rhetorical metaphoricity of a mere figure: a disem
bodied verbal substitute that signifies abstractly the linguistic law of · . 1 stances of the VIC , .
Thus.the diversity of the testimoma aradoxically. the in-
infinite exchangeability and substitutability. The dead bodies are thus SUnders, and the perpetrators h ave 1in common. . PIar positions 0 f no t
ve.rbally rendered invisible, and voided both of substance and specific- commensurability of their . diff
irreren t and parttcUhical emotlOna, . I an d
ity. by being treated, in the Nazi jargon, as figuren: that which. all at seeing, the radical divergence of t elf. h . topograp. .
but as witnesses
I as wItnesses.
once. cannot be seen and can be seen through. .
epIStemological ..
pOSItIOnsnot .
SImp Y an event essenna. lIy
Who do not Witness who let the HoIocau st occur. asal witnesses, the film
' .' fits VlSU
The Germans even forbade us to use the words "corpse" or "vic- Unwitnessed. Through the testimorues 0 the Holocaust occurs
tim." The dead were bJocks of wood, shit. The Germans made us makes us see concretely-makes us witness- . . howI advent of an even t with-
refer to the bodies as figuren, that is, as puppets, as dolls. or as is the unprecedented. inconceiva· ble historrca ' . t in the scheme of the .
Schmattes, which means "rags." (13) .
Ol.lra Witness 1 an event that histonca . lly conSIS shilosophical Iyeo nsists .
Ii· P
teralerasure of Its witnesses bu t th a,t moreover, .' ,F eyewitnesslng as s
uch: . an
IIIanaccidenting of perception. 1. .n a splttttng
. 0)d perceptua IlY thou t a
wi
But it is not only the dead bOdies of the Jews that the Nazis. paradox'
. b t ognitlvelyan . c1udes the
icalJy, do not "see." It is also, in some striking cases, the living JeWS event.thus not empirically, u c . and because It pre 'hi!ates
transported to their death that remain invisible to the chief architectS Witness both because it precludes seeing that radically anOJ _
JIOSsibility of a community of seeing:
· . an event
b ration (to the co
mmensura
'bility
of their final transportation. Walter Stier. head of Reich Railways De-
partment 33 of the Nazi Party, chief traffic planner of the death trains w,
,. recourse(the appeal) to VtSU
,",.
. al corro 0th
. s) and us
djssolves the pOSSI
("special trains," in Nazi euphemism), testifies: UIllty between two differen t seetng

of anycommunityof witnessing.
300 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY
of THE VOiCE
.. I 301
"THE RETURN
FROM
 Shoah enables us to see-and gives us insight into-the occurrence ~Frenchprint: "They don't speak French."8 French, the native lan-
of the Holocaust as an absolute historical event whose literally ee- guage ofthe filmmaker. the common denominator into which the tes-
whelming evidence makes it, paradoxically, into an utterly prooflessevent timonies (and the original subtitles) are translated and in which the
who e magnitude of reference is at once below and beyond proof. film isthought out and gives. in turn, its own testimony happens (not
byehance, Iwould suggest) not to be the language of any of the wit·
THE MULTIPLICITY OF LANGUAGES nesses.1t is a metaphor of the film that its language is a language of
The incommensurability between different testimonial stances, and translation, and, as such. is doubly foreign: that the occurrence, on the
the heterogeneous multiplicity of specific cognitive positions of seeing onehand.happens in a language foreign to the language of the film,
and not seeing. is amplified and duplicated in the film by the multi, butalso,that the significance of the occurrence can only be articulated
plicity of languages in which the testimonies are delivered (French, inalanguageforeign to the language(s) of the occurrence,
German, Sicilian. English. Hebrew. Yiddish. Polish). a multiplicity that Thetitle of the film is. however, not in French and embodies thus.
necessarily encompasses some foreign tongues and that necessitates oncemore,a linguistic strangeness, an estrangement. whose ignifi-
the presence of a professional translator as an intermediary between Onceisenigmatic and whose meaning cannot be jrn mediately accessi-
witnesses and Lanzrnan n as their interviewer. The technique of dub- bleevento the native audience of the original French print: Shoah. the
bing is not used, and the character of the translator is deliberately not Hebrew word that with the definite article (here missing). designates
edited out of the film -on the contrary, she is quite often present on "theHolocaust"bur that, without the article. enignlatically and in-
the screen, at the side of Lanzmann, as another one of the real actors definitely means "catastrophe," here names the very foreignness of
of the film, because the process of translation is itself an integral part t, I that cannot be pos-
Llnguages, the very namelessness of a catastrop re
of the process of the film. partaking both of its scenario and of its own essed by a native tongue and that, within translation. can only be
per~ormance of its cinematic testimony. Through the multiplicity of . nnot witness; that
named as the untranslatable: that which language ca . .
foreign tongues and the prolonged delay incurred by the translation, hi I . I language In Its
w ich canbe articulated in one language; that w 11C 1 •
the splitting
. of the eyewitWI nessing' that the historical event seems [0 tum, cannotwitness without splitting.
consist of. the incapacity f '
. 0 seemg to translate itself spontaneously
and simultaneously int '.
. 0 a meamng. IS recapitulated on the level afthe THE HISTORIAN AS A WITN E SS
viewers of the film Th til ' i
who sees and hears but
. e m places us ill the position of the witness
. 1b etask of the deciphering of signs and of the proces sing , of intellig -
. .' cannot understand the significance of what IS hi' I t 9 1S however,
gomg on until the later inte . IllY-whatmight be called the task of the r-eus a or - f tl profes-
der-i f '. rvention, the delayed processing and reno a ."..1 I haracter 0 re
enng 0 the slgmficance of th . "'''' out within the film not merely by tne c h historian
tra I h e VIsual/acoustic information by the rs te
ns ator. W 0 also in som . a mterpreter. but also by two 0tIrer re alacro -
lIonl' like the
is attest d b th . e ways dIstorts and screens it. because (as
e y ose VIewers who' . !.lui Hilberg)and the filmmaker (Claude Lanzmann)-who. :es and
tongues that the translato- r are. natIve speakers of the fOr~lgn ~ . like the Wltlles
tnesses,In turn play themselves and who. un . esses of wit-
out by some of La tor IS translatIng. and as the film itselfpomtS Eke th 'tnesses (WItn
nzmann's int . e translator, constitute second·degree WI . al interpreter,
rion is not always b I erventlons and corrections). the transla· """ , WItnesses
'
a so utely accurate. of the testimomes,, ) L'k
Ie, the professIOn th film and the
The palpable foreignness of th fi • ~thoughin very different ways, the filmmaker III ~ofthe process
radical foreignness of th .e 1m s tongues is emblematic of the bulO ' I tS or age.n ts
nan on the screen are in turn cata ys - b e testimonial
us. but even to its own e e~~enence of the Holocaust. not merely to ct, ' ' 'ng and W os
partIcIpants Ask d trqJtlOn, agents whose reflective W101eSSl . th effort tOward
participants to see the til . e Whether he has invited the ""', esaid ' our own reception and assist ' u s both . 1ll the e foreignneSs 0 f
what language would the m~ ~n.zmann answered in the negative: "In
p rtIcIpants see the film?" The original \\'35 tomPrehension and in the unending struggle WIth, aJ interpreter)
"&ns ' the profesSIon
•In processing not merely (as does
302 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY
TH E vOICE " I 303
FROM "THE RETURN OF
 the literal meaning of the testimonies, but also, (some perspectives ani No,no....
their philosophical and historical significance. Extermination came to you as a big surprise?
The historian is, thus, in the film, neither the last word of knowl· Completely....
edge nor the ultimate authority on history. but rather. one moretoper You had no idea.
graphical and cognitive position of yet another witness. The statement Notthe slightest. Like that camp-what was its name? It was in
of the filmmaker-and the testimony of the film-are by no means the Oppeln district .... I've got it: Auschwitz.
subsumed by the statements (or the testimony) of the historian. Though Yes,Auschwitz was in the Oppeln district .... Auschvvitz to Krakow is
the filmmaker does embrace the historical insights of Hilberg, which forty miles.
he obviously holds in utter respect and from which he gets both inspi- That's not very far. And we knew nothing. Not a due.
ration and instruction. the film also places in perspective-and putsin Butyou knew that the Nazis-that Hitler didn't like the Jews?
context-the discipline of history as such, in stumbling on (and giving Thatwe did. It was well known .... But as to their extermina-
us to see) the very limits of historiography. "Shoah," said Claude Lanz- tion, that was news to us. I mean, even today people deny it. They
mann at Yale, "is certainly not a historical film .... The purposeof saythere couldn't have been so many Jews. Is It .
true ? I don't know .
Shoah is not to transmit knowledge. in spite of the fact that thereis That's what they say. (136-38)
knowledge in the film .... Hilberg's book The Destruction of the European
. h f Auschwitz) and his
Jews was really my Bible for many years .... But in spite of this, Shooh To substantiate his own amnesia (of t e name 0 '
. .' licitly refers here to the
IS not a historical film, it is something else .... To condense in one ownclaim of essentially not knOWlng, Stier Imp . .
hori f "revisionist historto-
word what the film is for me, I would say that the film is an incarnation, claimof knowledge-the historical aut onty-o . .'
. . ty of countnes by tustori-
a resutTeclion, and that the whole process of the film is a philosophical graphies," recent works published 10 a vane
one ."\0 Hilb erg IS. th e spokesman for a unique and impressive knowl- f the dead cannot be proven
ans who prefer to argue that the number 0 . f th ct
I I hard eVIdence 0 e exa
edge on the Holocaust. Knowledge is shown by the film to be absolutely and that since there is no scientific, scho ar Y .'
.d . merely an [rrverrtron, an
necessary 10 the ongoing struggle to resist the blinding impact of the extent of the mass murder, the genocl e 15 . f ver existed II
I aust III act, ne .
even~, to counteract the splitting of eyewitnessing. But knowledgeis exaggerationof the Jews and the H 0 ocausv. I mean even
not, 10. and of itself 'Clent
a suffici Iy active
. and sufficiently effective act' .. . . h t was news to us. .
But as to their extermInation. t a many Jews Is it
of see mg. The newness of th fil ' .. . ld not have so .
. . ems VISiOn, on the other hand consisu today,people deny it. They say there co~ m not the one who knows,
precisely m the surpris] '. . '
. hich ISIng insight It conveys into the radical ignoranCe true? I don't know. That what they say. I a h I did not know did
mWI weareunkn . I ay that w at
hi . I OW1OgY all plunged with respect to the actual but there are those who know w h 0 s
istonca occurrence Thi .
t ory - on th e con trary. .t IS Ignorance is not simply dispelled by his' not exist. "Isit true? I don't know."
h hand (former
Iy Nazi commissioner
how hisrorv I ,I encompasses history as such. The film shows Dr.FranzGrassler, on the ot er . . in front of the cam-
ory 15 used for the p' if of the Warsaw Ghetto), comes ims
hi elf to mImIC,
libi to his forgetting.
ji orgetting th t" urpose of a htstortcal (ongoing) process 0
a . trcntcally encu h . 1 .' hyasanal1
phy. Historiogra h . g ,Inc udes the gestures of historiogra' era, the very gesture of hlStotlograp
p y IS as much th d .
as it is the product f th . e pro uct of the passion offorgetung
o e paSSIOnof rememb . Youdon't remember those days? et thank God, the bad
Walter Stier, former head of' . enng. Not much .... It's a fact: we tend to forg ,
transports of the Jews to th Reich Raliways and chief planner of the
e death camps, can thus testify: times. . . . au were Dr. Auerswa1d's depuly.
/11 help you to remember. In Warsaw Y
What was Treblinka for you? Ad' . . d' m it .
Yes, that's all. . ... esttnatton? Yes. . . . .' . You're mentione
Dr. Grassier; this is CzernlakOW s dIary.
But not death.
It's been printed. It exists?

304 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY

"THE RETURN OF THE VOICE" I 305
FROM
 He kept a diary that was recently published. He wrote on]uly 7,1941 ...
July 7, 19417 That's the first time I've relearned a date. MayI
take notes? After all. it interests me too. In July I was already
there! (175-76)
In line with the denial of responsibility and memory, the very gesture
of hi toriography comes to embody nothing other than the blankness
of the page on which the "notes" are taken.
The next ection of the film focuses on the historian Hilberg hold-
ing. and discussing, Czerniakow's diary. The cinematic editing that fol-
lows shifts back and forth, in a sort of shuttle movement. between the
• face of Grassier (which continues to articulate his own view of the
placesand the different voices in the film, the filmmaker is continu-
ously-though discreetly-present in the margin of the screen, per-
haps as the most silently articulate and as the most articulately ilent
witness.The creator of the film speaks and testifies. however, in his
ownvoice. in his triple role as the narrator of the film (and the signa-
tory-the first person - of the script). as the interviewer of the wi tnesses
(thesolicitor and the receiver of the testimonies), and as the inquirer
(theartist as the subject of a quest concerning what the testimonies
testify to the figure of the witness as a questioner, and of the asker
not merely as the factual investigator but as the bearer of the film's
philosophicaladdress and inquiry).
Thethree roles of the filmmaker intermix and in effect exist only m
.

ghetto) and the face of Hilberg (which continues to articulate the con- theirrelation to each other. Since the narrator is, as such. strictly a
tent of the diary and the perspective that the author of the diary- .
Witness , " . d to the story of the interviewing: the n af-
hIS story IS restncte
Czerniakow - gives of the ghetto). The Nazi commissioner of the ghetto , .' h Lanzmann's rigor as narra-
rativeconsists of what the interview ears. . .
is thus confronted structurally, not so much with the counter-statement , .' wer (and as an Inquirer],
toris precisely to speak strictly as an mtervte .
of the historian, but with the first-hand witness of the (now dead) toabstain.that is, from narrating anything directly in his O~~tlvOlche,
author of the diary, the Jewish leader of the ghetto whom the inelucta- t that refers axplict y t e
exceptfor the beginning - the only mornen
bility of the ghetto's destiny led to end his leadership-and sign his filmto the first person of the filmmaker as narrator:
diary-with suicide.
The main role of the historian is, thus, less to narrate history than I no Chelmno was the
to reverse the SUicide, to take part in a cinematic vision that Lanzmann Thestory begins in the present at Che m .... Of
fi st exterminated by gas ....
has defined as crucially an "incarnation" and a "resurrection." "I have place in Poland where Jews were r d h'ldren who went
n women an C I
~aken a historian," Lanzmann enigmatically remarked, "so that he will the four hundred thou san d me , . . of the last
li Srebnlk surVIvor
I~carnate a dead man, even though I had someone who had been a there. only two came out a we .. ". ' Ch lrnno .. I
" hen he was sent to e ..
director of the ghetto.':» The historian is there to embody, to give flesh period.was a boy of thirteen w " e boy singer to re-
and blood to, the dead author of the diary. Unlike Christian resume' found him in Israel and persuaded that oneum
non: though, the vision of the film is to make Czerniakow come alive turn with me to Chelmno. (3-4)
preCls~l~as a dead man. His "resurrection" does not cancel out his death.
The VISion of the film is at . . maker's own voice, at once situates
. . once to make the dead writer come alive as The opening, narrated In the film th t is presented not yet as
a historian, and to make in t hi . msupapast a .
". - rrr rur-n, story and the historian come alive thestory in the present an d su . the story proper IS
In h~e u~l~ueness of the living voice of a dead man and in the silence hi t ry or a pre-story.
a f IS suicide. • the story but rather as a pre- IS 0 , hi h beginS, in fact, subse-
lm's speech w IC b ik
contemporaneous with th e fi . ctual song of Sre 0
. preface by the a < d"
THE FILMMAKER AS A WITNESS quent to the narrator's wntten ' . the "I" who -roun
e nt The narrator IS " Th
At the side of the historian Sh h fi . resung(reenacted) in the pres . Ith me to Chelmno. e
"h' to ·'retum WI f th ast
characters (its list of wt ,oa nally Includes among its list of Srebnikand "persuaded irn pens the story 0 ep
process of makin _o;tnesses) th.e very figure of the filmmaker in the who opens or reo th .gna
narrator.therefore, is the one ..I..of the narrator. of e SI -
the living and th; dead :~d creat~on-of the film. Traveling between In the present of the telling: But the . g is projected on the screen as
moving to and fro between the different . e: the openln
lOryof the film, has no VOIC .
OF THE VOICE" I 3°7
306 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY "THE RETURN
FRO M
 the silent text of a mute script. as the narrative voice-over of a writing Inhis other roles, however, that of the interviewer and of the in-
with no voice. quirer,the filmmaker, on the contrary, is by definition a transgressor.
On the one hand. then. the narrator has no voice. On the other hand, and a breaker,of silence. Of his own transgression of the silence. the
the continuity of the narrative is insured by nothing other than by interviewersays to the interviewee whose voice cannot be given up
Lanzmann's voice. which runs through the film and whose sound con- andwhose silence must be broken: "1 know it's very hard. I know and
stitutes the continuous. connective thread between the different I apologize"(117),
voices and the different testimonial episodes. But Lanzmann's voice- As an interviewer, Lanzmann asks not for great explanations of the
the active voice in which we hear the filmmaker speak - is strictly, Holocaust,but for concrete descriptions of minute particular details
once again, the voice of the inquirer and of the interviewer, not of andof apparently trivial specifics." "Was the weather very cold?" (•• ).
the narrator. As narrator, Lanzmann does not speak, but rather vocally "Fromthe station to the unloading ramp in the camp is how many
recites the words of others. lends his voice (on two occasions) to read miles?... How long did the trip last?" (33). "Exactly where did the
aloud two written documents whose authors cannot speak in their ramp begin?" (34). "It was the silence that tipped them off? Can he
own voice: the letter of the Rabbi of Grabow, warning the Jews of Lcdz describethat silence?" (67). "What were the [gas] vans like? What
of the extermination taking place at Chelmno, a letter whose signatory color?"(Bo).It is not the big generalizations but the concrete particu-
was himself consequently gassed at Chelmno with his whole cornmu- larsthat translate into a vision and thus help both to dispel the blind-
nity ("Do not think"-Lanzmann recites-"that this is written by a ing impact of the event and to transgress the silence to which the
madman. Alas, it is the horrible, tragic truth"; 83-84), and the Nazi splitting of eyewitnessing reduced the witness. It is only through
~ocument entitled "Secret Reich Business" and concerning technical the trivia, by small steps-and not by huge strides or big leaps-that
Improvements of the gas vans ("Changes to special vehicles ... shown the barrier of silence can be in effect displaced, and somewha.(
by use and experience to be necessary"; 103-5), an extraordinary docu- lifted.The pointed and specific questioning resists, above all, any pOSSl-
ment that might be said to formalize Nazism as such (the way in which , . f h H I caust Insofar as the In-
blecanonization of the expenence 0 teo 0 ' . . .
, d (the unspeakablhty) of
the most perverse and most concrete extermination is abstracted into terviewer challenges at once the sacre ness .
a ~ure questi~n of technique and function). We witness Lanzmann's death and the sacredness ofthe deadness (of the silence) of the Wltness,
VOicem.od.ulaung evenly-with no emotion and no comment-the per- Lanzmann'squestions are essentially desacralizing.
verse d.lcuon of this document punctuated by unintentional, coinci-
. to the gas chamber? . , .
dental Irony embodied by the signatory's name: "Signed: Just." How did it happen when the women came m
Besides this recitati on 0 f th e written . documents, and besides hJS . What did you feel the first time you sawall these naked women?
own mute reference to his ..
. own VOIceIn the written cinematic preface
o. f t h.e silent opening ,ann Lanzrn speaks as the interviewer and as an
mqurrer. but as narrator h k . . . . . .,. What was your impression the
. be. e eeps silent. The narrator lets the narra- But I asked you and you dldn t answer. ivttt with children? HoW did
tive earned on by oth b .
he Inrervi ers- y the live voices of the various witnesses first time you saw these naked women amvt g
e trrterviews whose sto .
are to testif 'th. nes must be able to speak for themselves, if they you feel? f r about that. , . it was
'y, at IS, to perform th '. .
h d wi err umque and Irreplaceable first- I tell you something. To have a ee 109 there day and night
an wuness. It ISonly in thi . 11 . because working
that the filrn can : J5 way, by this abstinence of the narrator, very hard to feel any ung. . our feeling disappeared,
can III fact be a narrart , between dead people, between bodles'l Y _, 6)
recisely who h . rratlve of testimony: a narrative of that,
P , IC can neither be < ling at a I. (114 •
narrative is th . reported, nor narrated, by another. The you were dead. You had no ree
us essentIally a ' .
filmmaker's I' t . narranvs of silence, the story of the . through its desa-
IS entng' the n ' . ' f the testlmony
as he is the b . arrator IS the teller of the film only insofar Shoahis the story of the liberatIOn o. . f the Holocaust for the
earer of the film's silence.
cralization; the story of tee h d canontzatIOn 0
OF THE VOICE" I 309
308 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY FROM "THE RETURN
 sake of its previously impossible historicization. What the interviewer It still exists, It's closed now.
above all avoids is an alliance with the silence of the witness, the kind Qosed? What does that mean?
of emphatic and benevolent alliance through which interviewer and Theydon't bury there now. (17-18)
interviewee often implicitly concur, and work together, for the mutual
comfort of an avoidance of the truth. The inquirer thus inquires into the very meaning of closure and of
It is the silence of the witness's death that Lanzmann must histori- narrative,political and philosophical enclosure. Of Dr. GrassIer, the ex-
cally here challenge, in order to revive the Holocaust and to rewrite assistantto the Nazi "commissar" of the Jewish ghetto, Lanzmann
the event-wtthour-e-wtrness into witnessing, and into history. It is the si- asks:
lence of the witness's death, and of the witness's deadness, which pre-
cisely must be broken and transgressed.
My question is philosophical. What does a ghetto mean, in your opinion?
(182)
We have to do it. You know it.
I won't be able to do it.
DIfFERENCES
You have to do it. 1 know it's very hard. 1 knaw and 1apologize.
Don't make me go on please. Grassierof course evades the question. "History is full of ghettos," he
Please. We must go on. (117) replies,once more using erudition, "knowledge," and the very disci-
plineof history to avoid the cutting edge of interpellation: "Persecu,
What does going on mean? The predicament of having to continue to lion of the Jews wasn't a German invention, and didn't start With
r
bear witness at all costs parallels, for Abraham Bomba, the predica- WorldWar II" 1182). Everybody knows, in other words, what a ghetto
ment faced in the past of having to continue to live on, to survive in is,and the meaning of the ghetto does not warrant a specIfically phdo-
"hi t ry" knows
spite of the gas chambers, in the face of the surrounding death. BurlO "'phfcal attention: "history is full of ghettos." Because IS 0
have to go on now, to have to keep bearing witness, is more than simply only too well what a ghetto is, this knowledge might as well beleft to
to be faced with the imperative to replicate the past and thus to repli- history,and does not need in turn to be probed by us. HIstory ISthus
cate hJS own survival. Lanzmann paradoxically now urges Bombato usedboth to deny the philosophical thrust of the question and to forget
break out of the very deadness that enabled the survival. The narrator the specificity-the difference-of the Nazi past. Insofar as the reply
. . , fusal f t ke jor granted the concep-
calls the witness to come back from the mere mode of surviving into denies precisely the Inquirer s re usa 0 a .
, . f h h tto the stereotypIcal,
that of living-and of I'ivmg . . If the mterviewer's
pain. " . thus to
role IS non -let alone the preconceptIOn - 0 t e g e , .
ki ower of the quesnon.
break the. silence ' the nar ra t'or s ro I'
e IS to insure that the story (be 'It preconceivedanswer in effect forgets teas h ng P . f h
'a. . forgets the meamng 0 t e
that of SIlence) will go on. Grassieressentially forgets the ditterence: fr
, II d ign precisely of the am'
But
. it is the inquirer wh ose p hilI osophical
. interrogation and interpel gheuo as the first step in the NaZI overa eSI .
Ianon constantly reopen . difference that will con-
h .
w at mighr otherwise be seen as the story' mg-and of the enclosure-of a difference, a d
I ure of the death camp an
c Iosure. sequentlybe assigned to the ultimate enc os d s not meet
. . G ssler's answer oe
10 the "final solution" of eradlcatlOn. ra . . differ-
to reduce the question s
Mrs. Pietyra, you live in Auschwitz? the question, and attempts, moreove~ t of the attempt at the con-
Yes, I was born there ence, But the question of the ghetto tha both in the
Were there Jews in AUs~~~'tzbefore the war? . ) f difference - perseveres
~lnment (the reduction 0 a Th narrator is pre-
They made up eighty . quirer-narrator. e
a synagogue here ... , percent of the population. They even had speechand in the silence 0f th e III " will go on (will
. h stion In Its turn,
CJSelythere to insure that t e que. ds is not merely the
Was there a Jew; s h cemetery in Auschwitz? COntinuein the viewer). The inquirer, in other war ,

"THE RETURN OF THE votCE

" I 311
310 I TRA.UMA. AND TESTIMONY FROM
 agency [hac asks <he questions, but the force [hat takes apart all previ· trafficplanner Walter Stier (133). And to the Nazi teacher's wife, who
ous answers. Throughout the interviewing process the inquirer-narrator, in a Freudian slip confuses jews and Poles (both "the others" or "the
at the side of Grassier as of others. is at once the witness of the ques- foreigners"in relation to the Germans), Lanzmann addresses the fol-
tion and <he witness of the gap-or of the difference-between the lowingmeticulous query:
question and the answer.
Often the inquirer bears witness to the question (and the narrator SinceWorldWar 1 the castle has been in ruins .... That's where
silently bears witness [0 [he story) by merely recapitulating word by the Jews were taken. This ruined castle was used for housing and
word a fragment of the answer, by literally repeating-like an echo- delousing <he Poles, and so on.
the last sentence, the last words just uttered by the interlocutor. But Thejews!
the function of the echo-in the very resonance of its amplifica- Yes,the jews,
tion-is itself inquisitive. and not simply repetitive. "The gas vans Why doyou call them Poles and not jews?
came in here." Srebnik narrates: "there were two huge ovens, and af- Sometimes Iget them mixed up.
terwards the bodies were thrown into these ovens, and the flames There'sa difference between Poles and jews?
reached to <he sky" (61. "To the sky [zim Himmel]," mutters silently the Oh yesl
interviewer. opening at once a philosophical abyss in the simple words What difference?
of the narrative description ofa black hole in the very blueness of the The Poles weren't exterminated, and the Jews were. That's the
image of <he sky. When later on, the Poles around the church narrate difference.An external difference.
r how they listened to the gassed Jew's screams, Lanzrnann's repetitious Andthe inner difference?
echoes register the unintended irony of the narration: I can't assess that. I don't know enough about psychology and
anthropology. The difference between the Poles and the jews? Any-
They heard screams at ntght? way,they couldn't stand each other. (82-83)
The jews moaned .... They were hungry. They were shut in and
starved. . .., bility of difference and
As a philosophical mqmry into the ungraspa . .
What kind oJ cries and moans were heard at night? .""
asa narrativeof the specific dluerences be tween the vanous WItnesses, .
They called on jesus and Mary and God, sometimes in . h t" onies -a fragmentatIon
Shooh implies a fragmentation of t e tes 1ffi
German .... . h not ultimately be sur-
both of tongues and of perspectIves- t at can
The jews called on jesus, Mary and God! (97-98) passed.It is because the film goes from singular to singular, because
. by another, that Lanz-
thereis not possible representation of one Wltness "t
Lanzmann's function as an echo is another means by which the voice- f the film to begm to WI -
mannneeds us to sit through ten h ours 0 .
lessness of the narrator and th . f . , . both of our own Ignorance
. e voice 0 the mquirer prod uce a question ness- to begin to have a concrete sense - ce is
In the very answer, and enact a difference through the very verbal repeti- .. f th occurrence. The occurren
and of the incommensurabilIty 0 e .' s which
tion. In the narrator as the bearer of the film's silence the question of ti n of the testlffiOme .
conveyed precisely by this fragmenta 10 . thering of
the scream persists And d' ' . . . g The film 15 a ga
. so oes the difference of wha t the screams m enact the fragmentation of the WltneSSm . . f the fragmenrs
fact call ou t to Here as els h . . ' But the collectIon 0
'. ew ere In the film. the narrator is, as such, th e fragments of <he Wlmessmg. . possible totality
hoth the guardian of the .
questIon and the guardian of <he difference. does not yield, even after ten h ours of the mOYle,. anynial incommensu-
. .' th athering of teStIffiO
oranypossible rotalizanon: eg . bl theoretical statement
Thde 'th'nqUirer's investigation is precisely into (both the philosophical ralesdoes not amount either to a generahza e his concept of the
an e concrete) particul ity f . . Asked wha twas
. an 0 dIfference. "What's the difference be- or to a narrative monologic sum. t: 1 had obsessions,
tween a special and a regui '.. .
ar train? the inquirer asks of the NaZI Holocaust,Lanzmann answered: ""Ihad no concep ,

31.2 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY THE VOICE" I 313

fROM "THE RETURN Of
 which i different .... The obsession of the cold .... The obsession of
the first time. The first shock. The first hour of the Jews in the camp,
in Treblinka, the first minutes. I will always ask the question of the
first time .... The obsession of the last moments, the waiting, the fear. Response:jULIA KRISTEVA
hoah is a film of fear, and of energy too. You cannot do such a film
theoretically. Every theoretical attempt that I tried was a failure, but For Shoshana Felman: Truth and Art
these failures were necessary .... You build such a film in your head.
in your heart, in your belly, in your guts. everywhere" (Interview, 22-
23)· Thi "everywhere" that. paradoxically. cannot be totalized. and
that resists theory as such, this corporeal fragmentation and enumera-
tion that describes the "building"-or the process of the genera-
tion-of the fiJm while it resists any attempt at conceptualization, is
itself an emblem of the specificity-of the uniqueness-of the mode of Shoshana Felman"'s writing accompanies Claude Lanzmann's
testimony of the film. The film testifies not merely by collecting and film Shoah with such intelligent complicity that it succeeds in
by gathering fragments of witnessing. but by actively exploding any creating a new object, which it is appt-oprtate . to ca Jl th e "Lanz -
possible enclosure-any conceptual frame-that might claim to ron- mann-Felman duo."! This Lanzmann~Felman duo encompas~es
tain the fragments and to fit them into one coherent whole. Shoah bears two enigmas that continue to confron.t us: What was ~e ~ID1
r witness to the fragmentation of the testimonies as the radical invalida- of the Final Solution? What art is possible after AuschwI~.
tion of all definitions, of all parameters of reference, of all known an- The brutal evidence of the response to the first quest1o~-
swers, in the very midst of its relentless affirmation -of its materially the final solution directed against the Jews-is burdened WIth
creative validation-of the absolute necessity of speaking. The film . . ti n of living bodies; the
meaning: the systematlc extermlna 10 . _ "
puts in motion its surprising testimony by performing the historical f h 'me' the "sCientific
ritual obliteration of all traces 0 t e cri , .
and contradictory double task of the breaking of the silence and of the . , f h of thought, of comm u m-
eradication of the VISIble, 0 speec , .' c.
simultaneous shattering of any given discourse, of the breaking-or . b trays Itselfm the rorm
cation. The monstrous Nazi mystIque e rl with Bibli-
the bursting open - of all frames. . d tion obsesse WI a
of a fierce engagement m a estruc . hi h the
. the fou ndatiotts on w ic
cal message. It would obhterate . t perpet-
. b 'It in these terms. 0
identity of the Jewish people IS Ul I' ..z to commu.
. " ff t the one who istens,
uate living bodies, to a ec . h d ire for meaning.
. fh desire as t e eSI
nicate the rneanmg 0 urnan , talent transform
It was necessary that Claude LanzmanndSented horror in a
. . f this un prece
the philosophIcal seizure 0 h h a Felman's elucida-
. . tble i der for S as an
cinema of the mvist e In or attempt to destroy,
h N . crime was an .
tion to r.eveal why ~ e aZI this Gordian knot that co~~~~
along with the jewish people, . rher than the ind,VlS"
hi h is nothmg a
tutes the human, and W ic 1 . t exhibit the horror
. h In refusmg a
ble unity Of') life-Iook·speec . the scree n")', the film con-
visually ("absence of corpses on It of the real and sym-
ttn the resu
fronts us. the spectators. Wl db the Nazis-the difficulty
bolie putting to death perpetuate Y
31.4 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY
315
 of bearing witness. However, in the course of this investigation, this in a history book. The Lanzmann-Felman duo reveals the defensive am-
result reveals itself as the source of this same crime: one did not want nesiaof the survivors, points out the denials and the criminal complic-
to. or could not, watch, speak, or communicate. ity of the "outside" (the "oblique" look of the Polish), Lanzmann
The "Final Solution" reveals itself as a "historical attack" against points to the cruel irony that underlies the "will to silence" of the
bearing witness, in the double sense of the term: to begin with, the act Naziswhen he insists": "My question is a philosophical question: In
of looking truth in the face and, simultaneously, the translation of this youropinion, what does a ghetto signify?" Lanzmann's enormous ques-
vision into meaning." In order to understand that life-vision-meaningare tion reveals the narrow-minded perversity of Dr. Grassier who, "start-
inseparable, Claude Lanzmann the philosopher transforms himself into ing the game," prefers to evoke History in lieu of responding to the
a paradoxical film maker: in giving himself the task of filming the interrogator-philosopher, thus avoiding signification as well as respon-
"fatal secret." he produces this tension that is necessarily a contradic- sibility, But the Lanzmann-Felman duo does not forget the rare
tion - the rendering of the invisible into image. The film Shoah reveals "[ustes," such as the messenger Jan Karski, who acts as a relay between
simultaneously the putting to death of the human and the "explosion the"outside" and the "inside" and, in this role of visiting angel, breaks
of visual testimony"! as two sides of the same crime against humanity. thewalJthat separates those who do not want to know and those who
In the same way, it opens an epochal interrogation which has nothing are condemned to the powerlessness of putting words to this horror,
to do with the aesthetic, but which concerns the survival of civiliza- with the "orphic reiteration of his spectral visit" equivalent to "a ser-
tion: What art is possible for the invisible? For the unthinkable? monof love."8
The multiple impossibilities of testifying to the horror confront the
Ffguren spectators, the readers that we are-and those who come after us-
with the profundity of the trauma that "the Final Solution" inflicts on
I~ effect, the desire for extermination that mobilizes the Nazis aims
the entirety of humanity, Jan Karski's voyage in the ghetto of Warsaw
Simultaneously at the genetic survival of the living bodies and the possi·
reveals this trauma with the maximum of economy and intensrty.
b.ility ~fr~presen~ng this annihilation and its goal. The genetic destruc-
"What has happened to them?" demands this man to his ,friend Bun-
~on IS Immediately accompanied by a destruction of words and
diste. 'They died," he responds. and Jan Karski sees. that IS to say. he
~mages: at the same time that the Shoah banishes living beings it ban-
understands.9 And only in this way does he become a messenger: one
ishes the terms "dead" an d vvicrt victims. .. These human beings who are
declared "superfl uous ,,<- 10 11owing
' w ho0 by
bv seemg
ssel .'
and questIOnIng revea 1s th e trauma . But he. does not
the analysis of Hannah Arendt- . that from this moment
SlOp here. Karski internalizes the trauma, so
become no more than" billots of wood," "marionettes," "dolls," Fig' , h i not an act of corn-
uren, or SchmlJtten , rags , nothi mg. ThiIS lexical
, forth he takes part in the trauma: his speec IS
purification betrays the . '" . der to see once more
extent of the "historical art k" . . paSSIOn,but of passion itself. He returns In or ..
ac : It IS a question of the exclusion of a thl g more than a rela-
peop le not only from th h ' those who die. The messenger has rna d e no In
" . e uman domain, but from the domain of the , ' H nnot "recount memo-
Iivmg as such No mo h . . uon": that is not much. that is everythtng, e ca "th thi
eluded b he re t an marnrnars objects, the Jews are ex- . . d him He dies WI IS
nes'' because the trauma has contaminate 1. . .
- y t e same mortifyi . k except 10 negative
domain fh ' ng gesture that excludes them from the "they" who die, Of "this" Jan Karskt cannot spea
o uman tlme- from th ' f Thi not a world. I was not
Signification. e tune of language, from the time 0 phrases: "This was not humanity! . . . IS was t be spoken
there. I was not part of that."lo The trauma as such canno .

To Make Trauma Visible

1ht QaestIon and Its unguages bles on two modes
How to make visible the va ' d d iffi ' ,
catastr h' ne 1 cui ties of bearing witness after this Andyet. confronted with this trauma. the film gam s"'galion and the
op e-this Shoah- ith ' , th tr urna to us: mve '"~
horror _ . WI out precedent? Neither as an image of of discourse to commumcate e a
a rnonstrosfry of com .
. passionate melancholy-nor as an entry rnuiliplidty of languages,
316 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY RESPONSE BY JULIA KRISTEVA I 31.7
 The truth of the trauma destroys all possibility of narration. and of the creation, after the Second World War. of the Faculty of Letters at
all imaginary speech. even the most enigmatic poetry, The Lanzmann- GeorgetownUniversity in Washington. the Jesuit president of this fac-
Felman duo conveys this conviction with insistence. "Truth kills the ulty declared in substance that there was no other response to the
po ibility of art," insists Claude Lanzrnann. "But truth does not kill murder of men and memory than to keep alive the memory of lan-
the possibility of art."!' guages.to convene all languages in the event. And I share with the Lanz-
The filmic art merges with the art of the investigation. which comes mann-Felmanduo the conviction that the presence of a professional
extremely close to psychoanalytic amnesia. But it distinguishes itself translator in the film. placed between the witnesses and the inter-
at the arne time because. contrary to the psychoanalyst. the film- viewer.incarnates, in an indelible fashion. the impossibility of finding
maker of the invisible does not interpret: he contents himself with meaning in the trauma other than through a mosaic of languages:
making visible the simultaneity of the putting to death of bodies ond dialoguein the abyss between our opaque idiolects and yet neverthe-
the putting to death of vision- speech-memory, He does this obstinately, lesscomprehensible. defensive national languages that are yet no less
with a cold irony that freezes us before the sight of these human be- receptiveto the broken process of signification. divided. shattered. stu-
ings who were stripped of all that we believe constitutes humanity. It pefying.and yet. on the whole. possible,
is this irony of intelligence on which the Lanzmann-Felman duo bets,
and which communicates to us the hope of surpassing the trauma. AllIDamallon
Obstinately, Lanzmann insists. to the point of exhorting Bomba "to Thus, this paradoxical film not only allows us to see. but replaces
shake himself out of the lethargy that has permitted him to survive.?" the narrator with an interviewer who is also a translator. And. al-
so that with him we are forced to return from a rough "survival" to a though it fragments the narration of events in order to mak~ us ~eel
"vital suffering." lhesingle event that is worth the trouble - the trauma of the historical
. But w.h~Ch"we"? We. the inheritors of a Biblical message that binds attack against life-vision-eommunication - a virtual film nevertheless
life to VlS'IOnand to communication? We. the civilization of the Book emerges.This is the film of incarnation,
that speaks and reveals the truth? Or what remains of it? Through the thread that weaves together this arrangement of frag-
" But .one does not break the silence surrounding a trauma without ments, interviews and images, faces. questions. responses, and. by the
opernng. by breaking them open. all of the secrets.?> In what lan- tirelessrecommencement of an inquest that dedicates itself. by Its very
"
recommencement. infinite, In-finite-r-an '
mcarn ation is produced. . a .res-
~ag~ can we speak the invisible? An other language searches for irs
~dentl.ty before the camera. Immersed in a Babel of foreign languages, urrection'of the dead author of a journal (Czerniakow)," of the smgmg
, ' f h W rsaw Ghetto"
I~ avoids at great pains the familiar chatter full of amnesia. of the de- child (Simon Srebnik) and of the "last Jew 0 tea ,
sire to not know even of' " . , . th t gonists m the re-
. ' mcisive JUdgments that bring together the (SlmhaRottem called Kajik]," who become e pro a , '
denials. the crimes th b d ' .' with the mtentIon
. -. e an ages of forgetfulness. and often the inex- lneved memory of the spectator. They become one
pressibla sadness itself of the film and take up residence within us, " lbifity
. I f the radical impossr I 1
Several languages: German. Polish. Yiddish cut through the lan- Claude Lanzmann wins his bet: In pace 0 . ., "to reach people
guage of th di .
that i e . trector-interrogator. French. so that it is the transillnon of witness. his "art" substitutes the posslblbty I a con-
at Imposes Itself as th ) I th . ",17 to communICate not on y
of fil h ' e on y anguage of the film: "It is a metaphor rough their own intelhgence . In order to
m t at Its language m t b I , h ponse' to arouse us
us e a anguage of translation and, in such stanr, but an open question. wit out res " 'de open This
a way, doubly strange' th t th ' , I the qnesucn wt '
that of film b r rna e event happens III languages fOreignto move us. Not to conclude. but to eave . U' cl-nemagraphic
, ut also that the si ifi ' , , be es an artrs c.
late itselfs ' I' gru canon of the event ca.nnot artiru- elernal ambition of phIlosophy com
ave LD a anguage for ergn . to th e languages of the event."'4 ambition. An exception? A utopia? Let us see.
To Translate: All •• n~ •• _ "
- ..... ~ Are Languages of the Evenr" tazawm !be MesseDger Ka ki the messenger from
I am not Sure that Fren h .
fact, I am sure of the 0 c ,:as foreign to the event of the Shoah. In OaUde l..anzmann takes on the role of Jan rs. 'mess 18 Even if
• , id .. evisits and bears WI .
PPOsIte. I recall that when we commemorated Outside" who sees the "lnSI e, r •
1
318 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY RESPONSE BY JULIA KRISTEVA I 3 9
 the testimony of this "most honest outside witness"19 does not change trainin movement ... forever," declares Lanzrnann, reprised through
the politics of the Allies. as his Zionist friends wished. an essential thevoiceof Shoshana Felman.>
breach is accomplished in the project of the "Final Solution": failing The Shoahcontinues? Yes? No? How to be sure?
to ave the lives of the Jews. Jan Karski saves the vision and its commu- I watch the television transmissions of the Tsunami: absolutely no
ni ation and. with these. the hope of putting an end to barbarism.Is relationto the "Final Solution." And yet, the flood of mediatized im-
this the role of Lanzmann's film Shoah, of art after Auschwitz? Such ages.while evidence of the triumph of an over-sated technology that
ems the message of the Lanzmann-Felman duo. takespleasure in the good conscience of its general gifts, strangely
But their vigilance does not stop there. Shoshana Felman returnsto rendersdeath less real. The third millennium begins with the incapac-
h question of the history of this enigmatic cinematographer himself. ity [Q think the meaning of human life; we evacuate all meaning in
and does not avoid recalling his biography: an "assimilated" French imagesand monetary transactions. We watch, certainly, but who sees?
J w, and not always content to be so, a philosopher at ease with the Whereare the "messengers"?
German language and Sartrean existentialism. In other words, could Havewe taken the measure of the historical catastrophe that the
we not say that he is a man of the "outside" who accedes to the "in- Shoahhas inflicted on us? We have reacted with a counter·investment
side." a sort of Karski? A man that European history has cut into two- inthevisible:the look is everywhere at once; there is not a single event
one ide "inside," the other "outside"-on one side trauma, on the that escapes the register of the visible. But this inflation of vision is
deprivedof intelligence. Is this privation perhaps the most insidious en-
other the desire for universal communication. To save the Jews and to
duranceof the catastrophe, of the Shoah? This train in motion. without
save thought. To begin with this incarnated thought that is art. "To
end....
condense in a word what this film is for me, I would say that it is an
The art of the truth waits to be accomplished. We revisit the Lanz-
incarnation, a resurrection, and that its entire approach is philosophical,"
mann.Felmanduo, and find that the Shoah has not finished revealing
Lanzmann declared at a gathering at Yale.>
10 us its ravages. Only a philosophical art capable of incarnating the
Art as a philosophical intervention that transverses the traumatic
messageof the Bible can save us now.
truth. by opening the possibility of resurrection, of incarnation. Lanz·
mann is decidedly a messenger: he attempts a transmission between
Europe a s th e Iinl ieritor. February2005
. of the Greeks and the Evangelicals, Europeas
phIlosophical and humanist, the Europe that "shattered" itself by per-
peruanng a historical attack against life-vision-communication, and
the people who were m d d .
. . . ur ere . An uncomfortable position. A proDUS'
mg posrtron. A hypothesis.
Lanzrnann does not de . hi .
'. . cerve irnself With an easy solution. WhatIS
slgntfied by this "last J ".
ti th . ew, Simha Rottern, a member of the insurrec·
IOn at awaited the Ge .
rmans In the Warsaw ghetto?" The last one (0
revo It? Or the last to be th . . .
reatened WIth extermination? For from thiS
moment forward no J '11 . ,
o bv thei - no tew wi be shut away in ghettos by the Germans
r y ten- eventual imit .
Jew of th t ators. Is It a question of the last persecuted
, e end of the Shoah? La
the same N tho . nzmann hopes so, and the film hopes
. 0 109 IS absolutely s h f
life-Vision '. ure, owever. insofar as the unity 0
-communIcatIOn con tin d
cided that th I . ues to be threatened. "Then, I eo
east Image of the film would be a train in movement, a

320 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY RESPONSE BY JULIA KRISTEVA I 321.

 ofWalter Benjamin (the only chapter in this book that is not about a
mal) IS, I would propose, a story about the relation between silence
andjustice, It is a story that achieves the status of what Benjamin will
SHOSHANA FELMAN call':a proverb": "A proverb, one might say. is a ruin which stands on
~e s.lteof an old story and in which a moral twines about a happening
11 From "The Storyteller's Silence: Walter like Ivy around a wall."3

Benjamin's Dilemma of Justice" Part ODe: BeDjamin's justice

Twostories here will therefore intersect and. through their intersec-

tion,shed light on each other: the story of the life of Walter Benjamin
and the story of his writing,
Although Benjamin does not write about trials, he does write about
One can ask oneself whether the relationship of the storytellerto history as the arena of a constant struggle between justice and injus-
hIS matetial, human life, is not itself a craftsman's relationship tice.He does write about the relation between history and justice. In
, , , exemplified by the proverb, if one thinks of it as an ideogram the wake of Benjamin, this chapter is dedicated to an exploration and
of a story. - WALTER BENjAM IN, "The Storyteller" (after Benjamin) an attempt at conceptualization of this central rela-
Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller has to tell, tion, which. as I will later show, similarly governs trials, The chapters
He has borrowed his authority from death, that follow illustrate concretely how the questions Benjamin identi-
-WALTER BENJAMIN, "The Storyteller" fiedas central (as constitutive within the relation between history and
justice) nowadays emerge as haunting questions at the center of con-
'b'l'justice,
No , ,seems poss'bl ' h out the pnnciple
I e WIt ' of some respon- temporary trials,
beyond alllivi
;:~i:~:i:~ , ng present, before the ghosts of those who
51 I Ity

b~hrno~who are already dead, be they victims ofwa,,_ History,Justice, and the Law
a er .Inds of violence ti I' Trialshave always been contextualized in - and affected by- a general
sexist or oth 1.' d ,na ona 1St, mast, colonialis~
er A.ln s of extermination. relation between history and justice, But they have not always been
- JACQUES DERRIDA, Specters of Man< judidally concerned with this relationship. Until the middle of the
twentieth century, a radical division between history and justice was
Why start a book on tri I . in principle maintained. The law perceived itself either as ahistorical
thought of Walt B I~ s WIth the story of the life and ofthe
er enjaminz The t I ' or as expressing a specific stage in society'S historical development.
parable for the twenrt ' s ory, would argue, IS a But law and history were separate. The courts sometimes acknowl-
entieth century b ' '
cared literary th ' a para Ie that a SOphISD- edgedthey were part of history, but they did not judge history as such.
u
before the lawab thor could perhaps entitle "Before the law":
o In the tempo ra I an d iIn the spatial sense.' This state of affairs has changed since the constitution of the Nurem-
"Kafka d berg tribunal, which (through the trial of the Nazi leaders as represen'
DeS not use the word " ,
min. "yet it is justi . justice,':' writes Walter Benja-
Lativesof the historical regime and the hi~torical pheno~en~n "of
, . ce which is th . '
critique "2 In the e point of departure of hiS Nazismjfor the first time called history itself into a court of Justice,
, same way one c Id ,t h s occurred in the rela-
uses the word "ju ti .. '. ou say: Benjamin seldom
s Ice, yet It is J' ti In the wake of Nuremberg, a dlSplacemen a ,
departure for his c '1' us ce that is the point of tiunshlp between history and trials,' Not only has it become thmkable
n ique, The story of the life and of the work
" I 323
322 FROM "THE STORYTELLER'S SILENCE
to pu t history on trial. it has become judicially necessary to do so. In this chapter I will analyze how. in anticipation oj developments in law
uremberg did not intend. but has in fact produced. this conceptual and in advance of history. Benjamin gives voice precisely to this claim
revolution that implicitly affects all later trials. and not only the tradi- to justice in the name of the tradition of the oppressed. I argue that
tion of war crimes and of international criminal law. In the second Benjaminis the philosopher and the conceptual precursor. the herald
half of the twentieth century. it has become part of the function of of this claim to justice. His theories are allegorical of the necessity of
trial to repair judicially not only private but also collective historical recoveringthe silence of the oppressed in the name of a judgment of
injustices." history itself. In this he is inscribed prophetically in relation to con-
temporary trials. Benjamin's reflections on history predict, or at the
Htstcry 011 Trial very least anticipate. what will actually happen in the realm of the law
TIlUS. the Eichmann trial puts on trial the whole history of the Nazi in the second half of the twentieth century.
persecution and genocide of the European jews," Decades later, the
defense in the O. J. Simpson trial puts on trial the whole history of Tht Expressionless
lynching and of the persecution of American blacks. while the prosecu- Thecourt. I claimed. gives a stage to "the tradition of the oppressed,"
tion puts concurrently on trial the historical injustices inflicted with in helping the "expressionless" of that tradition (the silence of the per-
impunity on battered women and on murdered wives. This book ex- secuted. the unspeakability of the trauma of oppression) to come into
plores these two paradigmatic legal examples among the many other expression.
trial (civil as well as criminal) that judge history as such: the Brown w Walter Benjamin originally coined the term expressionless (das .AUS-
Bonrd oj Education case in the United States. the Irving v. Lipstadt British druckslose) as an innovative literary concept," a concept that e~se~tlally
libel case, the French Klaus Barbie trial, the trials of the oflicers and links literature and art to the (mute yet powerful) commUnIcatIon of
in "the true
torturers of the "Dirty War" in Argentina. the Turkish trial of those what cannot be said in words'? but what makes art b e long
accused of having committed genocide against the Armenians in 1921, world." what "shatters" art. says Benjamin, into "the torso of a sym-
. . "GEA" 0) The
the international ad hoc war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and for the bol," into a "fragment" of the real world (BenJamm. ' .34 .
f~rmer Yugoslavia. In this last case of Bosnia and the former Yugosla- expressionless in literature (and. I will later show. in law) IS thus an
it has no possibility of
~a. the crime of history consists (again) both in human murder and utterance that signifies although an d b ecause
In gend~red murder, both in the crime of genocide itself and in the Sl3tement.
ressionless not only to a
~ompamon outrage targeted at Women. What the war crimes tribunal But in linking literature throug h th e exp
. I moment that connotes
~n ~e Ha.gue for the first time puts on trial as a crime against human- stillness and a speechlessness but a so to a .·C· t .
"th nt in which lite IS pe rr-
tty IS.not just the ethnic crime (the genocidal history) of massacres and death. trauma. and petrification- e mome .. ("GEA" 3401-
ethnic
hi cleansing
. but a Iso th·e sexual crtme (the sexualized genocidal
. fled. as though spellbound in a single moment . b
Story) of systematic and collective rape dbreaking concept that can e
Benjamin created. I will argue, a groun . 0' ular sheds
and that in par c
. The significance of all these legal cases that put history on trial-a applied as well to political phenomena. d con tempo-
Significance this book p ·ti es OFhistoryll an on
roposes to extract and to explore - is not only new light on twentieth-century crt qu ~ d I ments 12
th at t h ey are revoluti . . I ding late legal eve op .
"the on onary ill the sense that what they judge is both rary historical developments. inc u . k i B njamin's path-
e prIvate" and "th blic." 1
in th th e pu IC, but also, even more significantly, rhat I use the word expressionless throughout this .boO 4 (n h:se added reso-
em e cour-t provid . . th se of Levirras' W
The COurt allows
pressed:' t
of an expl-·
. r: es a s~ag~ for the expression of the persecuted.
Benjamin called) "the tradition of the op-
a arucu ate ItS claim tc i . .
. '. 0 justice In the name of ajudgment-
breaking sense,'> but also III e sen
nance is here induded in the BenJamlO1
Ausdruckslose)
. I
are those whom VlO ence
. "an sense:
has deprive 0
. I
) rs expressionless (das
. d fexpression' those
duced to silence. and
•

lot or l1Tlphclt prose . h h been histoncal Y re .

in the cami t . cunon c-of history itself. The court helps w 0, on the one hand. ave .' 11 made faceless, depnved
ng 0 an expresslOn oFwh t h' . Who,on the other hand. have been histonca Y
'J a Istoncally has been "expressionless."
.. I 325
324 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY
fROM
"THE STORYTELLER'S SILENCE
 of their human face - deprived, that is, not only of a language and a
voice but even of the mute expression always present in a livinghuman
face. Ifi Those whom violence has paralyzed, effaced. or deadened. those
whom violence has treated in their lives as though they were already
dead, those who have been made (in life) without expression, without a
voice and without a face have become-much like the dead-
historically (and philosophically) expressionless (das AusdnlCkslose),
This book proposes to explore precisely the status of the expression-
less in court, and the legal modes by which the expressionless of his,
tory finds an expression in trials that judge history itself and in legal
proceedings that deal with (and try to repair) the crimes of history.
In the cases that this book discusses and in others like them. me
Court either inrentiona.lly gives a stage to the expressionless of history
Or unintentionally and unconsciously enacts that expressionlessness
and is forced to witness it and to encounter it legally to deal with it.
Through the proceedings. the expressionless at least partially recovers
the living humanity and the expression of a human face. In the court-
r- room (to put one against the other two key Benjaminian concepts), the
expressionless turns into storytelling,
. I argue that Benjamin claims in advance this type of exercise of jus-
nee and this court that judges history.
He grasps ahead of others the significance of the relationship he
tween history (oppression, trauma, violence) and silence. He sees ahead
o~othe~ the necessity for justice to repair this silence by dragging
history Itself to court.
Benjamin sees in advance, I argue (ahead of what will happeo in the
day on which the court will be redeemed from its inherent political
forgetjUlnessl.
Only on Judgment Day will the meaning of history (a
meaningthat cannot be mastered or possessed by "man or men ")18
emergefrom the political unconscious" and come to light. Only on
Judgment Day will the past come into full possession of its meaning: a
meaningin which even the expressionless of history (the silence of the
victims,the muteness of the traumatized) will come into historical
expression."Tobe sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness
of its past which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past
become [legally] citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived
becomesa citation ill'ordre du jour- and that day is Judgment Day" (Ben-
jamin, "Theses," 254). The invocation of a Judgment Day to which his-
tory itself is destined is often read as testimony to Benjamin's
involvementwith-or act of faith in-a Messianic eschatology. I read
it secularly as the (revolutionary. legal) day that will put history itself
on trial, the day in which history will have to take stock of its own
flagrantinjustices.
Judgment Day implies a necessary reference of history and of histori-
cal justice to a reawakening of the dead;20 and justice is, indeed. for
Benjamin,above all justice (and. quite paradoxically, life) for the dead,
Life for the dead resides in a remembrance (by the living) of their story;
justice for the dead resides in a remembrance (by the living) of the injus-
tice and the outrage done to them, History is thus, above and beyond
official narratives, a haunting claim the dead have on the living, whose
, ,_ " b b t to protect the dead from
responSibilItyIt ISnot only to remem er u , '
- ' . 'II have the sift offanmng
being misappropriated: "Only that hlStonan wi b'

second half of the tw ti th , fi I vinced that even the

. en ie century) at once the urgent need for the the spark of hope in the past who IS rm Y can
rep:ur ~fcollective historical injustices, and the abhorrent acts of "bar- dead will not be safe from the enemy ifhe wins" ('"Theses," 255)-
b ansrn - the barbaric cri h
' mes - t at are constitutive of history as such."
He analyzes In advanc t
.. , _ aI ' e a once the reasons for and the imperative Crlliqut Of Violence
rustortc necessity of p tt' hl , I' th violence of history: the
u 109 IStory as such on trial of bringing his- What the dead will one day put on tria IS e
tory as such and most f II ' .n ' hich the present rulers step
, . 0 a • contemporary history into a court of violence of "the triumphal processlO 10 w 'b
Justice, " ("Theses" 256)- the Violence Y
OVer those who are lying prostrate ',' . 1 nee) as law:
e
which the rulers institute their own rule (thelt OwnfVlOu ,e "Walter
" usurpers, they hold themselves to b e prop
rietors 0 JUs c .
ry philosophical
"Hope in the Past," or Justice for the Dead , . Varverde "that eve
Benjarnin noted," writes Manana '. ble political proj-
History in Benjamin's reflect' , erated by quesuona
a tri J b . IOns ISrelated not just to the structure of reO ection on justice can b e recup rnn of II nner of 'cultural
a ut, more radIcally to "J d , priatiun 0 a rna
ical injustice will be ' u grnenr Day": the day on which histor- ens, as part of the bourgeOls appro. _ f 'ustice by the rul-
cancelled out pre - I th - treasures.' , , , The appropriation of philosophIes a J f Benjamin's
ment; the day on which' _ esse y rough the act of Judg' . ,the greatest concern 0
JUStIce and memory will coincide (perhaps the tngclasses of each generation was
326 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY "THE STORYTELLER'S SILENCE" I 327
FROM
thoughts on history.'?' Only the dead can judge the sheer violence of the function of violence is characteristic of militarism, which
the historical appropriation of philosophies of justice: only from the could only come into being through general conscription. Milita-
perspective of the dead can this violence disguised as justice and rism is the compulsory, universal use of violence to the ends of
cloaked as law be seen in its nakedness and put on trial. the state .... For the subordination of citizens to laws-in the
The law-and the court itself-are therefore not entirely (andnot present case, to the law of general conscription-is a legal end. If
by definition) on the side of justice; they partake of the violence of that first function of violence [militarism] is called the lawmaking
hi tory. The law must thus stand trial along with history itself. Like function, this second [conscription] will be called the law-preserv-
history, the law has an inherent relationship to death. It is precisely ing function. Since conscription is a case of law-preserving vio-
this con titutive relationship of law to violence and death that must lence ... a really effective critique of it is far less easy than the
be laid bare and in turn indicted. "The task of a critique ofviolence"- declamations of pacifists and activists suggest. Rather. such a cri-
Benjamin observes- "can be summarized as that of expounding its re- tique coincides with the critique of all legal violence- that is, with
lation to law and jusrlce":» the critique oflegal or executive force-and cannot be performed
by any lesser program. ("Critique," 284, emphasis mine)
For ifviolence. violence crowned by fate. is the origin of law. then
it may be readily supposed that where the highest violence, that
Violenceis lawmaking when it institutes itself as law and creates new
over life and death, Occurs in the legal system. the origins of law
legal norms and new prescriptive standards. Such, for instance, was
jut manifestly and fearsomely into existence .... For in the exer-
the case of the precedent-setting . .
court of the VIctorIOUS a t Nurem-
ci e of violence over life and death more than in any other legal
berg:» it was the violence of victory that enabled the Nuremberg pro-
act. law reaffirms itself. But in this very violence something rotten . . Western Allies .(and.
in law is revealed .... Law ... appears ... in so ambiguous a moral reedings to take place and enabled the VIctOrIOUS
their tribunal) to set up a groundbreaking legal precedent and mstr-
light that the question poses itself whether there are no other . ., bility d the new jurrs-
violent means for regulating conflicting human interests. IBenja- rute for the whole legal future: the new jusucra J I an . .
. h ity." When VIOlence IS
min, "Critique," 286-87)23 prudential concept of "crimes against umam . . .
. I king (when it does not mstr-
not at the origin of legitimation as awma ..
. f to) it is legf timated as
This radical critique of violence is born (Benjamin explains) from the rure a new law that legitimates It ex post ac , .
. ti g law Such as Benja-
un~lat~ed catastrophe and the unparalleled ideological and techno- law-preserving it is in the service of a preexrs In . , .
, . it 1" on of compulsory conscrip-
logical VIOlence of the First World War: a twentieth-century watershed min points out. is the case of the msn u 1 d
k e extreme an more
event that encapsulates the undreamt-of aggression and brutality re- lion in the First World War, or, to ta e a mar d i the se rice
vealed in the contempora Id I" . . . . I ce deploye rn .
I' ry wor . t IS precisely this epiphany of vro- obvious example, the case of the NaZI VIO en .' h 1 wmaking
"All . 1 ce as a means IS ett er a
ence, which has deceptively paraded as civilization, that it is urgent of the Nuremberg laws. VIO en di ates it for.
. Ither of these pre 1C ,
to unmask, demystifY, and bring to trial. After the First World War. it Orlaw-preserving. If it lays claim to ne. means even
IS no longer possible to speak of violence naively. r h that all VIOlence as a .
,eilSall validity. It follows, owever,. bl matic nature of
in the most favorable case, is impbcated In the pro e
If in the last War the c iti f' .
. ri que a military violence was the starting law itself' ("Critique," 287)· . d th law' the Western law
POInt for a passionate " f vt
cnuquo 0 VIolence in general-which OnJudgment Day, the law will therefore JU ge e N' . law' the Rus-
taught at least one rht h' . . Ill judge the aZI ,
. mg, t at vlOlence IS no longer exerdsed or toler- (the International Military Tnbunal) WI sty and rehabili-
ated nalvely-neverth I .I . . I d will free, amne ,
. . e ess VIOence was not only subject to criti- sian law will judge the SOVIet aw, an hi spect the most
crsrn for Its lawmakin h trials In t IS re '
". g c aracter, but was also judged perhaps tate the victims of the MosCOW .' f th Nuremberg trials, the
more anmhiiallngly f, th. '
. or ana er of Its functions. For a duality in Characteristic trial of history is the thud 0 e
328 ) TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY "THE STORYTELLER'S SILENCE
.. I 329
FROM
 o-called Justice Case, in which the Nazi judges (and civil servants)
were put on trial and convicted.
Law itself is therefore both redemptive and oppressive. and so is in
potential every trial. Every trial can be both at the same time, or it can
be rather the one or the other. Benjamin's concern for justice derives
precisely from this con tradiction - from this suspension between re-
d mption and oppression - inherent in the very nature of the law.Itis
becau e redemption is impossible that there is a demand for justice
and an imperative of justice. One longs for justice and one hopesin
legal justice because the only secular redemption comes from the
law." Yet the law offers no ultimate redemption and no final day of
judgment.w "Justice," writes Levinas, "is always a revision of justice
and the expectation of a better justice."27 Judgment Day is both con-
crete (particular. political, historical) and doomed to remain histori-
cally, eternally defecced.
law,could it be said that Kafka's trial is, indeed-above all legal tri-
als-the ultimate trial of the century (the one that truly puts the cen-
tury on trial)? Like K. in Kafka's trial. Benjamin is barassed by the law.
LikeK .. he is finally silenced by legal means. Indeed, the drama of his
finalfall to silence illustrates. in contrast to his hopes, at once the
failureof civilization to redeem the silenced and the silencing capacity
of law itself in its potential (and in its totalitarian reality) as civilize-
tion's most pernicious and most brutal tool of violence. Like K., in Kaf-
ka's trial, Benjamin ends up being himself a murdered victim of a
persecutoryculture that masquerades itself as trial and of a law that
masqueradesits crimes as questions of procedural legalities and legal
technicalities.
"On September 26. 1940." writes Hannah Arendt. "Walter Benjamin.
who was about to emigrate to America, took his life at the Franco-
Spanishborder":

III Therewere various reasons for this. The Gestapo had confiscated
his Parisapartment. which contained his library ... and many of
Justice. Death, Silence, and the Unappropriated his manuscripts .... Besides. nothing drew him to America. where.
~en Benjamin claimed justice for the dead. he did not yet foresee as he used to say, people would probably find no other use for him
himself as dead. Or did he? Did he know that he himself would one than to cart him up and down the country to exhibit ~im.a~..th~
dayb e a victim
" f' .
0 the violence of hIstory exhibiting its mad injustices last European." But the immediate occasion for Benjamm ~ S.Ul-
as law? Did he already kno w th a.t un d er such CIrcumstances
. he would cide was an uncommon stroke of bad luck. Through the arrnisttce
r~ther take his own life than submit to the delusions and tlte distor- agreement between Vichy France and the Third Reich. refugees
. . d of being shipped back co
nons
. of such history? . Whe n thoIS b 00 k . . .
WIll In Its turn-after Benja. from Hitler Germany ... were 10 anger
mm-daim justice for the d ea d'. It Will . claim.. It quite concretely first . f fu the United States
Germany.... To save this category 0 re gees... .
of all. for Walter Ben'jamm. hirmselt: for the private story of his life and had distributed a certain number of emergency visas through ItS
of his death and . for th e pu bl'ic story-henceforth . B njamin was among the
.' the collective leg' consulates in unoccupied Europe ... , e . . d
acy-ofhls reflectIve and' . . . . '11 Also he quickly obtai ne
h .. Imagmative work. To do justice to Benjamm, firstto receive such a visa m Marsei es. .
t get to Lisbon and board a
owe~er, It Will talk about his silence. a Spanish transit visa to enable himo.. hi h
WhIle Benjamin's phil h . . ld h a French exit VIsa ... w 1C
dempti .. I osop y of history incorporates a vision of re- ship there. However, he di not ave . . bly
tve j ustrce that in bri . the " . lease the Gestapo, mvana
will recov d . mgmg e expressIonless" into expression. the French government. eager to P . d no great
er an restore th .. . neral this presente
and of th di fr . e mlssmg. silenced history of the oppressed denied the German refugees. In ge d oad to be
e tsen anchtsed th lif f . . t nd none too ar uous r
dl nfr' • e he 0 Benjamin as an oppressed and difficulty, since a relative IY s hor a ell known
ise anchlsed Gerrnan-] . h fu . to port Bou was w
drama of d' t rted . ewrs re gee encapsulates. in contrast. a covered by foot over the mountams I' Sn'U for gsnja-
h border po Ice. ,
IS 0, ~ Justice very . '1 [i .
the realities of Kafka's trial :;ml ar ,10 Its precise factual details) to and was not guarded by th e Frene. d' ti n even the
. . fr a cardIac con 1 0 .. '
effect propheticall de' . Kafka s apparently fantastic novel," mm apparently suffenng om t have arrived in a
ertian and he mus
min and the arra :f PlctS the future legal tragedy of Walter Benja' shortest walk was a grea t ex· f refugees that he
Y PossIble and actual totalitarian perversionsof the state of serious exhaustion. The small group 0

"THE STORYTELLER'S SiLENCE

" I 331
330 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY fROM
 had joined reached the Spanish border town only to learn that exit visa from the country (France) into which he fled from Nazi Ger-
pain had dosed the border that same day and tbat tbe border many and in which he took unwelcome refuge as a stateless. segre-
officials did not honor visas made out in Marseilles. The refugees gated, disenfranchised. and interned German refugee. Like K.,
were supposed to return to France by the same route the next day. Benjamin dies at the hands of officials. of representatives of the law:
During tbe night Benjamin took his life, whereupon tbe border in the (Spanish) policemen that arrest him for his missing exit visa
officials. upon whom this suicide had made an impression. al- (from Occupied France), Benjamin confronts, like K., the guardians of
lowed his companions to proceed to Portugal. A few weeks later procedures and the guardians of boundaries, the gatekeepers that
th embargo on visas was lifted again. One day earlier Benjamin deny admittance and forbid entrance to the Law. Benjamin's last mo-
would have got through without any trouble; one day later the ments, therefore, strikingly and eerily resemble K.'s last moments.
people in Marseilles would have known that for tbe time being it
was impossible to pass through Spain. Only on that particular day After an exchange of courteous formalities regarding which of
was the catastrophe possible.»
them was to take precedence in the next task - these emissaries
seemed to have been given no specific assignment in the charge
"Before the Law," writes Kafka. "stands a doorkeeper. To this door- laid jointly upon them .... The two of them laid K. down on the
keeper there comes a man from the country who begs for admittance ground, propped him against the boulder, and settled. his head
to the Law."
upon it. But in spite of the pains they took and all the willingness
K. showed, his posture remained contored and unnatural-looking
. . b n the first handed the
But the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the mo- ... Once more, the odIOUS courtesies ega , b k
ment. The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then. to knife across K. to the second, who now handed it across K. a~
enter
.
later • "It is possibl
J e, .. answers the doorkeeper, "but not at again to the first. K. now perceived dearly that he was supposed to serze
this moment" Since th d I . . the knife himsel]: as it traveled from hand to hand above him, and plunge
. e oor eadlng Into the Law stands open as
usual and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man bends down , I t ly rise to the occusion. he
it into his own breast... , He could not comp e e
to peer through tbe ent Wh . k His glance fen on the
ranee, en the doorkeeper sees that he couldnot relieve the officials of thetr tas s. . . . . . th
laughs and sa . "If . · h flicker of a light going up, e
. ys.. you are so strongly tempted, try to get in with· top story of the house. . .. W It a fi f tnt and
?ut my perrmssron. But note that I am powerful. , , this door was en' a human gure, at
casements of a window there tIew op , d b tly far
Intended for you and I . that height leane a rup
, am now gomg to shut it."> insubstantial at that distance an d ' it? A
till farther Who was I
forward and stretched both arms s I hized? Someone who
The truth of Benjamin's lifi h friend? A good man? Someone who sympat Ize. kind? Was
, e as a arassed German-Jewish refugee. as a . Iy? Or was it man .
running. stateless person as 'II wanted help? Was It one person on.. . f that had been
be . , ' an 1 egal border crosser and as a would-
Immigrant to the free world is th '• . . ments In hIS avor
Benjamin "has actu II b e truth of Kafka s tnal. Like K., help at hand? Were there argu Lo . c is doubtless unshake-
cused man, a figure a : . ec~m~ a. mute figure in the shape of the ac- overlooked? Of course there must be. gJ ts to go on living.
Bl n Jamlfi 'htndamanwho wan
Like K.. Benjamin is ru d lfiSIStS)of the most striking intensity,'?" able, but it cannot WIt sa? Where was the
h he had never seen. .
on trial. n amentallyand fa dirca Ily a subject under a rfgJme
. Where was the Judge w om trated? He raised his
high Court, to which he had never pene .
But in this era in which law b
violence in this totalttan ecomes CUlture's most blatant tool of hands and spread out his fingers. Iready at K.'s throat.
, . arran world f h f the partners were a ed
Moscow trials, Benjamin (like K a 0 t e Nuremberg laws and of the But the hands 0 f one 0 . t his breast and turn
th knife deep m 0
trial. He simply is eXclUded from' tbnd unlike K.) does not even stand while the other thrust e Id till see the two of them
e Law. He merely does not have an it there twice. With failing eyes K. cou s

332 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY "THE STORYTELLER

's SILENCE" I 333
FROM
 immediately before him ... watching the final act. "Like a dogl" meaning. His life becomes a parable of the relation between history
he said; it was as if the shame of it must outlive him." and silence.

There is. however. one essential difference between Benjamin and K.: Pan T1Iu: lIeIIlamin's Silence
K. submits himself to the "procedure" and collaborates with it. Benja-
Nothing moredesolating than his acolytes, nothing more godforsaken than
min. in contrast, makes good on what K. would like to do but fails to
h~ adversaries.No name that would be more fittingly honored bY si·
do: he dies by his own hand. he "relieves the officials of their tasks." lence,-wALTER BENJAMIN, "Monument to a Warrior," One·Way
He sentences himself to death in order to avoid precisely the execution of
Street
the verdict by officials - the (Nazi) officials of the era. In K. there is
indeed a hidden element of identification with the law. and with ojji· Expect from me no word of my own. Nor should I be capable of saying
dais-an element. thus. of collaboration with the executioners. It is anything new; for in the room where someone writes the noise is so
precisely this "cooperation" between the victim and the executioner great.... Lethim who has something to say step forward and be silent!
that Hannah Arendt will define years later, on the occasion of the Eich· - KARL KRAUS, cited by Walter Benjamin
mann trial. as "the totality of the moral collapse the Nazis caused in
respectable European society. not only in Germany but in almost all ·
Iisten t that element in Benj'arilin's
I propose now to address-and 0-
countries. not only among the persecutors but also among the vic- . . ifi
own language and wntmg that speer ca y, decisively remains beyond
II .
- . . "I aU language and lin-
tims. »aa K. knows that his murder by the law constitutes "a shame" appropriation and beyond commumcatlon. n. , ' '
that "will outlive him," but the shame is also his distortion-his "con' . id "th e remains III addluon to
guistic creations," Benjamin has sal, er ,
tortion"-by the law.» Benjamin says no to the distortion, He will not . h t nnot be commumcated. ' , ' It
what can be conveyed something t a ca
. hi wn language that pure
let history as violence appropriate him and appropriate his death. He is the task of the translator to release In so.
. ues to LIberate the Ian-
will die not at the hands of others-of the officials of the law-but language which is exiled among alien tong . k' h' bbrevi-
rather at his own hands. He will faU silent by his own decision. " B' in's own wor .m IUS a
guage imprisoned in a work. 36 In e~Jam , . I articulation of his
SIlence B . . kn .
, "enJamm ows well, IS the essence of oppression and trau ared, cryptic style and in the essentially elhptIc. ,,' . d" in in-
manzano b " I . ' it literally Impnsone
, n, ut It IS a so something that escapes (resists) the master, thought. a surcharge of meaning IS qUI e f Benj'amin's own
ntis mute refusal of Cooperation (and of identification) with the mas- . . k f the translator 0
stances of sIlence. It IS the tas 0, e whose implications, I will
ter this ~ute, resist,ance ,to his own appropriation
e- by the [fascist] work to listen to these instances of sllenc .' . I nd autobiographi-
fo~c~s of histcricaj distortIOn - is the ultimate significance of Benja, ., hil hical hlstonca. a
show,are at once stylIstIC, P I osop '''37 m critical amplification
rrun s own self-inflicted death. This death (to borrow words from Levi- cal. "Midway between poetry and theory. y that is still impris-
. f the language
;as). IS :'a breach made by the human in the barbarism of being.'?' of this silence-my own translation 0 h t Benj'amin himself
< enjarrun creates this breach. He will not let history erase his final cry '11 th s focus on w a
oned in Benjamin's work-r-wt u d heeded in the critically
lor jusnce, even if this cry b ", ' , s unhear • un
c. must e expressIOnless" and must remain has underscored but what remain . k: "that element in a
rorever a mute cry Silen db' non of hIS wor .
the mea' f hi '. ce y law, he WIll not let history appropriate repetitive mechanical repro d uc I f bject matter "38
nlng 0 IS sIlence, mittalo su j - .
translation that goes beyon d trans
"Conversation " Be' ,
I '. lljaffiln always remembered, "strives toward si·
ence, and the lIste.ner is re II th ' IV
meaning fr h' aye sIlent partner. The speaker receives
om 1m' the sHe t '
meaning."35 ' n one IS the unappropriated source of Wars and Revolutions .f'
'1 't has been perceived tha~ oJ
Through ltis choice of d th . . Nothingis understood about this man untt 1 guage and fact -falls for
lence Ben -. . ea and through hIS self-inflicted faU to SI' -"htng- la n
, Jaffiln remains like' t' necessity and without exception, evo;.'J"
. JUS Ice. an unappropriated source of
YTELLER'S SILENCE" I 335
334 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY fROM "THE STOR
 him within the sphere of justice, , , , For him. too. justice and language however.not a state but an event. It is the significance of the event
remain founded in each other.-WALTER BENJAMIN, "Karl Kraus" that Iwill underscore and try to further understand in what will fol-
low.Whatdoes it mean that culture-in the voice of its most profound
It is customary to view Benjamin essentially as an abstract philoso- witness-must fall silent? What does it mean for culture? What does
pher. a critic and a thinker of modernity (and/or of postmoderruty] in it mean for Benjamin? How does Benjamin come to represent and to
culture and in art. In contradistinction to this dominant approach,I incorporate concretely, personally. the physiognomy of the twentieth
propose now to view Benjamin - far more specifically and more con- century'? And how in turn is this physiognomy reflected. concretized.
cretely-as a thinker. a philosopher. and a narrator of the wars and
in Benjamin'sown face?
revolutions of the twentieth century. "Wars and revolutions," writes In searching for answers to these questions. I will ju~ta~o~e and
Hannah Arendt, "have thus far determined the physiognomy of the grasptogether theoretical and autobiographical texts. Benjamm sown
twentieth century. And as distinguished from the nineteenth century . ,
workIncludes a singular recor d 0f an au t 0bl'ographical event.' that, to
ideologies-such as nationalism and internationalism. capitalism and
my mind, is crucial to the author .s th eones ' as much as to hIS destiny ,
imperialism. socialism and communism-which. though still invoked . -' narrates this event 10
(although critics usually neglect It), BenJamm ,
by many as justifying causes, have lost contact with the major realities , in the [lyrical] auto-
one of his rare moments of personal djrectrtess, 1 .
of OUf world, war and revolution ... have outlived all their ideological
ju dfications."3Sl
,
biographical text entitled A Berlm 'Ch'
rente Ie. I will interpret this event.
. I ys that consu-
togetherwith. and through. two central theoretI,~a eSssa tiler" and
,
tute the cornerstones of BenjamIn '. s· late work' The tory e I
The seeds of total war developed as early as the First World War,
, "I ding the most persona,
when the distinction between soldiers and civilians was no longer "Theses on the Philosophy of History, n rea, th h the most
. - hi I notations roug
respected because it was inconsistent with the new weapons then the most idiosyncratic autoblograp ICa . effort is to
used .... The magnitude of the violence let loose in the First World , th ti cal constructions. my
far-reaching.groundbreaking eore I I tion that will over-
War might indeed have been enough to cause revolutions in its give Benjamin's theory a face.? The conce~tua quesl tion between the
aftermath even without any revolutionary tradition and even if , 'II b ' what 1S the re a 1
ride and guide this effort wi e: ls th I tl'onship between
no revolution had ever occurred before. h 'general ISt e re a
theoryand the event (and w at. In '. ut of the concrete
the theory arise 0
To be sure, not even wars, let alone revolutions, are ever com. events and theories)? How does h oncrete drama (and
pletely determined by violence. Where violence rules absolutely, t? How does t e c
drama (and trauma) of an even, d how do both event and theory
, , , everything and everybody must fall silent,"
trauma] of an event become theory? An di t of sl'!ence)7
, ., embo IIDen
relateto silence (and to BenjamIn s
~nmy, reading, Walter Benjamin's life's work bears witness to the ways
In whl~ eve~tsoutlive their ideologies and consummate, dissolve, the
v
groundmg discourse of their nineteenth-century historic and utopian
meanings. Benjamin's text I
. spay out. thus. one against the other and TheGries GfSilence is I doxically) far
one through the other. both the "constellation that poses the threat of , . min the theory IS para
total anmhllatlon throu h ' Becausemy sense is that m genja • 'II tart my close reading of
f II' g war against the hope for the emancipation bi graphy I W1 S h
o a mankind through revoluti "41 ' less obscure than the auto 10 ' , I essays-perhaps t e
t 'I' ion, and the deadly succession of his- , he two theoretIca
ortca convulSIOns thro gh hi h Benjamin by addressmg lirst t , f hich I propose to under-
b . , u w rc CUlture- in the voice of Benjamin. B nJ'arnm-o w
W a IS Its most profound witness-must fall silent. best known abstract texts 0f e , that both "The Story-
, 1 takes I Will argue d
Theory and Autobiography SCorethe common theorenca s . fH'story" can be construe
teller" and the "Theses on the Philosophy °d rellated to. the two world
Silence can be either th ' 'dfroman ]"1
langu e outside of language or a position inside as two theories of silence derive _ '6 is retrospectively. exp lot Y
age, a state of noisele .. written in 193 •
ssness or wordlessness. Falling silent is, wars:"The Storyte 11er,
STORYTELLER'S SILENCE"I 337
336 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY FROM "THE
 connected with the First World War; 'Theses on the Philosophy of His- Lessand less frequently do we encounter people with the ability
tory:' written shortly before Benjamin's death in '940. represents his to tell a tale properly .... It is as if something that seemed inalien-
ultimate rethinking of the nature of historical events and of the task able to us ... were taken from us: me ability to exchange
of historiography in the face of me developments of the beginning of experiences."
the econd World War.
I suggest that these two texts are in effect tied up together. Ipropose Among the reasons Benjamin gives for this loss- the rise of capital-
to read them one against the other and one through the other. as two ism. the sterilization of life through bourgeois values. the decline of
tage in a larger philosophical and existential picture. and as twovari- craftsmanship. the growing influence of the media and the press - me
ations of a global Benjaminian theory of wars and silence. I argue firstand most dramatic is that people have been struck dumb by me
therefore that "The Storyteller" and "Theses" can be viewed as two FirstWorld War. From ravaged battlefields. they have returned mute
theoretical variations of the same profound underlying text. My meth- to a wrecked world in which nothing has remained the same except
odology is here inspired by the way in which Benjamin himself dis- the sky.This vivid and dramatic explanation is placed right away at
eu ses-in his youth-"Two Poems by Friedrich Holderlin,"? in the beginning of the text. like an explosive opening argument or an
analyzing in the two texts (as he puts it) "not their likeness which is initial shock or blast inflicted on the reader. with whose shock the
nonexistent" but their "comparability,"44 and in treating them- whole remainder of the text will have to cope and to catch up. The
despite their distance-as two "versions" (or two transformations; of opening. IS.indeed,
. . as force ful as It
,. IS ung raspable . The text itself does
the same profound text. . . . I' tegrate it with the arguments
not quite process It. nor does It tru y In . .. e in-
that follow.And this ungraspability or unmtegratabihty of the b g
The End of Storytelling . . ,... d I' ates and illustrates me pomt
nmg ISnot a mere cotncidence: It up IC .
"The Storyteller" is presented as a literary study of the nineteenth- . t mat has struck dumb Its
of the text that the war has left an impac .
, .' th continuity of telling
cen,tury Russian writer Nikolai Leskov, and of his striking art of story- survivors.with the effect of Interrupung now e f th
telling. But the essay's main concern is in depicting storytelling as a ts in act the content 0 e
and of understanding. The utterance repea
lost art: the achievements of the nineteenth-century model serve as the statement: it must remain somewhat unassimilable.
, d . to retain what cannot be as-
background for a differential diagnosis of the ways in which storytelling In Benjamin however it is pro ucuve
. '. . view that what cannot
IS lost to the twentieth century. Something happened. Benjamin suggests, similated. And it is crucially Important 10 my . d t d
that has brought about me death -the agony-of storytelling, both as d Before It C3n be un ers 00 •
be assimilated crystallizes around a ate. d b k t the collective
a literary genre and as a discursive mode in daily life. Benjamin an. the loss of narrative is dated. Its process Iis trace ac a '
nounces thus a historl I d ..
'. rica rama of the end of storytelling"-or an massivetrauma of the First World War.
innovanve cultural the f h
. ory 0 t e collapse of narration-as a critical
and theoretical apprai I (th b an to become apparent
of = . aisa rough Leskov) of a general historical state With the IFirstl World War a process. eg ti ceable at the end
a113Us. d si then Was It not no I
The theory thereby . B . '. which has not halte smce . the battlefield grown silent-
consciousn . ,IS enj arrun s way of grasping and bringing into of the war that men returned from. bl perience? What ten
ess an unconscious It I . communlca e ex
tible histori I cu ura phenomenon and an impercep not richer. bu t poorer 10 d f books was anything
nca process that h tak in the floo 0 war
ness and th t th as en place outside anyone's aware- years later was poure d au t I th And there was
a can erefore be d . h fr mouth to rnou .
only retrospecri I . . ecip ered, understood. and noticed but experience that goes am r has experience been
ve y. 10 Its effects (its ut mat For neve .
jarnin are that tod' symptoms). The effects. says Ben· nothing remarkab Ie ab 0 . t sric experience by tactr-
. ay, quite sympto ti all . hly than stra egr
tell a story Th f ma c y. It has become impossible Ul contradicted more th orou g . fl tion bodily experience
. e art 0 storyt II' h . rience by 10 a .
to share exp . e mg as been lost along with the ability cal warfare. economiC expe . by those in power. A
enences. _-J. oral expenence
by mechanical wauare. m
338 I TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY
YTELLER'S SILENCE" I 339
FROM "THE STOR
 generation that had gone to school on a horse-drawn streetcar lessan answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continua-
now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing tion of a story which is just unfolding" ("St .." 86),
remained unchanged but the douds, and beneath these douds, in It is not simply that there is no longer a proposal for historical or
a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, narrative continuation. The First World War is the first war that can no
fragile human body, ("St .." 84) longer be narrated. Its witnesses and its participants have lost their sto-
ries.The sole signification that "The Storyteller" can henceforth articu-
Thus, narration was reduced to silence by the First World War. What late is that of mankind's double loss: a loss of the capacity to symbolize
has emerged from the destructive torrents-from the noise of the ex- and a loss of the capacity to moralize."
plo ions-was only the muteness of the body in its absolutely helpless,
A Philosophy of History
helterles vulnerability, Resonating to this dumbness of the body is
th toryteller's dumbness, The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 (three years after the
But this fall to silence of narration is contrasted with, and covered publication of "The Storyteller") brings Benjamin to write, in 1940-in
by, the new loudness, the emerging noise of information - "journalism the months that were to be the last ones of his life -what I have called
being clearly, , , the expression of the changed function of language his second theory of silence, entitled "Theses on the Philosophy of His-
In the world of high capitalism.?-s tory." At first, this text seems altogether different from "The Story-
. In a world in which public discourse is usurped by the commercial teller." Its topic is not literature but history. of which the essay offers
alms and by the noise of information. soldiers returning from the First not a diagnosis but a theory. The theory is programmatic: its tone is
Wo~ld War can find no social or collective space in which to integrate not descriptive but prescriptive. The "theses" are audaciously abbrevi-
their death experience. Their trauma must remain a private matter ated and provocatively dogmatized, They do not explicitly reflect on
that ~annot be symbolized collectively. It cannot be exchanged, it must silence. The essay focuses rather on (scholarly and SCIentific) discourses
fall SIlent, on history. The word silence does not figure in the text. .
And yet, speechlessness is at the very heart of the reflec~on, and of
The Unforgetulble the situation, of the writer. Like the storyteller who falls Silent ~r re-
Gone are the days when d . " turns mute from the First World War, the historian or the theor-ist of
, di id ying was a public process in the life of an , ' h 5 d World War is equally
In IVI uaJ and a most exempla "("" . history facing the conflagration of t e econ
battlefield' ry one St. 93), Irrespective of the t al or discursive tool, no
. ~xpene~ce, mortality is self-deceptively denied in sterilized reduced to speechlessness: no ready-rna d e concep u .
be urgeois life which stri k , b ffici ent to explam the nature
discourse about history turns out to e su Cl ..
and liter II .; N ' ves to eep death out of sight symbolically
a y. arration was h of this war' no available conceptual framework in which history IS cus-
ultimat h ' owever, born from the pathos of an
e exc ange between tl re dvi tomarily p~rceived proves adequate or satisfactory to understand or
, ying and the living Medieval paint' . t V· s-a-vis the undreamt -0 f
mgs represent the origin f· . to explain current histoncat developmen s. I. d· l displacement
inaugural site of ,0 storytelling: they show the archetypal or
narration to be th d '. events, what is called for, Benjamin sugges~s, IS a ra tca thods and of
(or the orisri I ,e eathbed, In which the dying man di I t nsvaluatlon of our me
gina narrator) reviews hi lif OfOurframes of reference, a ra rca ra th t the mtngs
thus address th IS he (evokes his memories) and . . . "Th current amazement a
es e events and 1 . Our philosophies of history. e. t' th century is not
him, A dying sp ker ! essons of hIS past to those surrounding , 'still' ssible 10 the twen ie
J' ea er IS a naturall thori , Weare experiencing are sn po .' f knowledge-
rows his author,'ty f y au ontattve storyteller: he bor- , t i not the begmmng 0
rom death 48 philosophical. This amazemen IS f hi which gives rise to
Today, however, agonizers die· . unless it is the knowledge that the view 0 istory
are attended by no I' In pnvate and without authority, They
!Steners They til' i, is untenable" (VIlI, in Benjamin, TIl.. 257), , fNazis (ofiliose who
thority-and cert . I '. e no stones. And there is no au' , ty and che propnety 0
aln y no Wlsdom-th . , HIStory is now the proper , ' se) It is by virtue of a loyalty
have no counsel either for at has SUrvIved the war. 'We
ourselves or for others. After all, counsel is can control it and manipulate ItS dlSCour .
.. I 341
340 I TRAUMA AND TE
STiMONY FROM
"THE STORYTELLER'S SILENCE
 to history that Hitler is proposing to avenge Germany from its defeat with which this axiom has been borrowed - taken to extremes - by the
and its humiliation in the First World War. All the existing discourses discourses offascism. Fascism is, indeed, quite literally, a philosophy of
on history have proven ineffective either to predict or to counteract history as victory. Unlike historicism. it is not unconscious of this preju-
the regime and the phenomenon of Hitler.'" dice:it is grounded in a cynical and conscious claim of this philosophy
History in Nazi Germany is fascist. Fascism legitimates itself in the of history.51
name of national identity on the basis of a unity and of a continuity Historicism is thus based on a confusion between truth and power.
of hi tory. The philosophical tenets of this view are inherited from Realhistory is, on the contrary, the inelu,ctable discrepancy between
nineteenth-century historicism, which has equated temporality with the twO.52 History is the perennial conflictual arena in which collective
progress. in presupposing time as an entity of natural development. memory is named as a constitutive dissodation between truth and power.
progressively enhancing maturation and advancing toward a better- What, then. is the relation between history and silence? In a (con-
ment as time (and history) go by. Benjamin rejects this view, which has scious or unconscious) historical philosophy of power, the powerless
become untenable vis-a-vis the traumas of the twentieth century. It is (the persecuted) are constitutionally deprived of voice.
the victor who forever represents the present conquest or the present Because official history is based on the perspective of the victor. the
victory as an improvement in relation to the past. But the reality of voice with which it speaks authoritatively is deafening: it makes us
history is that of those traumatized by history, the materialist reality unaware of the fact that there remains in history a claim. a discourse.
of those who are oppressed by the new victory. Historicism is. however, that we do not hear. And in relation to this deafening, the rulers. of
based on an unconscious identification with the discourse of the vic- the moment are the heirs of the rulers of the past. History transml~s.
tor, and thus on an uncritical espousal of the victor's narrative perspec- ironically enough, a legacy of deafness in which historicists unwit-
tive. "If one asks with whom the adherents of historicism actually B ., s only as
tingly share. What is called progress, and what enjamin see .
empathize," Benjamin writes, .s therefore the transrms-
a piling of catastrophe upon catastrop h e, I . .
ler from one historical
The answer is inevitable: with the victor .... Empathy with the sion of historical discourse from ru Ier to ru . . f
. . 'on is eonsuumve 0
victor inevitably benefits the ruler. Historical materialists know instance of power to another. This tranSmISSI .
. . . hl t "The connn-
what that means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to what is (misguidedly) perceived as contlDUlty in IS ory, h
" "The history of t e op-
this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers uum of history is that of the oppressors.
step ~ver those ~ho are lying prostrate. According to traditional pressed is a discontinuum-'?" . . thus barbari-
practice. the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are .
If history ., ItS spectacu It'ar ri umphal tIme, IS .'
despite
. .' historian is not 10 posseSSion
called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them cally. constitutively conflIct-rIdden, the .' ". the philoso-
with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural ddt ched "objective ,
of a space in which to be remove • ea. fli I the face of the
treasures
. he surveys hay e an ongin
" w hlich he cannot contemplate .d to the con let. n
pher of history cannot be an outsi er . h b < scism in the
WIthout horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of . . 1 phlIosoP Y Y ra ,
the grea t mi deafening appropriation of histonca ls of t hnology and law
min d s and talents who have created them, but also to . '1' ed tOOS 0 ec
face of the Nazi use of the most Cl~ tz "ob' ectivity" does not exist. A
the anon~~us toil of their contemporaries. There is no docu- for a most barbaric racist persecuUon, ~ . t lomcal "detach·
ment ~f cIVIlIzation which is not at the same time a document of '. . t from an epts erne e-
barbartsrn And just d . histoncal articulation proceeds no . lan's sense of urgency and
. .' as a ocument IS not free of barbarism, barba- the hlstonan
rnent" but. on the contrary. fr om
rism tamts also the manner in which it was transmitted from one
owner to another. (VII, m., 256) of emergency. Sol

Historicism is thus ba d . that the "state of emer-

is blind to this resu se .. on a perc~ptIon o~ history as victory. But ir The tradition of the oppressed teaches us but the rule. We must
p pposmon. So blind that It does not see the irony gency'' in which we live is not the exception

342 J TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY "THE STORYTELLER

's SILENCE" I 343
fROM
 attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this in- muteworld. from which music will never ring out. Yet to what is it
ight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring dedicatedif not redemptionz':»
about a real state of emergency. and this will improve our position
in the struggle against Fascism. (VIII,m., 257) Dedicated to Redemption
When,therefore, will redemption come? Will there be a red em ption
The theory of history is thus itself an intervention in the conflict; it is after the Second World War? Will there ever be redemption from the
itself historical. In the middle of a cataclysmic world war that shifts SecondWorld War? Benjamin foresees the task of the historian of the
the grounds from under our very feet, danger, Benjamin implies, is future.
what triggers the most lucid and the most clairvoyant grasp of history,
Historical insight strikes surprisingly and unexpectedly in "moments Hewill be sad. His history will be the product of his sadness.
of udden illumination" in which "we are beside ourselves.':" Danger Flaubert [Benjamin writes], who was familiar with [the cause of
and emergency illuminate themselves as the conditions both of history sadness], wrote: "Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu eire triste
(of life) and of its theory (its knowledge). New, innovative theories of pour ressusciter Carthage" {Few will be able to guess how sad one
history (SUch that enable a displacement of official history) come into had to be in order to resuscitate CarthageJ. (VII, m., 256)
being only under duress.
Before the fact, Benjamin foresees that history will know a holo-
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it caust.Afterthe war, the historian's task will be not only to "resuscrtate
"the way it realJy was" (Ranke). It means to seize hold ofa memory . . b ut, para doxicaIly
Carthage"or to narrate extermination ., to save the dead:
as it flashes up at a moment of danger, Historical materialism
wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly ap- d b egarded as lost to his-
Nothing that has ever happened shou I e r
pears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. (VI,
m,,255) tory.(Ill,nl.. 254)
ift f f nning the spark of hope
Onlythat historian will have the gi 0 a d '11 t be
In Benjamin's own view. history-a line of catastrophe-is not a . d that even the dea Wl no
in the past who is firmly convince . .,' I' )
movem~nt to~ard progress but a movement toward (what Benjamin .
safe from the enemy if he wins. (VI , fll ,,2 55', BenJamm s Ita lCS
calls emgmatlcaJly) redemption. Redemption -what historical strug-
gles (and political revolutions) are about-should be understood as W Id War will be sad. Beyond
Thus. the historian of the Second or hi war particularly,
both materialist (Marxist, political. interhistoricaI) and theological (su- . tl vigilan t In t IS ,
sadness, he wiIl have to be inten y '·'fi· with the vic-
prahlstoncal, transcendent) ' "Redemptl'on'" IS diisconnnuity,
.. ditsrup~ hi . n's [dentr catron
. I the conceptual question of the istoria - question of
t1~n. r names the constant need to catch up with the hidden realityof far more sertous
tor inadvertently evolves into a graver.
history that always rem' d b
. . ams a e t to the oppressed, a debt to the dead POliticalcomplicity. 'd II boration with a crimi'
of history, ~ claim the past has on the present. . . f today is to avot co a
The task of the h,stonan 0 . S' ilarly the historian
. RedemptIon is the allegory of a future state of freedom justice hap- di es of faSCIsm. irm .
pmess, and recovery of -. ,. nat regime and with the ISCOUrs id l"citywith history's
t hful to avoi comp 1
" . meaning History should be assessed only in oflomorrow will have to b e wa c tent) crimes. Benja-
re:erence to this state, which is its goal. HistOrical action should take ba rbarism and with cu Irure 'latent
S
(and now pa
iti al awareness of the
p ace as though this goal . . . g of the cn IC
. were not utopian but pragmatic. Yet it can min's text, I argue, is the begtnnm_ h obsessively preoccupy
never be deCIded by a I 'f .
. morta I redemptIon. ultimately can be imma-
nent to h.1story or if it' d d ' treache.rousquestIons 0 co ahoratlon t at so_ - intuitively senses
. f II
h- ... IS oome to remain transcendental beyond . . I' the war. BenJamm ,f
lstOry. ThIs world" B ". ' us to this day. It IS still ear y. m 't will arise precisely, later, out oJ
. enJamm has wntten elsewhere. "remains a the importance of this questIon, as 1
344 I TR ....UM ........ND TESTIMONY
's SILENCE" I 345
FROM "THE STORYTELLER
 me Second World War. The historian, Benjamin suggests. must be rev-
olutionary lest he be unwittingly complicit. And complicity, for Benja-
min. is a graver danger. a worse punishment than death.
Historical materialism wishes to retain the image of the past
which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a
moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the
tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that
of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt
must be made to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is
• about to overpower it. (VI, Ill.. 255)
onlythe most climactic demonstration, the most aberrant materializa-
tionor realization of this historiography.
Whereasthe task of the philosopher of history is thus to take apart
"the concept of history" by showing its deceptive continuity to be in
facta process of silencing, the task of the historian is to reconstruct
what history has silenced, to give voice to the dead and to the van-
quished and to resuscitate the unrecorded, silenced, hidden story of
the oppressed.

The historian. paradoxically, has no choice but to be a revolutionary

e if he does not want to be a collaborator.v
C
1:;' Hisf,or-y and Speechlessness

Benjamin advances, thus, a theory of history as trauma-and a correla-

tive theory of the historical conversion of trauma into insight. History
consists in chains of traumatic interruptions rather than in sequences
of ration~l causalities. But the traumatized -the subjects of history-
are deprived of a language in which to speak of their victimization.
Th.e reJati~n between history and trauma is speechless. Traditional the-
O~I~S of history tend to neglect this speechlessness of trauma: by defi·
mtl~n. speechlessness is what remains out of the record. But it is
specifically to this speechless connection between history and trauma
that Benjamin's own theory f hi .
o istory mtends now to give voice.
, He does so by showing how the very discipline the very "concept of
hisrory':» . . '
IS constituted by what it excludes (and fails to grasp). History
(to Sum up) IS thus inhabited by a historical unconscious related to-
and founded on-a doubl 'I .
e Sl enee: the silence of "the tradition of the
oppressed," who are by defi iti d '
(or whose narrative . ru on epnved of voice and whose story
pers ive} .
pectrve ISalways systematically reduced to si-
Ience: and the silence of ffi . I hi
o CIa IStOry- the victor's history-with re-
spect to the tradition of th .
hidd theorert e oppressed. According to Benjamin, the
en eorencat centrality of this double silence defines historiogra:
h
pyas such This in I .
rathe.r tit" .. . . genera IS the way in which history is told. or
. IS IS In general the w . hi .
urnph oft: . ay In W ich hIStOry is silenced. The trio
ascrsm and the outbreak of the Second World War constitute

346 , TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY FROM "THE STORYTELLER'S SILENCE" I 347

 37. Ibid.. . 148. . 50. Demetrius. De elocutione 127. 140-41. 166; Dionysius, De compositione
3 . KlOpSlOCk. "Von der Darstellung," in: Klopstock, Ge,kmken uber dli vnborum 23.
uuur dtr I'oesle. 172. 51. {Pseudo-)Longinus. De sublimitate 10. 3.
39· VgJ. Michael Jakob. "Schwanengefahr": Das lyrische Ich im Zeichen tin
Sthwans. (MOochen: Hanser, 2000). 240-68. CHAPTER10
40. The concept of "Umkehr" (inversion, turning. turnabout) is used by From "The Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah"
H lderlin-supe.rimposing the theoretical concept of peripeteia in tragedy Shoshana Felman
""lith the rhetorical concept of inversion and the spiritual notion of an inner
1. "The Loneliness of Cod," published in the journal Dvar H~Shavu'a (mag-
turnabcur-, in the AFlmerkungen zum Odipus (V 202) and the Anmerkungen ZIlr
azine of the newspaper ·
Davar), Te I-AVIVo 1 98 4. My translation from the
Jln.lsond (V 271). .
41. cr. Walter Hof HOiderlins Stil als Ausdruck seiner geistigen Welt (Melsen- Hebrew. d tho but the truth"; an
2. "To tell the truth. the whole truth, an no mg. eriu
helm am Clan: Hain. 1954). 90-91, and Manfred Frank and Gerhard Kun.
oath, however, which is always. by its very nature, suSCeptlhblJeto p ·(~'Rryes·ur.
.. , rdo inversus': Zu einer Reflexionsfigur bei Navalis. Holderlin. Kleistund . . w with Debora erome
3· The Record, October 25. 1985; an mtervre
K:lCka," in Geist und Zeichcn: Festschrift ftir Arthur Henkel. ed. Herbert Anton.
Bernhard Gajek. and Peter Pfaff, (Heidelberg: 1977). recting Horror: The Man Behind Shoah"). (N w York'
til b
Claude Lanzmann e .
42. Friedrich Nietzsche,
Die Geburt der Tragodie. in Nietzsche, Samtlicht 4· Shoah, the complete text of the m y f h til will refer to this
. f the text 0 tern
\\fmc. Kritiscne Studierwusgabe.
ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Miln· Pantheon Books, 1985). Quotations rom mber (in parenthe-
edition, and will be indicated henceforth only by page nu
ch 11: de Gruyter. 1980). 1:47, 57. 64-65.
43· To give just a few other examples of Adoneic strophe endings in Hold- sisfollowing the citation). E lrn S5 Testimony (Cam-
5· John Kaplan. foreword to Eliiza beth F. Lotus.
.. yewi e
ertin's Pindaric odes: "wte wenn am Feiertage" (t'Baume des Haines," "Kraftt
del' G6ner," ,. eele des Dichters,': "heiligen Bacchus." II 118-20), "Del' Mutter bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1979). .Hilberg's historical analysis.
. borrows from .
Erde" ("Wolke des Wohllauts," "Herz die Gemeinde." "Laute gegn1ndel."ll 6. Categories that Lanzmann hinks Cf Raul Hilberg, The
2 . . b d' nd ret I . .
but which the film stnkmgly em 0 les a d Meier "19 5).
123- 5), "Die Wanderung" ("bessel' zu wohnen." "Ahnen gedenken" "MHdt 8
Destruction of the Europeanjews (New Y or }('. Holmes. an .. ,
geriihrel." ·'Wol.ken des Ida." "kommet. ihr Holden," II 138-41). '·Oe.r Rhein-
W'thout a Witness. .
("'Kusten Moreas:' "Rasen des Halbgotts." "Seele gegeben:' "die e.r gegrOO" 7· See chapter 3. 11, "An Event 1 . n of his visit to Yale UnI-
n the occaSIO . .
det:' "werden getrachtet:' "nenn icll den Fremden," "alte VeIWirrung." n 8. Interview given by Lanzmann 0 h' 'or Holocaust Testlmomes
ffV'deo Arc Ive l' f.
142-48). "Mnemosyne" ("abel' was ist diB," "fehlet die Trauer," 11194).Lach- versity, and filmed at the Fortuna I VI k) on May 5.1986. Herea -
. La b and Laurel oc . .
mann (HlHderlins Hymnen in freien Strophen. p. 99) and Gaier (HOlderlin: EiM atYaie(interviewel's: Dr. Don u d to by the abbreViatIOn
ter, citations from thiS., Videotape will be referre
EinfUhnmg Il'iibingen and Basel. Francke, 19931. 228) mention the frequenC)'
of this group as a c1ausula in the hymns. without recognizing them as in- Interview . k of the Trans It"
a or, in nIuminations,
stances of adoneus. 9· See Walter Benjamin. "The Tas Y k' Schocken Books, 1969).
trans. Harry Zohn. ed. Hanna h Arendt (New or.
44· Ma.rtin L. West, Greek Metre (Oxford: Clarendon. 1982),65.
45· Cf. Bruno Snell, Griechische Metrik (GOttingen: Vandenhoeck & Iht, 69-82. " 986; first part of Lanz-
La mann May 4, 1 . T n
precht. 1982). 44-57. for the significance of eolic lyric poetry for this df\'e:l0p' la, "An Evening with Claude nz •. h d by Yale UniverSity. ra-
menr. esp. 48-50. . d and copyng te .
mann's visit to Yale. VIdeotape fi d to as Evenmg). 2.
46. cr. Alcaeus fro 34,41,42,45.66,68,69, '50, 283, 308, 362 [Voigt).nd sCriptof the first videotape (hereafter re eITFe risson wrote: "I have anal~ed
Sappho fro 137 and 168 C (Voigt). 11. For instance, the Frenc llman Robert au .
d specialIsts an d histonans
thousands of documents. I aveh tirelessly. pursue
find a single former deportee
47· Cf. Snell. Griechische Metrik. 44-57. for the significance of rollc lyric
poetry for this development. esp. 48-50. . my questions.
WIth I have tn 'ed in yam to . own eyes, a gas"
with hIS
48 S fi . he had really. seen. . f history.
. ee. or Instance, VII, 4. pp. 124. 130-31.. 214-17, 272.298.304. capable of proving to me that W have a "selective VIeW 0
49. Ibid .. ix (preface). chamber" (Le Mande January 16, '979)· e

, NOTES TO PAGES 292-305 I 509

508 I NOTES TO PAGES 286-291
comments Bill Moyers. "We live within a mythology of benign and benevo- 21. Ibid., 102.
lent xperience .... It is hard to believe that there exists about a hundred 22. /bid.
books all devoted to teach the idea that the Holocaust was a fiction. that it
did not happen. that it had been made up by Jews for a lot of diverse rea- CHAPTER 11
son :. Interview with Margot Strom. in Facing History and Ourselves {Fallt9S6}: From "The Storyteller's Silence: Walter Benjamin's Dilemma of Justice"
6-,. Shoshana Felman
1'1. taternent made in a private conversation in Paris. January 18, tgll'{. 1. Compare Franz Kafka. The Trial, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir; rev., with
"J'af I'm un historian pour qu'il incarne un mort, alors que j'avais un vivant qui€tail additional material trans. E. M. Butler (New York: Schocken Books, 1992).
dfrt(1cur du ghetto," 213-15.
13. In this respect. the filmmaker shares the approach of the historian 2. Walter Benjamin. "Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of his
Hilberg: "In all my work," says Hilberg, "1 have never begun asking thebig Death" (hereinafter abbreviated "Kafka"). in Walter Benjamin. n1uminations,
questions. because I was always afraid that I would come up with small ed. with an introduction by Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books.
answers: and I have preferred to address these things which are minutiaeor 1969),139. This collection will be referred to by the abbreviation m.
detail in order that I might then be able to put together in a gestalta 3. Walter Benjamin. "The Storyteller," in m.. 108. The essay "The Story-
picture which. if not an explanation. is at least a description, a morefull teller" will be indicated by the abbreviation "St."
description. of what transpired" (70). 4. At Nuremberg. history was asked in an unprecedented manner to. ac-
.. . th submitted for the first lime
COUnt in court for ntstorical irilusucet at were
. and the J·udgment concep-
RrspolU< by Julia Kristeva to the legal definition of a crime. The prosecution
f er that until then had not
For hoshana Felman: Truth and Art tualized as crimes atrocities and abuses 0 pow . .
. . " rimes comnutted at the orne
L hcshana Felman. "A. rage du temoignage: Shoah de Claude LanZ' been justiciable: "crimes against humanity, c .' tll its
. h t talitarian regime In lets on I
mann:' in Au sujet de Shoah (Paris: Edition Belin, 1990). Translation ofchaplrr of war against civilians. injustlces t at a
.
°
d pponents On
th
e pa
thb aking
re
In T~rfmony: Crises o!Wftnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and HiStory. own subjects as well as on outSIders an 0 . h hi torical signifl-
. d enerally on t e IS
2. Ibid .. 55. concept of crimes against humanIty an g ductl ... chapter 3 sec-
. 1 e "Intra uctlon • .
3. Ibid., 79. cance and vision of the Nuremberg tn~ s, se . led "TWO Visions of Historic
• IbId., 61-64. tion V; and chapter 4. part 1, subsectIon entit
Trial".
5. IbId., 63.
6. Ibid., 60. 5. Compare Robert Cover, "N~re.~~erg
Myth." in "The Folktales of jusnce.
a:
d the Creation of a Modern
ttve Violence, and the Law: The
10 ~arr 1 R' n and Austin Sarat (Ann
r. Ibid .. 79. M' now Michae ya.
8. Ibid., 93. Essays of Robert Cover, ed. Mar th a 1. .J athan Turley. "Sym-
. 1995) 195-201. on
9. Ibid., 96. Arbor: University of Michigan Press. . . . d the Ethos of
. T ansformatlve justice an
10. Ibid., 91. pcsium on Trials of the Century. r eview 33 (2000): 655; Gerry J. Simp-
11. IbId .• 51. Nuremberg," in Loyola of Los Angeles Law R d F ture Developments in Inter-
U
SOn."Conceptualizing Violence: Prese~t an d Crimes against Humanity:
12. Jbtd., 73. . . War Cnmes an .
13. Ibid., 11. national Law and Pohcy on . Tt·als " in Albany Law Rmew
. .. WarCnme I •

I•. Ibid., 65. Didactic and Dissident Histories 111 w.tness. Screening Nazi Concen-
I "Film as I .
60(1997): 801; lawrence Doug as, . \" ~aIe Law journal 105 (1995):
J 5. Ibid., 68. berg Tnbuna. II
tratiOD Camps Before the Nurem
16. Ibid.. JOI-2.
449. U·e between law and history)
J7 Ibid., 98. . . I ted to the new . b
6. This change (which IS re a U· n of the relationship e-
1 Ibid. b .c reconfigura 0 . . I
also entails and represents a aSI . .' I·usu·ce Previously. cnIDloa
19. lbld. l' "mcnmma J .
tween "the private" and "the pub IC
20. lbld., 66.
NOTE S TO PAGES 320-324 I 511

510 I NOTY::~ T ....

 trial were "private" in the sense that they judged individual perpetrators Thinbng~f.the-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav, European
( od their individual or private criminality) in the name ofsociery and of its Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 145· (This collec-
public interest. The new kind of trial puts on trial not only the private but tion of essays will be hereinafter abbreviated EN.) Although Levinas does not
31 0 (through me private) the very realm of "the public." In the name of the use the term expressionless, he situates in the expressionless face of the other
public and ofthe collective interest, what is judged as criminal is henceforth (in the face stripped of expression) "the original locus of the meaningful"
bolh the private and the public. (EN. 145). For Benjamin, in turn, the expressionless is the original locus of
7. Hannah Arendt precisely disputed the Eichmann trial's project (Q put the meaningful. Levinas's thought profoundly resonates with the ~o~ght
hi tory on trial in the name of the conservative jurisprudential necessity of Benjamin, although it does not overlap with it on all points. The ongm ~f
(requirement) to judge the private. to focus on the individual (the criminal), meaning is for Levinas (as for Benjamin) "pure otherness:' Pure otherness IS
to target strictly the literal and not the representative responsibility of the signified in Levinas precisely by the image of the expressionless face of the
aecu d. For a discussion of Arendt's objections to a prosecution of history, other: the other's face is a naked. vulnerable, exposed human face, a face
ee hapter 3. section m. "before all particular expression ... a nakedness and stripping awa~ ~f ~-
8. Walter Benjamin. "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Ill., 257. pression as such; that extreme exposure, defenselessness, vulnerabl~ty ~t-
TIle essay will hereinafter be abbreviated "Theses." The "tradition of the op- self' (EN, 145). This exposure, this vulnerability of the other is (for .BenJam~n
, ' f h aningful I thus Include ID
pressed" is the tradition of their silenced narratives and of their silenced as well as for Levinas) the original locus 0 t e me .
'1 h esonance of Levinas's concept
~uma. For an analysis of this proposition through a close reading of Beoja- Benjamin's concept of the expreSSIOn ess t e r
ibiltty f the erasure of the face
m.II1's "nleses," see here part 2, the subsections entitled "A Philosophy of of the face (and of the always present POSSI I I 0
HI tory" and "History and Speechlessness:' by violence). . I rged sense in which
9· Compare Benjamin. "Goethe's Elective Affinities," trans. Corngold, in 15. What follows is a definition of the synthetic, en a t f
, l"t specifically to the ccntex 0
Wahe~ Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume I: 1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock I use the Benjaminian concept, m app ymg I .
, hi between law and history-
and Michael W. Jennings (Ca m b nid ge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), the law and of the new relations rp . f hom "the
. th face from Levmas, or w
340-41: The essay will hereinafter be abbreviated "GEA'" the volume will be 16. I borrow here the emphaSIS on e f thics and ofJ'ustice
abbreviated SWI. ' . . . . f the emergence 0 e '
VISionof the face" IS a correlative 0 .' I e} as the efface-
, (nceptuahzes VIO enc
10. In the expressionles
. s, ..every expression simultaneously comes to a and who rigorously defines VIOlence co f h Iiving (human) face
tandstil!' ("GEA," 340), . . I t effacement 0 tel
ment of the human face. This Via en f th xpressionless. "What
. . . 's concept 0 ee
th l'wentieth<entury
b )11. . I ques 0 f hi
criti history include (but are not exhausted 15 also crucial, I propose, to BenJamm
. .
.
"The relation to tea
h F ce is both the relation
y . e .posrcolomal
.
critiques f colorn
0 co onialism
. as well as more generally the ISthere in a face?" asks Levmas. d what is bare and
. absolutely expose ,
antmatlonallst, antimilitarist f ". . to the absolutely weak-to what IS th upreme isolation we call
the ceo . all' ' ermrust, gay, antiracist critiques, includmg undergo e s
nonuc y onented Marx' ISt crttrques, .. the critique of capitalism, and . destitute ... what is alone an d can rder and at the same
. 'tement to rou ...
more recently. the critique of globalization. death and thus, in some way, an lOCI k'II" it is the fact that I
'Th shall not 1 ..• ,
12. The expressionless Ia . . time ... the Face is also the au II' g out to me" (EN,146). Vic-
trauma ad" rgue, IS a term that implicitly conceplUOltUS '1 't is like a ca m .
n conceptualtzes the inh' . cannot let the other die a one, 1 . I' ting both its vision and ItS
ture If tr h' erent relatIOn between trauma and htera- the face 10 ob itera
. auma as tn Benj . . lence is what precisely e ff'aces II t kill" Struck by violence.
ing" powe.r of't an~m a literary power of expression (the "shaner- th "Thou sha no .
I s muteness), It is b '. . . mute call or its human appeal, e . ure by the other) loses the
is an utterance that s' ;(; I ecause, like lIterature, trauma m Its rum through Its eras
13 See th d' 1~IJ'es a though and because it has no possibility ofstawnDlL a face that (through trauma or _ Ifb omes expressionless, express-
xpress Itse ec
. e ISCUSSlon of this c . capaci ty to express life an d to e
tion 7. the subsec"; . oncept later In this chapter (in part 2, Sf{"
. Llon entltled "Pro . .. . . . ing only the rigidity of death. . f the term expressionless is
Ion in chapter 4 . sopopela ), and the substanoal dISCUS . .' ny preCise use 0 .
, part 3, section 9 th' f So far as Benjamin's ImgUlStlCa ded resonance of Levinas that I m~
lhe 'T'rial' Th E' ' e Subsection entitled "The caesura 0
. expressionless." concerned (as distinguished from the a~ h uld be noted. however: (1) that
14 Le' , th term), It so, hi h
. vmas tn turn speaks of "th '. • elude in my enlarged use 0 f e [Son is expressionless (w c
Emmanuel Levinas "Ph'l e stnppmg away of expression as such. .d that some pe
Benjamin deliberately never sal
<, - I osophy. Justice, and Love," in Levinas, Entre News: 1
NOTES TO PAGES 325-326 I 5 3
512 I NOTES TO
PAGES 324-325
 In erman would be the traditional use of the term as implying a lack of 24. For a synthetic summary of this well-known critique of the Nurem-
pres ion in a face or in a person), but only that specific acts (including berg trial as "victor's justice," compare for instance Gerry Simpson, "Con-

peech acts). both moral and artistic. are expressionless in his sense; (2) that ceptualizing Violence: Present and Future Developments in International
the expres ion less paradoxically is the only form in which specific acts and Law and Policy on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity: Didactic and

phenomena can possibly find expression (rather than being excluded from Dissident Histories in War Crime Trials," Albany Law Review 60 (1.997):805-6:
"In the absence of a uniform and global approach, the trials of war criminals
II and first having to find a way to express themselves). For a detailed philo-
logical analysis of the concept of the expressionless in Benjamin, see Win' generally occurred only where defeat and criminality coincide. This was un-
doubtedly the case at Nuremberg and Tokyo. The phrase 'victor's justice' is
fned Menninghaus. "Walter Benjamin's Variations of Imagelessness," in
by now a truism, The victorious allied powers tried their German and Japa-
Jrwish wrtrers. German Literature: The Uneasy Examples of Nelly Sachs and Walter
nese adversaries without considering the possibility of applying these same
Br"j~mf~. ed. Timothy Bahti and Marilyn Sibley Fries (Ann Arbor: University
of tichignn Press. 1995). 155-73. laws to their own war-time behavior." See also Cover, "Nuremberg and the
Creation of a Modern Myth," in "The Folktales of justice," in Narrative, ~io-
17· "There is no document of civilization," Benjamin writes, "that is not
Ience, and the Law, 195-201; Lawrence Douglas, "Film as wimess: Screenmg
at the same rime 3 document of barbarism." The "cultural treasures:' there-
fore. have an origin that <a histcri rica I materialist
" . NaziConcentration Camps Before the Nuremberg Tribunal," Yale Law Journal
"cannot contemplate with-
OUI horror" t'Thcses." 256), 105(1995):449; Ruti Teitel, "The Universal and the particUl~r .and lote.rna-
18. . "Not man or men . but th e s t rugg I'mg, oppressed class itself is the tional Criminal justice: Symposium in Celebration of the FIftieth Ann~ver-
Ri ht "Columbia Human RIghts
depository of historical knowledge" ("Theses," 260). sary of the Universal Declaration of Human g s,
19, TIle political unconscio " Review 30 (1999):285·
_ us conststs m the structure of oppressions and law
, ' th Messiah" and "Nurem berg an d
repressions specific to a giv en historical
. . moment. Compare Fredric Jameson, 25. Compare Robert Cover, "Brtngmg e ,
th C . f M d Myth" in "The Folktales of Justice," in Narratwe,
.. 'u
Tht Poll( Ica "ConsCIOUS' Na
U ntverstty Press. 1982).
' rtu t'rve as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell e reation ° a 0 ern , "I tegrity [in judges) . , . is the act of
. Violence,and the Law, 185-87 and 201.: n . "
.' I h t hich redeems that IS law.
20, In this apparently Messia . th maintaining the vision that It IS on Y tnat w Iif d
relationship b . me erne, Benjamin again predicts the new 26. The dead can have an afterlife, but they cannot come bacfk thO.I e. ~nty
etwecn trials and the d d' ' dB' in is well aware 0 t Isreal,
nate Some of the later" . ea ,a relationship that will predoml'
if they do, they do so as precisely dea, enjam d d d es not entail their
turn rudy and trials of the century" and that this book will in its . . 1 scttation of the ea 0
attempt to think th h and of the fact that the hlstoflCa resu k th dead and
See chapters 3 and 4. roug and concretely meditate about- Id like to stay awa en e
resurrection. "The angel [of history J wou ' k whole what has
I ed " but he cannot rna e
21. Mariana Varverde "D . , make whole what has been smas 1 , . h . d (the storm) of
History and Social M '. errida s Justice and Foucault's Freedom: Elhics. . tly caught m t e wm
• . < ovements " La . been broken: his wings are Impoten
pare jacques Derrida Specte if' wand SOCIal Inquiry 24 (1999):657· Com-
"progress" ("Theses," 257-58).
< , rs 0 Manc The S .
and (he ew Internah I . tate oj Debt, the Work of Mournm
27. Emmanuel Levmas,
. "u nI·queness" ' in EN, 196.
ana, trans Pe Ka
22. Benjamin
.
"C '0' '. ggy
n que of VIOl en "(h
mUf(NewYork:
.
Routledge, 1994)'
"
28. Hannah Arendt, ··Introduction," m., 5-18.
in Walle.r Benjami R ,f!' ce eremafter abbreviated "Critique ~ 29. Compare Franz Kafka,
The T'na,I 213-15 "'n notes after Brecht,
n. eJ.ections: Essays A h . ..
trans. Edmund jeph t . ' p onsms, Autobiographical Wnlm . . "Kall<" 131 Indeed, as Benjaml . th
co t, ed WIth . 30. BenjamlO. a,' ·Vl·ng what exists m e
York: chocken Book 8' an Introduction by Peter Demetz (NeW e without percel
"Kafka perceived what waS to com" J hereinafter abbreviated
R (Rtjlect'ions). s. 19 6), 277. This coUection is hereinafter abbreviared . on Kall<a [fil.. 143· of.
present" ("Some ReflectlOns .' tially as an individual -
"H perceIved It essen
23. It was to some extent thi " "SRK"). And Benjamin adds: e .., rception of the future pro-
the problematic nature of th s cntIque oflegal violence, this awareneS50( . Kafl<'s Benjamm s pe
reeled by it" (ibid.), Like a. d. d·Vl·dual from his insight, that
. I . elawandofth I' , .' as affecte m 1 '
13 tnals that (among th e lIIDts and flaws ofproseculOl' ceeds. I argue, from his posloon db' ect
. . . 0 er reasons) w h· , . . . , a persecute su ~ .
IOstnUtlon (in South Afr' as at t e ongm of the contemporary IS. IDtO his historical posItion as _
. . Ica and elsewh ) f .
Wllh lhe crimes of bisto . th ere 0 an alternative modeofdeahng 31. Kafka. The Trial, 227-29, italics rome.
ry, e Truth aod ReconcllIanon .,. Commissions. 1
NOTES TO PAGES 329-334 I 5 5
514 I NOTES TO PAGES
326-328
 stylistic echoes. My methodology will be attentive. therefore. to three dis-
32• Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banalil)' oJ Evil
tinct levels of the text that the analysis will bring together: the conceptual
ew York: Penguin Books. 1963). 125-26; hereinafter abbreviated EiJ.Arendt
level of the theory. the narrative level of the autobiography. and the figura-
is commenting on the collaboration of the Judenrat: "Wherever Jews lived.
tive level of the literary criticism.
there were recognized Jewish leaders. and this leadership, almost without
43, SWI. 18-36,
exception. cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another.
44, Ibid .. 33,
wiLh the Nazis" (EiJ. 125). But this cooperation between victim and execu-
45, .. St.... 83,
tioner (the essence of the moral calamity triggered by the Nazis) was not 46. "Karl Kraus." R. 242. Compare ..St .... 88-91,lnformation and narration
specific to Jews. Arendt insists. "David Rousset, a former inmate of Buchen' are not simply two competing modes of discourse (two functions of lan-
waldo described what we know happened in all concentration camps: 'The guage). They are in fact two strategies of living and communicating, two
triumph of the 5.S. demands that the tortured victim allow himself to be led levels of existence within culture. Narration seeks a listener; information. a
10 the noose without protesting. that he renounce and abandon himself rc consumer. Narration is addressed to a community, information is directed
the point of ceasing to affirm his identity. And it is not for nothing. It isnot toward a market. Insofar as listening is an integral part of narration, while
gratuitously. out of sheer sadism. that the S.S. men desire his defeat. They marketing is always part of information. narration is attentive and imagina-
know that the system which succeeds in destroying its victim before he lively productive (in its concern for the singularity. the unintelligibility of
~ounLS the scaffold ... is incomparably the best for keeping a whole people the event). while information is mechanical and reproductive (in its concern
In slavery. In submission. Nothing is more terrible than these processionsof for the event's exchangeability, explainability- and reproducibility).
y
human bcin gs going. lik Benjamin was concerned not only with communication but ymplicitl ,
I e d ummies to their deaths' (ies Jours de notre mort.
19471" (Arendt, Eij, 11-12), essentially) with education. Educationally. these two modes conflict n~t O~lY
as two separate roles or institutions. They wage a battle within every insntu-
33· See Kafka. The Trial, 227-28 (emphasis mine): "The two of them laidK.
tion and within every discipline of knowledge. They ar~ in conflic~, in ~ffect,
down _on the ground . pro ppe d hiun against, the boulder, and settled his head
within every pedagogy. They struggle (to this day) withm every umversity,
upon It . But' 10 SPite
. oJ.f t h e pcms
' they took and all the Willingness K. showed,his
47. "Today people live in rooms that have never been to~ched by d.eath
~~::.r7"ainedcon~rted. a~~. u~natural-looking." Compare Benjamin, and ... when their end approaches they are stowed away In sanatoria or
• 35 {emphasis mine]: This story takes us right into the milieuof
Ka.fka 5 world. No one s ays th at the distortions
' hospitals by their heirs" ("St.," 94)·
which it will be the Messiah'J 48. "Death is the sanction of everything the storyteller has to tell. He has
mwfon . to set right somed ay arrect
~ only our space' surely they are distort1anslj borrowed his authority from death" {"St.," 94}· . . ... .
our tttne as well . Kafk a must have had thi ,' 49. Since the storyteller (in Lesl<ov and his tradition) IS a righteous
r.. 8 IS In mind."
3 4· C!'f, 1 7. .... .. d "sa e'' (..St.... 108), what now falls to muteness
man. a teacher. an a g . s teacher of
• 35· Walter Benjamin
ated "MY")' B _ .'
"Th
e Metaphysics of Youth" (hereinafter abbrt\"
' is the very possibility of righteousness. Similarly. h~erature a
hIt
11
its VOIce In the co apse 0
f
• 10 enjamin SWI 6 humanity (in the manner of Leskov) as os .. thi -
6 ' ' .' . .' ode of discourse. Htcrature as e ICS
3 . The Task of the Translator" SWJ 6 narrative as a genertc. literary m .' II nd philosophically
37• lbid1 •• 259.
' .2 "
"counsel," education-is thus inherently, histonca y. a
38, Ibid .. 257,
reduced to silence. . . cn'tiques and "decon·
39. Hannah Arendt. On Revol . . . f history that BeoJamm
40. Ibid .. 11-18. uttcn (London: Penguin, 1990). 11. 50. Among the rheortes 0 . hI' , m (positivism) pure lib-
li . n) pure stonCIS '
struets" are pure theology (re IgtO.. .. al historical II1aterialism).
41. Ibid .. 11. tralism (idealism). and pure MafX1SIIl (~ncnoc 'viI'ans and militarY officials
. 'h ngue to hiS top CI I .
41.. This textual juxtaposition wiU. 51. Compare Hitler sara . fP I d' "DestrUction of poland IS
be illuminated in ,'t t of the theory and the autobiographY . f the invaSion 0 0 an .
. ' s urn, by Ben' '. '.Oh' tn 1939. on the occasion 0
. . ImunaOon..'
0 flm' 'ng 'orces not the arrival at
m the early lite.rary Jatnln s work as a literary critic, espeollW} II.

essays on H ,old I' es, in the background. The aIm IS e d' u' caUse for starting the war-
Eltet'h't Affinities. I will th 0 er m. on Dostoevsky. and on Goeth ' propagan 15 c
a certain line .... I sha 11gtve a
criticism and wi.1l . us borrow metaphors from Benjamin's own lireraJ)' 1
tn turn use th .
em as Interpretive .
tools and as evoearrie
NOTES TO PAGES 337-343 I 5 7
never mind whether it be plausible or not. The victor shall not be askedlater 3, "Novelist Rebecca West. covering the first 'historic' Nuremberg trial for
on whether he told the truth or not. In starting and making a war, nottht the New Yorker. found it insufferably tedious," writes Mark Osiel (Rebecca
nghl is what matters but victory." Quoted by Robert jackson in his introduc West. "Extraordinary Exile." New Yorker, Sept, 7, 1946). "This reaction was not
110n to Whitney Harris. Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg {NewYork: uncommon. As one reporter notes (Alex Ross. "Watching for a Judgment of
8. roes and Noble. 1954. 1995), xxxi. Real Evil." New York Times, Nov. 12. 1995): "It was the largest crime in history
51. In this conception. Benjamin is the interpreter-the synthesizer-or and it promised the greatest courtroom spectacte.fuutl ... what ensued was
tile diverse legacies of Nietzsche. Marx. and Freud. an excruciatingly long and complex trial that failed to mesmerize a dis-
53. Walter Benjamin. "Paralipomenes et variantes des Theses 'SurIe concrpI tracted world. Its mass of evidence created boredom. mixed occasionally
de "hfsIOfno,···Bmrs !ranrais, ed. Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (Paris. 1991),352:my with an abject horror before which ordinary justice seemed helpless."
translarion. Quoted in Mark Ostel. MassAtrodty. Collective Memory, and the Law (New Bruns-
54· The reality of history is grasped (articulated) when the historianTffLlg' wick. NJ.: Transaction publishers. 2000). 91.
titus a historical stcre of emergency that is. precisely, not the one the rulerbas 4. Gideon Hausner. justice tnJerusalem (New York: Harper and Row. 1968;
d lured or that (in Hobbes's tradition. in Carl Schmitt's words) is "decided orig. pUb.1g66), 291-92.
by, lh.e sovereign:' Compare Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie (Munich and 5. In a short text called "The Witness," Jorge Luis Borges writes: "Deeds
lelpalg. 1922), a work cited and discussed by Benjamin in The Originll!Gtr· which populate the dimensions of space and which reach th~ir e~d when
. d t but one thing or an infinite num-
Irlan Tragic Drcma (1928: London: NLB. 1977).65.74.239. no. 14-17. someone dies may cause us won ermen . .
55· A 8erlin Chronicle (hereinafter abbreviated Be). in R. 56-57. ber of things dies in every final agony, unless there is a universal memory ... ,
~6. "~EA,'" 355. Redemption seems, therefore. to be linked to the moment What will die with me when I die. what pathetic and agile form will the
ofiliumanauon that< s U dd en Iy and unexpectedly gives
. . to ntcr
us the capacity world lose?" (jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Ot~ Writings
rhr sllt"nc~ to rune (FlIO the unarticulated and to hear what is in history deprived [New York: New Directions. 19621. 243). It is because humans. unl~e docu-
. t . I calls upon each witness to
of words. Redemptio n starts . by redeeming history from deafness. merits, do not endure that the Eichmann ria . .
·11 di h he or she dies TransIence IS
ee For a historiography
57· fr a f complicity,
". ".
we must disassoaale cur- narrate the singular story that W1 re w en
.
.
's death is from the start,
se lYes from our accusto me d thomkmg:
. "Thinking involves not only the ll_'
uu" inscribed within this legal process as the witness .
o r tfi'
h oughts. but thei r arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stopsIn . ~ implicitly inscribed within each testimony. "
con guraucn pregnant with . _,.l. While documents-unlike the living witnesses-exclude de~th as ~ POSSl-
b hi h . I tensions. it gives that configuration a shllo-" . d hil the Nuremberg trials claim au-
y W IC It crystallizes' bility inherent in the eVIdence. an w Ie&: th d th it
hi tori I b' Into a monad. A historical materialist approacheSl I . the courtroom rrom e ea
ca su jeer only wher h thority precisely in the act of she termg Wa It r Benjamin's
he recoem . e e encounters it as a monad. In this srru~ to e
grnzes a Sign for a Me " . d·' talks about, in the Eichmann trial. on the contrary (h us ryt lleer has to tell
ently I' SSIaDlC cessation of happening. or. put 1I1ef' . f rything t e sto e .
• a revo Utlonary chane . th expression). "Death is the sanctlon 0 eve ......
emphasis mi ) e In e fight for the oppressed past" (XVII, flL 261 . fr d ath" (BenJamm, St .• 94)·
ne. He has borrowed his authority om e . Th T ·al 0'£ AdoJl' Eich·
58. The original and c . t '5 widow 10 en" :I

the Concepl of History." lIrrent German title of the essay is. precisely."'01 6. Attested to by the chief prosecu or d ction of ABC News
0
mann, a PBS documentary Home Video (B347 ). a copra u
. Pr' ts Film Company, 1997·
CHAPTER 12
ProductIons and Great 0Jec . 'sed in its entirety. The com-
7. The Eichmann trial was the first trial televI fI 1
A Ghost In the House Of JUStice' . h' softheStateo srae.
Shoshana Felman . Death and the Language of the Law plete trial footage is kept 10 the arc lYe.. t us the discourse that
"0 .. writes Paul Valery. repeats a . I
8. ur memory. d· t ,·ncomprehenslon. t
., n .s respen 109 0
1. Friedrich Nietzsche Th . we have not understood. RepeOno I b accomplished." Paul
Collins. introducti b' ~ Use and Abuse of History for Life, trans. AdrilJl f 1 ge has not eeD
signifies to us that the act 0 an~a Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard. BibIi-
1957). 12-17 ee Chon Y Julius Kraft (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 194t-
. apter 3 secti II .; • Valery. "Commentaires de Charrnes. 10 Valery. .
1. Raben J3000 "I • on .. subsection entitled "History for (j r . 5 ' my translatIon.
n, lltroduction"" Wh' ~~I'lW otheque de la Pleiade. 1957 )• 1.1 10 •
Evfdmet' al Nurember (N ,Ill ItneyHarris. Tyranny onTnw- , 1
g eWYork' . Barnes and Noble, 1954,1995), XXXV-x,.:()'\ NOTES TO PAGES 353-355 I 5 9

0:, I •• __