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╇
i

Commonplace Witnessing
ii
iii

Commonplace
Witnessing
Rhetorical Invention, Historical
Remembrance, and Public Culture

Bradford Vivian

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2017

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, without the
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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Vivian, Bradford.
Title: Commonplace witnessing : rhetorical invention, historical remembrance,
and public culture / Bradford Vivian.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2017] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016034958 (print) | LCCN 2016052293 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190611088 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190611095 (updf)
Subjects: LCSH: Memory—Social aspects—United States—History. |
Speeches, addresses, etc., American—History and criticism. | Collective
memory—United States—History. | Rhetoric.
Classification: LCC BF378.S65 V575 2017 (print) | LCC BF378.S65 (ebook) |
DDC 302/.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034958

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v

For Noah—​
and the privilege of bearing witness to his brave and gentle life.
vi
vi

For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.

Acts 4:20

Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep

fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
John Updike, “Tuesday, and After”
viii
╇
ix

CONTENTS

Acknowledgmentsâ•…â•…xi

Introductionâ•…â•…1
1. Invention: Booker T. Washington’s Cotton States
Exposition Addressâ•…â•… 23
2. Authenticity: Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Fragmentsâ•…â•…47
3. Regret: George W. Bush’s Gorée Island Addressâ•…â•… 95
4. Habituation: The National September 11 Memorialâ•…â•… 129
5. Impossibilityâ•…â•…163
Conclusionâ•…â•…197

Bibliographyâ•…â•…207
Indexâ•…â•…221
x
xi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for permission to use revised versions of previously published

materials in this book. An earlier version of ­chapter 1 originally appeared as
“Up from Memory: Epideictic Forgetting in Booker T. Washington’s Cotton
States Exposition Address,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 45 (2012): 189–​212. This
article is used by permission of the Pennsylvania State University Press.
Chapter 3 is a revised version of “The Paradox of Regret: Remembering
and Forgetting the History of Slavery in George W. Bush’s Gorée Island
Address,” History and Memory 24 (2012): 5–​38. I thank Indiana University
Press for generous permission to use that material.
A variety of research grants and fellowships contributed to this proj-
ect. The Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award and Grant-​in-​Aid (awarded by the
National Communication Association), an Interdisciplinary Research Grant
from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, and
a Mini-​Grant from the Program for Advancement of Research on Conflict
and Collaboration (PARCC) in the Maxwell School for Citizenship and
Public Affairs at Syracuse University all supported my on-​site research in
Manhattan for ­chapter 4. A Faculty Fellowship in the Center for Humanities
and Information at Pennsylvania State University allowed me to complete
final research on this project and prepare my manuscript for publication.
I thank the sources of these institutional supports for their substantial
contributions to my project.
I am deeply grateful to several individuals for their assistance with this
book. I wish to thank, in particular, Hallie Stebbins at Oxford University
Press for her consistent support and editorial expertise, as well as her edi-
torial assistant, Hannah Doyle. My research assistant, Allison Niebauer,
performed stellar copyediting and formatting work with this manuscript
in its latter stages. Matthew Richards provided insightful commentary
on an early draft of c­ hapter 4. Stephen Browne offered excellent sugges-
tions regarding a draft of my Introduction while entertaining productive
xii

conversation over the basic claims of this project as a whole. This book has
also benefitted from the general atmosphere of research support as well as
intellectual rigor and generosity alike in the Department of Communication
Arts and Sciences at Pennsylvania State University.
Literature on the topic of witnessing in recent decades has focused
largely on distressing, violent, and tragic historical phenomena. Perhaps
one can also imagine an account of bearing witness to sources of joy, mercy,
and grace. My own testament as such would begin and end by acknowledg-
ing all the ways in which the two brightest personifications of joy, mercy,
and grace in my life—​my wife, Anne, and my son, Noah—​have inspired,
supported, and informed this work at every turn.

[ xii ] Acknowledgments
xi

Commonplace Witnessing
xiv
1

Introduction

B earing witness is imperative. We must never forget. We must always

remember. We must bear witness. So say the survivors of atrocity and
personal suffering, elected officials who speak at public memorials, produc-
ers of documentary films about infamous injustices, and droves of citizens
affected by unspeakable tragedies. One could, in principle, adopt many dif-
ferent forms of language to narrate and work through traumatic historical
events; but what this book describes as the language of witnessing is now
de rigueur in such circumstances. President Barack Obama dedicated the
National September 11 Museum by saying that it exists “so that generations
yet unborn will never forget” the terror of that day. T-​shirts, bumper stick-
ers, and ribbons that read “Never Forget the Newtown 26” (available for
sale online) memorialize the children slain in the Sandy Hook Elementary
School shooting. A delegation from the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum traveled to Jordan in 2014 on a “Bearing Witness Trip” to observe
the plight of Syrian refugees.1
The subject position of the witness, the one who exhorts all others to
bear witness, is remarkably variable in contemporary liberal-​democratic
society, from survivors of injustice and religious leaders to politicians,
tourists, and media spectators. Rhetorical mediums of witnessing in our
time are equally adaptable, encompassing literature, public speech, politi-
cal ceremony, atrocity memorials or museums, social media, and even video
games. Personal, social, political, or moral reasons for bearing witness are
accordingly miscellaneous. “Witnessing,” Wendy Hesford observes, “has
come to mean not just the experience of the survivor but a more general-
ized mass-​mediated experience.”2 The question of who bears witness, and
how or why one does so, is now conspicuously uncertain, but survivors,
2

officials, and citizens indefatigably speak of the need to bear witness, to

preserve and publicize recollections of human cruelty and tragic loss in
accord with an indisputable imperative. We must never forget, always
remember, and bear witness as such.
The meaning of the imperative to bear witness in public culture is both
clear and opaque. The exigency and purpose for doing so appears to need
little explanation insofar as the prospect of witnessing indeed signifies a
frequently invoked social, political, and moral imperative. Yet many groups
and individuals adopt the language of witnessing for such diverse ends that
one may legitimately wonder whether any definitional or instrumental
center holds among multifarious acts of witnessing in modern public cul-
ture. Commonplace Witnessing contends that this radically variable sense of
witnessing is a product of the pervasive presence of witnessing in its many
forms throughout modern cultures of public memory. Postwar prolifera-
tions of European and North American practices of collective remembrance
have been duly studied in volume upon scholarly volume. Memory studies
literature is replete with analyses of witnessing—​especially those concern-
ing the Holocaust, the prodigious historical, political, and moral legacy of
which includes abundant commentary on the need to bear witness to hei-
nous crimes against humanity.3 This abundant commentary has, over the
course of recent decades, inspired public idioms and commonplace tropes
now employed for the purpose of bearing witness to any number of histori-
cal atrocities and tragedies—​for the prospect of bearing witness, in other
words, as a rite of collective remembrance, commemoration, memorializa-
tion, and the like.4
Commonplace Witnessing examines how, and with what sociopolitical
consequences, idioms of witnessing have infused the public discourse of
ordinary citizens, politicians, and civic institutions in recent decades. The
broadly established appeal of rhetorical commonplaces associated with
the public goods of witnessing allows such subjects to think and speak of
themselves as witnesses obligated to preserve collective memories of past
injustice or tragedy while preventing the onset of similarly devastating
injustices or tragedies in the future. Commonplace witnessing, this book
contends, is a vital and pervasive mode of influence born in the crucible
of modern public culture and intensified in its late modern, or contem-
porary, permutations. This initial definition of the term is intended to
contrast noticeably with traditional definitions of witnessing centered on
the often extraordinary moral discourse of a relatively select group of indi-
viduals who have somehow endured extraordinary historical and existen-
tial events. Hence the central question to which this book responds: how
and why—​according to what commonplace rhetorical forms—​are ordinary

[2] Commonplace Witnessing

3

citizens, consumers, or public officials moved to adopt the rhetoric of wit-

nessing, and thus claim to disseminate the putative lessons of historical
atrocity and tragedy?
Witnessing is one of the most commonly cited subtopics within the
broader field of postwar literature in collective memory. The present study
proposes that the significance of witnessing to scholarly accounts of pub-
lic memory, and conversely to public practices of remembrance, exceeds
its conventionally acknowledged status as a frequently emulated ritual of
postwar collective remembrance. Witnessing is no longer merely a promi-
nent species within the larger genus of collective memory; neither is
witnessing defined principally in our time by discrete religious or moral
traditions, apart from academic and civic investments in the concept of
collective remembrance. This book proposes, rather, that the notion of
bearing witness to past injustices or tragedies has come to substantially
shape the normative sense and value of public memory writ large. The pres-
ent culture of remembrance—​expressed in memoirs, speeches, memorials,
mass media, and public art—​consists, to a significant degree, in a culture
of witnessing. Publicly remembering the unjust or tragic past, according to
prevailing scholarly and colloquial usage alike, often amounts to somehow
bearing witness to that past; and, by the same token, bearing witness to
the unjust or tragic past frequently requires or presupposes that communi-
ties invent and maintain practices with which to publicly remember it. This
claim takes for granted the aforementioned definition of witnessing as a
commonplace mode of influence. That mode of influence, in which many
different subjects may participate, rather than select individuals who pos-
sess rare historical experience and special rhetorical authority, is acutely
and pervasively concerned with the difficult legacies of historical injustices
or tragedies. The essential claim here is neither that witnessing and public
memory are now purely equivalent phenomena nor that all forms of public
remembrance are now fundamentally forms of witnessing. The following
analyses posit, instead, that idioms of witnessing substantially (albeit not
universally) shape the sense and value of public memory throughout post-
war public culture in general, and acutely so in the present era.
Witnessing names a primary and historically specific valence of public
memory in our time. The gestalt, or historically specific innovation, of pub-
lic memory in the present era lies not in celebrations of national excep-
tionalism or commemorations of historic figures and military triumphs;
nor does it lie in dutiful preservations of the past via oral history, faith-
ful record-​keeping, or the founding of historical archives. The prospect of
describing, acknowledging, mourning, and drawing redemptive wisdom
from the most heinous modern crimes against humanity or from the most

Introduction [3]
4

calamitous human tragedies—​the prospect of witnessing, in an idiomatic

and widely felt register—​defines an especially prominent tendency of pub-
lic memory today, meaning the foremost sociopolitical ends that public
modes of historical remembrance repeatedly and demonstrably serve in
our time.
This study employs specific definitions of key terms in order to support
such claims. It identifies commonplace witnessing, for example, as a char-
acteristic valence of public memory in the current era. The case studies in
this book indicate that idioms of witnessing suffuse matters of broad and
deep public concern, including public knowledge of historical atrocities or
tragedies, deliberations over the meaning and relevance of those events to
present and future public affairs, and the expressions of public morality
that such atrocities and tragedies either symbolize or inspire. Witnessing,
therefore, names the tendency of contemporary public memory to play an
increasingly formative rhetorical role, from the postwar period forward, in
the fashioning and elaboration of public culture. Public culture connotes, in
this context, a realm of deliberation (even contestation) over those values,
ideals, and symbols that define and facilitate membership within the polis,
that embody and express the res publica as such. Edward Casey describes
public memory, in contradistinction to “social” or “collective” memory, as “a
basso profundo in the chorus of the body politic,” or as “the very condition”
for meaningful interchange in the fullest senses of public time and place:

The vita activa underlined by Hannah Arendt as the indispensable core of the
public sphere—​an active life of talk, first enacted in the agora in the West—​
would not be possible were it not for the enabling presence of public memory
at its fringes. This memory, not unlike the walls of the city, literally defines the
terms of the agon, providing the conditions within which open dialogue can
happen.5

This book contends that witnessing, whether in letter or spirit, substan-

tially characterizes common rhetorical forms and functions of public
memory, as Casey describes it, in modern public culture. Witnessing, as
a modern public rite, significantly defines “the terms of the agon,” the
abiding commonplaces (or rhetorical resources) with which members of
the polity are enjoined to either affirm or contest the meaning of those
beliefs, ideals, and rights that the public realm is said to accommodate and
enlarge. Witnessing thus represents a notably commonplace mechanism
with which diverse social, political, and moral agents have attempted to
incite various levels of public attention to or participation within the vita
activa in recent decades.

[4] Commonplace Witnessing

5

This study also adheres to a particular definition of modernity implied in

the phrase “modern public culture.” That definition reflects, across the fol-
lowing chapters, the progressively commonplace significance of witnessing
to modern public memory and, by extension, to public deliberations over
the lessons of the unjust or tragic past. For the purposes of this study, the
sense of modernity expressed in the phrase “modern public culture” refers
less to a historical period with a definitive beginning and end and more
to an ensemble of sociopolitical innovations, processes, and practices that
emerged in postwar societies. Such patently modern innovations, processes,
and practices include the global spread of liberal-​democratic governance,
massive realignments of nation-​state borders, formerly unprecedented
scales of military destruction, continual upheavals in lived time and space
engendered by patterns of capitalist production and consumption, the
evolution of global mass media, expanding multicultural society, and the
rise of supranational legal and political institutions or nongovernmental
organizations devoted to the cause of justice and human rights. This book
contends that the culture of modernity that these phenomena produced—​
especially a broadly democratic elan attuned to the meaning of past injus-
tices and present-​day distant suffering at its heart—​has led, in part, to the
emergence of witnessing as a commonplace public imperative.
Commonplace Witnessing maintains, throughout the chapters to come,
that witnessing is an especially prevalent, accessible, and affecting mode
of address in modern Western societies. The popularity of witnessing viv-
idly reflects what Andreas Huyssen calls the “time consciousness” of mod-
ern liberal-​democratic culture, which involves the “perilous task of taking
responsibility for the past.”6 Proliferating public imperatives to bear wit-
ness are historically coincident with such modern and late modern geopo-
litical developments as “the increase of redress claims, the rise of identity
politics, a politics of victimization and regret, an increased willingness
of governments to acknowledge wrongdoing, as well as the breakdown
of repressive regimes that have left difficult legacies behind.”7 Social and
political agents frequently adopt the rhetoric of witnessing in order to
communicate the so-​called lessons of such developments to the public at
large. Groups and individuals invoke the language of witnessing in forums
of transitional justice, in carefully orchestrated political ceremonies and
state commemorations, and as an element of popular moral reasoning or
multimedia content. Witnesses and institutions of witnessing are normal
fixtures of Western public culture.
Late modernity refers, in the context of this study, not to a rupture in or
deviation from the historical or cultural course of postwar modern pub-
lic culture; it refers, instead, to contemporary intensifications of postwar

Introduction [5]
6

social, political, and moral configurations, which thereby engender new

cultural forms. Huyssen indicates the mode of collective memory proper
to modern (and late modern) public culture when he describes “modernity
as the trauma that victimizes the world, that we cannot leave behind, that
causes all of our symptoms”8—​modernity, in other words, understood as
the putative legacies of injustice, destruction, and violence to which we in
the present habitually bear witness across numerous arenas of public cul-
ture. Such arenas range from avant-​garde memorials and elaborate state
commemorations to modes of popular consumption and rituals of heal-
ing and forgiveness. Modern public culture has occasioned the invention
of various rhetorical resources for enlisting public bodies as collectives of
witnesses (whether in word or spirit) to outstanding incidents of historical
atrocity and tragedy, thereby advancing a plethora of both commendable
and specious sociopolitical causes. The reinvention, and transmutation, of
these resources continues to proliferate and assume novel forms in the cur-
rent era of late modernity. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 in this book variously show
how liberal-​democratic developments of late modernity in particular—​
which are significantly concerned with questions of historical representa-
tion, delayed justice, and multicultural identity—​provide fertile conditions
for the increasingly popular use of witnessing to address unjust or tragic
histories as a common rite of public culture. These chapters demonstrate
that pronounced liberal-​democratic inflections of late modern public cul-
ture form the most salient common places, so to speak, in which forms of
witnessing acquire especial social, political, and moral value or utility.
These claims take for granted that witnessing in modern public cul-
ture has become commonplace, both topically and stylistically. This book
accordingly hews to a capacious definition of witnessing. It presupposes
that the provenance of witnessing in modern public culture has become
broad and inclusive; that its mediums are numerous and proliferating, not
rare and refined; that the community of those enabled to speak as wit-
nesses is abundant and diverse; that the address of witnessing is often
mundane, not oracular; and that the rhetorical forms by which members
of that community speak as witnesses are idiomatic, customary, and even
popular—​in a word, commonplace. The sum of this book entails a call to
dramatically expand and diversify our normative assumptions about the
particular types of historical subjects who bear witness. That call presup-
poses that one suspend conventional circumscriptions of the prerogative
to bear witness to social, political, and moral subjects who endured unusual
or extraordinary historical experiences.
The analysis to follow does not examine the rhetoric of witnessing
principally according to Greco-​Roman traditions of legal testimony or

[6] Commonplace Witnessing

7

Judeo-​Christian practices of moral witnessing (although the inherited

language and symbolism of witnessing in these permutations nonetheless
informs portions of the present study). It does not explore witnessing as a
form of spiritual meditation. Neither does it consist in a genealogy of wit-
nessing. Commonplace Witnessing concedes that witnessing is synonymous,
in select contexts, with moral testimonies spoken by survivors of horrific
events only to demonstrate that prominent examples of such moral testi-
mony now circulate in public culture as particularly esteemed rhetorical
templates, not to suggest a privileged type of witness or genre of witnessing
per se. Indeed, citizen-​subjects commonly model their discourse on widely
admired examples when speaking of historical atrocities or tragedies. This
book therefore rejects any effort to suggest that commonplace forms of
witnessing are somehow inauthentic. The chapters to come frequently
emphasize the rhetorically inventive nature of all witnessing, even that of
revered survivors; the analyses also question the mystique of authentic-
ity often associated with witnessing as well as our reflexive perceptions of
morally and politically persuasive witnesses.
The chapters to come define and analyze witnessing as a now-​ordinary
expression of commonplace historical knowledge, moral sentiment, and
civic commitments. They attempt to delineate some of the most recurrent
and formative commonplaces of witnessing in recent decades, which com-
bine to define witnessing according to its historically specific forms and
functions. Witnessing, as expressed in such forms and functions, encom-
passes a public rhetoric composed of doxastic expressions, available means
of persuasion, and customary symbolic displays with which communities
seek to understand, draw meaning from, and render judgment on the most
pervasively remembered injustices and tragedies in Western modernity. The
book thereby aligns the study of commonplace witnessing with something
like the general public and political investments in disseminating accounts
of distant suffering to far-​flung spectators that Luc Boltanski documented
as a growing and distinct “humanitarian movement” in Western culture
during the late twentieth century.9 The nineteenth century was known as
the age of history; the twentieth century evolved into an age of memory;
the early twenty-​first century, this book posits, is a time of witnessing.
Commonly invoked types of historical referents and noticeably recur-
rent patterns or techniques of historical representation characterize the
cultural wellspring of collective practices devoted to something like pub-
lic remembrance throughout postwar Europe and North America in the
late twentieth and early twenty-​first centuries. Particular topics recur
throughout interdisciplinary memory studies literature (despite the
admittedly diverse disciplinary orientations and methodologies that such

Introduction [7]
8

literature features). From either vantage—​public or academic—​common

referents lend ballast to the premise that witnessing connotes the animat-
ing spirit, if not the explicitly stated aim, of public memory in Western
modernity and late modernity. The Holocaust; US slavery, segregation,
and systemic racial violence; genocidal policies against Native Americans;
histories of systemic gender-​ based discrimination, from women to
GLBTQ citizens; US internment of Japanese Americans; the Vietnam
War; the AIDS pandemic; brutally repressive regimes in South America,
Central America, the former Soviet Union, and South Africa; the so-​called
Stolen Generation of Aboriginal children in Australia; the Oklahoma City
bombing; genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; the events of
September 11—​all such frequently invoked historical episodes reason-
ably accommodate, or fundamentally involve, witnessing of some type.
One may cite any of these common historical and memorial referents to
illustrate the increasingly normative sense of intertwined civic and moral
obligation in Western societies that motivates large segments of the pub-
lic to acknowledge and condemn past injustices or communally mourn
historic tragedies. Manifold enthusiasms for and investments in collec-
tive memory call on the public to not simply document and commemo-
rate, to mourn and memorialize, but to do so in a manner that allows its
members to symbolically witness condemnable injustices or otherwise
unimaginable tragedies, and thereby participate in further disseminating
the commensurate lessons of history.
The prevalence of witnessing in modern public culture contradicts
longstanding assumptions that witnesses, especially so-​called moral wit-
nesses, are relatively rare or uniquely qualified speaking subjects. A vari-
ety of notable public figures, including Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, insist,
paradoxically, that only those who were murdered during the Holocaust
possess the authority to testify to its ultimate evils.10 The question of
whether those who survived the evils of historical injustice or extraordi-
nary tragedy can effectively narrate such evils, of whether language even
possesses resources for doing so, is a leitmotif of voluminous research
on witnessing and testimony, especially concerning the Holocaust.11
Hence the great risk and responsibility that attends the ostensible act
of bearing witness: “[T]‌here is a risk involved in witnessing,” Michael
Bernard-​Donals writes, “the risk of taking the utterance as fact, as his-
tory, or (what amounts to the same thing) as knowledge.”12 Many studies
of horrific collective tragedies, moreover, employ the theme of trauma to
describe the profound psychological struggles that survivors of tragedy
may endure when attempting to translate their painful experiences into
language, and thus into public memory.13 Witnesses presumably attain

[8] Commonplace Witnessing

9

their characteristic ethos through extraordinary human experience, and

even they may not be able to effectively describe, or bear witness, to the
traumas that such experience entails.14
Yet the rhetoric of witnessing possesses broad persuasive currency in
modern public culture as an available resource of moral reasoning and
public deliberation—​or as a commonly invoked civic idiom rather than the
speech of rare historical subjects. Citizens and politicians who neither suf-
fered injustice nor directly witnessed tragic events commonly speak as if
they can bear witness to such phenomena. Commonplace Witnessing exam-
ines persuasive uses as well as moral or political disadvantages of the most
commonplace rhetorical mediums that enable them to do so: public tes-
timony, atrocity memoirs, political address, civic memorials, and rites of
secular forgiveness. Sociopolitical advocates engaged in public debates over
the legacy of historical wrongs frequently emphasize the need to acknowl-
edge victims of injustice or tragedy—​to bear witness, in effect, to narra-
tives that chronicle the experience of others.15 The customary rhetoric of
witnessing offers socially, politically, and morally appealing idioms with
which the public at large may address legacies of violence and injustice.
This book therefore defines witnessing according to its commonplace
usage in modern and late modern public culture: as an adaptable rhetorical
practice, consisting of customary persuasive forms and techniques, dissem-
inated through diverse mediums of communication in order to advance a
variety of civic and humanitarian goals. Popular and scholarly discourses of
witnessing in liberal-​democratic societies presume that one can bear wit-
ness to historical events without having witnessed them firsthand. Hence,
neither survivors of, nor direct eyewitnesses to, infamous events consti-
tute the subjects of this study (only one chapter focuses primarily on an
authentic survivor of an unjust or traumatic past, and his testimony does
not qualify as an act of witnessing according to normative senses of the
term). Survivors of injustice or tragedy bear witness by testifying to their
lived experience of such events; but political officials, popular media, and
public institutions routinely invite liberal-​democratic citizens—​who can-
not testify as such—​to think, speak, and act as witnesses to historical phe-
nomena. The original moral and rhetorical logic of witnessing, according to
which one must testify to the offenses that one observes,16 applies even to
those with no literal connection to noteworthy past events.
The case studies in this book analyze representative examples of
witnessing in some of its most prominent modern forms: public com-
memorations (­chapters 1 and 3); atrocity literature (­chapter 2); the
commemorative language of official state regret (­chapter 3); popular
memorials to collective trauma and tragedy (­chapter 4); and rituals of

Introduction [9]
10

witnessing and forgiveness employed in response to violent injustices

(­chapter 5). Each case study examines a central text or artifact (a public
speech, literary memoir, or civic memorial) as a consummate embodiment
of influential and widely reproduced rhetorical forms. These forms allow
one to conceive of oneself as a witness—​as a speaking subject obligated to
assist in setting right the wrongs of the past. The chapters in Commonplace
Witnessing presume that one’s skillful adaptation of such rhetorical forms
(not actual historical experience) enables one’s subjectivity as a witness.
The rhetorical redundancy of the selected artifacts—​their patent resem-
blance to other forms of witnessing on similar occasions—​signifies their
strength as explanatory resources: examining the discursive features of
each selected text or artifact simultaneously helps to explain why the
larger rhetorical genre that they represent (testimony, memoir, political
address, or civic memorial) holds such demonstrable public appeal as an
occasion for bearing witness. The book thereby evaluates both laudable
uses and unfortunate disadvantages of witnessing as a commonplace
rhetoric in Western public culture.
The status of a witness, in the most elevated sense of the term, tra-
ditionally was reserved for special types of speaking subjects—​namely,
individuals who either experienced profound suffering and tragedy or
who directly witnessed traumas inflicted on others.17 Such were the pre-
sumptive qualifications of witnesses as sources of moral wisdom and legal
evidence according to the intertwined Judeo-​Christian and Greco-​Roman
senses of witnessing common to historical usage. Yet the operative idea
of bearing witness in contemporary public culture warrants a dramatically
enlarged definition of witnessing, far beyond these classical associations.
Diverse members of the public at large—​most of whom are neither vic-
tims of nor immediate bystanders to historical trauma and injustice—​are
now obliged and empowered, for myriad reasons, to think and speak as
witnesses themselves. Alison Landsberg’s provocative conception of “pros-
thetic memory” offers an excellent interpretation of this phenomenon.
“Prosthetic memory,” she writes, “enables people to take on memories of
the past, even to identify with people from the past,” via mass media repre-
sentations of history.18 The verisimilitude of such mass-​mediated versions
of the past, she maintains, “ ‘speak’ to the individual in a personal way as
if they were actually memories of lived events.”19 Landsberg’s analysis sug-
gests just one of many cultural processes (prosthetic memory) that have
allowed witnessing to become a commonplace practice. Witnessing, a sin-
gle term laden with powerful social, political, and moral significance, now
refers in ordinary usage to the speech of otherwise distinct and incongru-
ous historical subjects.

[ 10 ] Commonplace Witnessing
1

The chapters that follow analyze predominant tropes and idioms

that enable those who did not witness the past to nonetheless inherit it
rhetorically—​to understand and verbalize the lessons of injustice and
tragedy—​as a familiar rite of modern public culture. The case studies in
this book argue that commonplace forms of witnessing organize modes of
historical knowledge and sociopolitical influence markedly different from,
but no less significant than, exceptional acts of bearing witness spoken by
exceptional individuals (such as former victims of suffering or injustice).
Thus, one may appropriately examine the particular modes of influence
and authority that commonplace forms of witnessing exhibit as a widely
available rhetoric—​a popular collection of persuasive tropes, appeals, and
forms of reasoning that many different liberal-​democratic subjects, from
ordinary citizens to elected officials (and not historical survivors alone),
routinely espouse. The goal of examining essential tropes, appeals, and
forms of reasoning that compose this rhetoric represents the connective
thread that unifies the various case studies featured in this book. The chap-
ters to come pursue a terminological, rather than topical, unity: the indi-
vidual case studies that constitute the majority of this book combine to
illustrate, despite apparent topical or contextual differences, the most per-
vasive rhetorical commonplaces of witnessing in modern and late modern
public culture, not to analyze the act of bearing witness in a single medium,
historical circumstance, or type of rhetorical situation. This normative
vocabulary of commonplaces forms the true object of my study; the indi-
vidual cases studies that follow are vehicles for analyzing it.
Commonplace Witnessing therefore amounts, in the broadest sense, to
a book of commonplaces. Each chapter examines a particularly vivid illus-
tration of an essential commonplace trope that substantially defines the
rhetoric of witnessing in our time. The chapters unfold so as to progres-
sively compose a treatise on invention, authenticity, regret, habituation,
and impossibility in the context of commonplace witnessing. The chapters
attempt, in each case, to examine essential commonplaces in the rhetoric
of witnessing according to what Kenneth Burke describes as a perspective
by incongruity—​a perspective on a phenomenon askance of conventional
wisdom, which thereby discloses fundamental and otherwise unacknowl-
edged contradictions or tensions within.20 The sources and modes of wit-
nessing thus examined may strike readers as simultaneously familiar and
provocatively atypical. Each chapter, moreover, plumbs the rhetorical form
and function of the master trope in question in order to identify its close
idiomatic affiliations with a cluster of related terms that further charac-
terize witnessing as a commonplace rhetoric in modern public culture.
Thus, invention in c­ hapter 1 involves decorum, praise and blame, and irony;

Introduction [ 11 ]
12

authenticity in c­ hapter 2 begets authorship, authority, ethos, fragmentation,

and trauma; regret in c­ hapter 3 intersects with political legitimacy, apologia,
and commemoration; habituation in ­chapter 4 connotes memorialization, spa-
tial aesthetics, absence, and embodiment; impossibility in ­chapter 5 conjures
necessity, rhetorical effectivity, temporality, futurity, and forgiveness. The fol-
lowing chapters therefore combine to yield a literal book of commonplaces.
The precise utility of these commonplaces as rhetorical evidence deserves
commentary. Commonplace Witnessing does not simply seek to demon-
strate that ordinary citizens and public officials presume to bear witness
to historical injustice and tragedy as if they experienced those events first-
hand (a phenomenon that previous studies have already documented21);
instead, this book analyzes how and why particular forms of rhetoric (or
persuasive speech, text, and symbolism) operate as such reliably appeal-
ing and adaptable means by which myriad citizens and officials aspire to
bear witness. Individuals who know little about the substance of modern
historical events are often familiar with celebrated speeches, writings, mul-
timedia artifacts, and tourist sites that convey the importance of bearing
witness to past collective traumas or crimes against humanity. Hesford’s
description of contemporary witnessing as a “generalized mass-​mediated
experience”22 is apt. Why are particular forms of public speech, literary
tropes, or memorial symbols routinely invoked mediums of witnessing in
customary settings? What social, moral, and political functions do these
rhetorical mediums facilitate in Western public culture, thus accounting
for their apparently widespread appeal? Analyzing the rhetoric of witness-
ing by addressing these questions enlarges our understanding of how such
rhetoric influences public deliberations about the social, moral, and politi-
cal legacy of crucial historical events.
Commonplace Witnessing makes three main contributions to scholarly
literature. First, it contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship by exam-
ining witnessing as a rhetorically adaptable medium of communication.
Previous scholarly authorities have studied modes of witnessing from
theological, literary, historical, psychoanalytic, and media studies per-
spectives.23 This book extends their findings by examining witnessing as a
popular mode of communication aimed at strategic, often didactic, persua-
sion instead of apodictic moral revelation. The analysis defines communi-
cation according to the full etymological sense of the word: not merely a
process of information exchange (regarding noteworthy historical events),
but also a medium for sharing substantive experiences or feelings among
many different individuals, as indicated by the etymological root common
to communication, community, and communion (Oxford English Dictionary,
s.v. “communication”24). The chapters to come thus regard witnessing as

[ 12 ] Commonplace Witnessing
31

a species of communication according to John Dewey’s definition of the

term—​as an important modality in modern Western culture through
which people “live in a community in virtue of the things which they have
in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess
things in common.”25 This latter sense of communication as substantive
distributed experience—​of being somehow linked in communication with
others—​shapes the intersubjective goods that commonplace idioms of wit-
nessing produce and disseminate: shared communal perceptions of criti-
cal historical events; the normative social, political, and moral lessons that
such events ostensibly signify; and communally affirmed commitments to
prevent the future recurrence of injustice and tragedy. The present study
builds upon prior research26 which documents that witnessing engenders
intersubjective identification in order to further explain how and why
particular rhetorical techniques have become such appealing, repeatedly
invoked mediums for inducing those experiences and the forms of com-
munity that they imply. The book is, in this sense, a study of witnessing as
a communicative—​and more specifically, rhetorical—​technique.
Second, the analyses in this book contribute to scholarship on the subject
of witnessing by analyzing it as a mode of rhetorical invention. The modern
scientific sense of invention connotes novelty, as in discovering some-
thing new or developing previously unknown methods, insights, or devices
(Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “invention”). But invention also refers to a
fundamental canon of rhetoric dating back to its formative classical ori-
gins, in which rhetoric functioned as a vital civic art. In this case, inven-
tion presupposes one’s strategic adaptation of proven persuasive topics,
lines of argument, and artistic tropes to the contingencies and constraints
of an immediate political, legal, or ceremonial circumstance.27 Rhetorical
invention prizes one’s ability to conjure persuasive techniques familiar to
civic bodies—​modes of reasoning and expression in which the public is well
rehearsed—​rather than new forms of thought and demonstration.
Contemporary rituals of witnessing, which pervade late modern forms
of public memory, allow select historical referents and deliberative com-
monplaces (koinoi topoi) to endure as proven and customary resources
for compelling argument and informed judgment. Social and political
advocates customarily do not invoke any historical atrocity or tragedy
but, rather, commonplace historical atrocities and tragedies (such as the
Holocaust, slavery, genocide in Rwanda, and the like) in order to prove
their arguments. Civic leaders and ordinary citizens habitually recycle
familiar tropes, images, and lines of argument to express the stark reali-
ties of such atrocities and tragedies, to preserve them as vivid touchstones
of collective historical consciousness and as bases for public deliberation

Introduction [ 13 ]
14

over the profound matters of justice and catastrophe that they symbolize.
Patterns of rhetorical invention thus explain significantly why ordinary
citizens and public officials (who neither suffered nor directly witnessed
historical injustice or trauma) may fashion themselves as subjects who
can effectively and responsibly bear witness: by adapting now-​customary
historical commonplaces, rhetorical tropes, and modes of reasoning (ini-
tially voiced by survivors of atrocity or tragedy) to myriad social, politi-
cal, or moral causes.
Finally, the present study adds to the relatively small number of books on
its subject in rhetorical studies. Witnessing originated, in Judeo-​Christian
theology and Greco-​Roman law, as a patently rhetorical act—​a public ritual
of address and response. Forums and media of witnessing have prolifer-
ated in modernity, but it remains a rhetorical practice in which one crafts
linguistic or symbolic appeals to publicize alarming historical realities,
and thereby move audiences to social, political, and moral action. Michael
Bernard-​Donals has contributed a series of sophisticated works on witness-
ing in rhetorical studies,28 although his Forgetful Memory: Representation
and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust and his coedited volumes with
Richard R. Glejzer (Between Witness and Testimony: The Holocaust and the
Limits of Representation and Witnessing the Disaster: Essays on Representation
and the Holocaust) understandably concentrate on the question of witness-
ing specifically in relation to the Shoah. Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions
of Testifying and Witnessing, edited by Arabella Lyon and Lester Olson,29
features six diverse case studies rather than a systematic single-​authored
analysis. In Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric, and Rights, Lyon also
explores issues related to witnessing as one of several subtopics relevant
to her innovative account of performative deliberation.30 In Spectacular
Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms, Wendy Hesford
examines how rhetorical frameworks shape human rights law, petitions
for legal recognition, and public views of violence or injustice. However,
she addresses witnessing as a secondary, not primary, element of her main
argument about spectatorship, visual media, and global culture.31 Barbie
Zelizer, in Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera’s
Eye, chronicles how photojournalists documented the liberation of Nazi
concentration camps and allowed readers to witness their horrific reali-
ties at a remove, thus influencing subsequent photojournalistic coverage
of atrocities. She does not, however, investigate witnessing as a persuasive
medium aside from this photojournalistic context.32 The relatively small
number of books in rhetorical studies related to witnessing, often as a
secondary focus, indicates that Commonplace Witnessing meaningfully aug-
ments disciplinary literature on this timely rhetorical genre.

[ 14 ] Commonplace Witnessing
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 —Da’ doe’k f’noafed t’met bai de put! da’ selle wai
hebbe.

—F’noafed is d’r gain tait.… hee!.. Joanse, scherpte

Piet voort tegen den katholieken plukker,—nou bi jai
stempelt, hee?.… moar hè je nou puur gain pain in je
donderemintje of peseer je ’t kerrikie.… mi je
skietgebedje.… G’loofd sai Jaisis Kristus.… en de
hailige sekreminte des oaltoàrs?.…

—Laileke duufels-toejoager, bromde die terug, hoor je

main kloàge?.… [47]

—Nou ikke stoan t’met dertien uur te plukke.… ik bin

d’r hard stikke-dood van.… main stuut is deurmidde..
ha’ je nou moar je maid hier Janse.… veur ’n
f’rsnoàp’rinkie!

Janse zweeg, giftig op Piet, dat ie met z’n geloof

begonnen was en z’n dochter. Dat kreng had schande
over z’n huis gebracht. Had ’n tweeling van ’n los
werkman, die zich dood zoop. En zij werkte nou op de
Wierelandsche fabriek van ingelegde groenten,
tusschen ’n hoop van dat meidenschorem. Vier
maanden geleden had ie ’r de deur uitgetrapt, met ’r
dikken buik, en nou begon die kerel er weer van te
klesseneere..

—Wat ’n gesoànik, schreeuwde ouë Gerrit naar Piet,

al kon ie bijna zelf niet meer van pijn, toch
voortploeterend in heete werkjacht.… wai doene ’t
allegoar.… jai mi’ je stuut en jai mi je knieë.
—Nou? watte?.. allegoar ke’ je hoore skraiwe?.. die is
f’rduufeld ’n meroakel.… mó’ je main of main jassie?
dolde Piet geraakt toch.

—Hoho!.… hoho!.… wá’ sou da’ t’met hain? vier en

vaife en nie genog aa’s.…

—Hain?.. Welneenet.. aas ’k moar wa’ neusiesverf

had, sou ’k main vast.. ’n kwassie smaire!

—F’rdomd! sel nie beure! sel nie beure! krijschte de

Ouë, bleek grauw van schrik en hitte,—òp ’t land
komp gain druppel, hoho! hoho!

In langzame optrekking van z’n linkerknie, met z’n

handen steunend in ’t gloeiende zand, had ie zich uit
z’n strammen hurk opgericht. Z’n rug voelde ie vlijmen
van pijnen en z’n beenen stonden heet te trillen onder
z’n lijf, als zou ie instorten. Piet gromde kwaadaardig:

—Skreeuw moar nie.… set ’t nie op je heupe.… maan!

moak goàr gain relletjes.… aas ’k ’n urretje likke wil
soa’k jou nie vroage!.…

—En jai Kees? vroeg Dirk, hep jai ’t lekker?

—Kees, Kees, bromde Piet weer, die hep gain rug,

gain stuit, gain kop, die hep niks!.… goàr niks!

Stil zwoegde Kees door, ’n endje van hùn bed af,

zonder [48]omkijken, in strakken loer op de aardbei,
met uitgolvenden slag z’n manden vullend, tweemaal
sneller dan zij.—En telkens àchter z’n hielen, draaide
ie ’n gouden slof neer met trillend vuur.—
 Op àl de paden, achter de akkerhagen, stonden
groote bruine, rauw-groene en roodbemeniede
handkarren, zwaar beladen met goud-glanzende
sloffen en bronzen mandjes.—Van allen kant tegen
den middag, kwamen de plukkers aansjokken met
bakken, sloffen; geurde en smolt ’t vruchtenrood en
sap inéén met gras en groentearoom, als wierook
door de lucht uitvloeiend en verwaaiend. De hemel
wiegde zwijmeladem en bruiste zonnedronkenschap
door ’t stedeke. De luchtkoepeling stond gespannen in
prachtglans van blauw, hoog boven de kruipende
plukkers en pluksters. Overal, in de paadjes nu, achter
de hagen, slangden de purperen regels in gloeiende
zoomen. Kielblauw en kielrood, ademde hoog de
zonnehitte in, en strooien hoeden blondden al meer in
’t jubellicht. Tusschen de doppers, kronkelden fel-
groen, de duizelig lange slakroppen-regels, blank
beschubd, en de jonge erwten glansden naast de
bladzilvering van tuinboonen. En woester, gelijk met
zomerroes, zonnedronken van licht en kleuren, ging
ploetering òp, jagender. Alle handen koortsten rond in
den grooten haal. Ze waren besteld de tuinders, door
’n paar groote afnemers uit stedeke, die in Engeland
en Duitschland hùn waar met flinke verdiensten van
de hand zetten. Duizenden op duizenden kilo’s
moesten geleverd worden, naar spoor gedragen door
de werkers, dààr gewogen en verzonden.—

Iederen dag làter in ’t saizoen, kon de prijs van kilo’s

dalen, als van alle kanten te groote oppropping en
aanvoer kwam. Daarom, in woeste jacht, met zwarte
afgunst onder elkaar, heet op voordeeltjes, plukten ze
in koortsige haast, om anderen vóór te zijn, als ’t kon;
anderen er uit te smijten en op moment dat aanvoer ’t
minst nog leek, nieuwe bestellingen bij te krijgen; al
was er in den winter al kontrakt gemaakt voor vaste
levering, met iederen gast die wou.—

Dirk had van ’t doorloop-pad àf, op den akker ’n groote

[49]kar met verlengboomen, om breeër op te laden,
volgestapeld met sloffen en manden. Wat bàkken
daarboven òp, versjouwde ie mee naar de hàven, de
mànden naar ’t spoòr. Jan Hassel de minst-vijandige
neef, reed mee den weg op naar ’t station. In
zweetdamp, met bemorste kielen, geurvracht hoog
opgestapeld en wijd-uit geladen van achter en van
vóór, tot op de handkruk, zacht zwiepend op de
verlengboomen, verduwden ze hun loodzware karren,
met borst en armenspanning, pezig-gestramd, ’t lijf in
rukkende stooten, Wierelandschen straatweg over
naar ’t station.

Zonlicht zoog heet in ’t vruchtenrood. Over de manden

lag bladgroen van tuinboonen, fluweel-zilverend er om
heengestrooid, tusschen het purper, dat glansde als
koralig licht-glimsel.—

Achter Dirk en Jan Hassel áán, ratelde een stoet van

karren, geduwd door tuinders, gelijkelijk optrekkend in
lawaai en gedrang naar ’t spoor.—Bij ’t zijhek werd
halt gehouden, zwenkten om beurten ’n paar
groenboeren de karren àchter de gele, schroei-
zonnige omheining.

Van Lemperweg, haven en zijstraatjes, ratelden en

woelden meer karren áán, gloeide ’t karmijn en purper,
al naar aardbeisoort, in de gouden rietsloffen of blank-
 gele ronde manden; wierookte al zoeter, dieper
vruchten-aroom heet-zomersch over ’t plein; vuurden
en vonkten de aardbeien van alle kanten,
zonnedronken in blaker, onder trillenden zonneroes.

Kerels met vermoeide, grimmige koppen, paarsig

vergrauwd van zweetvlekken, uitputting en zwoegdrift,
duwden òp, woelden, zwenkten, trokken hun karren,
schreeuwden en vloekten tusschen gedrang, geratel
en gedonderbonk van karren en manden. Trekhonden,
afgemartelde beesten, verwoed van hitte en dorst,
blaften gillend en bassend, stonden of lagen tusschen
de kleurig-donkere kar-assen ingekneld, met
riemrepen over neus, bek en nek gekneld,
ademstootend in snellen hijg, woest schuim
verkwijlend.—Van vier uur al ratelden en bonkerden
wagens en handkarren áán. Bergen manden stonden
opgestapeld naast wagens, apart voor aardbeivervoer,
vastgehaakt.— [50]

Op ’t station, aan achterkant van ’t zijpad, zat ’n man

vóór gewichtstoestel, verzweet en gejaagd, in ’t
ratellawaai en schreeuwrumoer om ’m heen, tusschen
treindrukte, loop van passagiers, kruiers en
zwellenden aanvoer van waar, met z’n bonboekje in
de handen, afrekenend wat ieder leveren kwam.
Telkens achter ’t hek, als ’n tuinder klaar was, zwenkte
’n ander uit al sterker aangedromde, woelerige
karmassa, schuin tusschen de latten-omheining, op
grof-bonkerig gekei, ratelde de leegte achter ’m dicht;
stond ook diè weer met ’n berg nieuwe manden en
vruchten voor den kontroleur. Voorzichtig zette iedere
tuinder z’n rood-vochtige manden met aardbei op de
 èven boven den grond zwevende schaal, netjes op
elkaar inschuivend en voegend al meer en meer, tot
de heele vracht van hun kar afgeladen was.

De kontroleur, met z’n zweethoofd, z’n gezicht

doorgroefd van zorgtrekken, overspannen arbeid en
vreemde zenuwtrilling van lippen als geluidstroom en
herrie watervallen over hem uitstortten van haast en
jacht,—woog af, trok handvat van weegschaal
achteruit, loerde intusschen naar kwaliteit der
vruchtjes.

—Naam! vroeg ie kort, met moeë stem, ’t zweet van

gezicht onder oogen en om neus uitwrijvend met
rooien doek, waarop ie bang keek, na elken
zweetveeg.

—De Kaiser!

—Wie?.. Piet of Willem?

—Willem!

—Achterweg?

—Welneenet!.. Slangetje!

—Slan-ge-tje herhaalde ie brommerig, zich zelf

dikteerend, onder snel geschijf, afscheurend in
rakettige karteltjes het geperforeerde reçu.

—Hier anpakke!—Weer schuurde z’n zakdoek langs

z’n zweetnek en hals, veegde ie met nijdige rukken ’t
vette nat onder z’n hemd weg. Dirk en neef Hassel
konden met hun karren ’t zijhek nog niet in. Achter hen
áán, dromden al meer paardwagens en karren met de
hijg-sjokkende en duwende [51]kerels er vóór, in al
sterker áánstroom van aardbeien, purperende
neergestorte wolken van rood licht, fijn-prikkelend
doorgeurend weibrok, paden, stationsplein. Gevloek
en geharrewar van rauwe vermoeide stemmen,
krijschte òp uit woesten sjouw en gedrang.—Doffe
blaffen basten tusschen hoognijdige keffers en
kermende hondestemmen òp,—dwars door
menschengeschreeuw en ratelgeraas, dat hooren en
zien verging. Kisten en manden, leeg en uitgehaald,
keilden rond achter ’t hek, waar ’n geholpen groep
afzakte, en overal dromde gegrom en driftig geworstel
der zwoegers, tusschen hun geurende stille vruchten
in, hun roode bergen van geur en vonkpracht.—Op
elkaar hitsend, afgunstig en nijdig, wou de één den
ander voordringen. Plots kwam er lucht in worstelende
ploeterende bende, konden ’n paar wachtenden
inzwenken, met hun wagens en verlengde
zwiepboomen, ratelden er karren wèg, dwars tegen
aandrommende massa in.—

—Nou debies! Ik ke’ nie langerst wachte, krijschte éen

uit den karrenstoet vóór ’t hek, met grauw
zweetgezicht, vette kerel, paf van hitte, uitblazend van
vermoeienis, gekneld z’n dikke lijf tusschen andere
wagens in.

—Hulp d’r sain effe eerst, gil-schreeuwde één achter ’t

hek, tegen kontroleur, die nu op ’n ouë mand zat, met
z’n bon-boek op de knieën gedrukt, rondloerend
overal heen, of ze’m niks bestalen, alles goed
verstapeld werd in de donkere wagons.—’n Blauw
 potlood stipte ie telkens nat tegen z’n mond áán, dat
z’n lippen paarsten als zou ie plots ’n beroerte krijgen.
Van ’t toegeschreeuw, de rumoerige hurrie en
onrustjacht achter ’t hek, maakte ie zich niks hooren.
—Vóór ’m stonden de tuinders, hun waar verladend
op ’t breede, lage, met stof-vuil overwaaide
weegtoestel.

—Acht honderd kilo van?.…

—Joapeke!

—Jaapeke uit?..

—Lemperweg!..

Snel kraste z’n potlood, stonden de tuinders voor ’m

ingebogen te loeren, naar de koortsige krabbeling van
blauw puntje [52]op ’t blanke schitterpapier, waar ’t licht
op beefde. Bij ’t ontvangen van reçu, hielp de tuinder
z’n waar van de schaal laden. Twee smerige kerels,
vergrauwd in zweet van zware werkjacht sprongen òp
en àf uit de binnen-in-donkere wagons, half
volgestapeld. De mannen rukten Jaapeke z’n manden
en sloffen uit de handen, grepen ze van de
weegschaal, klauterden met de aardbei wagons in, dat
de purpering kwam te dooven tusschen de morsig
bestofte houtwanden, waar àl hooger en duisterder de
geurvrucht op elkaar gesmoord, in verdook.—

’n Twintig meter van den kontroleur af, op ’n

weghoogte van grove keibestrating, àchter omheining,
propte nòg ’n drom karren, rumoerde landvolk met
waar en manden, bij ’n konkurrent-kooper, ’n
Duitscher, die onder geeldoekig tentje, waar zonnebol
gloeiheete lichtschaters op néérproestte,—
aardbeivrachten innam en verzond in andere wagens
weer.

’n Ontzaglijk dik wijf met reuzinneheupen, en magere

dochter, langhalzig en beenderig geitengezicht, zat
achter ’n klein kleurig tafeltje onder ’t brandende
tentdoek te schrijven, reçutjes en kopietjes, terwijl
zwaarbuikige Duitscher afwoog en loerde naar de
vruchten, met z’n glimvettig bollig zweetgezicht.—
Achterover, op z’n kruin geplakt, blankte ’n wit-stijve
automobielpet, glansfel beklept.—Met iederen tuinder
rumoerde en streed ie kort en stemsnauwend-
krasserig, over gewicht en waar. Moe’, niets
begrijpend van z’n Duitsch gebrabbel, stom en dorstig
in de hitte van d’r zwoeg, kregelden hun ruwe
gezichten, vervlekt van zweetvet, streken ze hopeloos
en zorgelijk in angstig spiervertrek van zenuwmonden,
handplat langs hun voorhoofden en monden, losten ze
verder, zonder ’n woord verweer, wachtend op reçu.

Aldoor weer ’t oerige moederwijf brabbelde wat

tusschen het gebrauw van den zwaarlijvigen mof.
Lacherig en spottend, gromden eindelijk de kerels in
vloek wat terug, verlegen onder ’t niet verstaan,
òpkijkend telkens naar bemiddelaar, die naast ’t
zengende tentdoek stond te schroeien in zonnevuur,
allerlei zure grapjes uitlolde tegen langhalzige
geelmagere dochter met den geitenkop en enorme,
vetdijige moeder. Onder geschrijf [53]en overgereik van
bons aan tuinders, schoot zij,—onder fluisterend
gekonkel van bemiddelaar in ’r ooren,—om ’n
 haverklap in proestlachen uit; schommelde ’t
moederwijf van gierpret, ’r logge boezem lang nog
nàbevend achter klein tafeltje, dat meelachte in lichten
sidder tegen d’r schuddenden vetbuik. Toch, ieder
keer duwde ze den kerel met ’r vette worsthanden
soms midden in ’n grap, ruw buiten de tent, loerden zij
en ’r dochter naar de weegschaal, of d’r niemand
bedroog; gingen d’r sluwe klein-grijze oogjes in ’t
pappig opgeblazen maangezicht lichtend rond, in kring
der sjouwende werkers, die doorlaadden en losten, in
stommen zwoeg, donker, morsig en vergrauwd,
tusschen ’t schittervuur van hun vruchtjes. En stapel
op stapel, purper leven slurpte op, al meer, satanisch-
gesperde muilen van donkere wagons.—

Kleurigste hurrie daverde rond den kontroleur, verder

op.—

Eindelijk was ’t Dirk’s beurt om te lossen, zwenkte ie

vóór, met z’n zware kar, wrong en schuurde ie door
engen hekingang, in giftduwen tegen de kruk, dat z’n
kop te barsten stond, zwellend van spierspanning.
Zweet droop van z’n wangen in de sloffen, toen hij
mand voor mand van z’n kar op ’t weegtoestel schoof,
berekenend, nauw passend en insluitend de manden,
onder ’t opstapelen.

—Van?.… vroeg kontroleur, al klaarstaand met

potlood op de lippen, tongpunt er tegen aangedrukt.

—Hassel!..

—Welleke Hassel?.…
 —Gerrit!

—De Blommepot, gromde ie voor zich uit, veerend op

z’n mand, blauwe krullettertjes op z’n papier krassend.

Dirk in zweet en zon, stapelde dóór van z’n kar, rustig

op ’t toestel.

—Hee, hield plots kontroleur z’n arm in, met ruwen

schreeuwstoot, van z’n veerende mand opspringend,..
wa’ is dá’? die mand dààr.… en die?.… daa’s drek!.…
ke’k niet gebruike!.… [54]

Dirk hield op, keek verstomd met z’n koeienblik den

kerel aan, die weer was gaan zitten.

—Wa nou?.. wa’ bruike?..

Hij wist eigenlijk wel dat ie twaalf sloffies met vuil goed
had meegekregen. Ouë Gerrit wou, woù nou eenmaal
van de berijpte vervreten hoek wat pluksel verstoppen
ònder de beteren, om zoo nog wat te beuren van z’n
teelt, denkend dat in de drukte geen sterveling ’r op
letten zou. Drie tuinders hadden ’t er op die manier al
door gekregen, waarom kon ’t hèm ook niet lukken?

—Droal nou nie soo Hassel, donderden achter ’t hek

wat kwaadaardige stemmen, van ongeduld barstende
tuinders, wai hebbe ook ’n kilotje!

—Stik doar, schreeuwde ie terug. Woest nijdig

begonnen plots z’n koeienoogen te werken, en
kwaadaardig te schamperen van wreed licht.
—Daa’s d’Ouë s’n skuld, bromde ie zacht voor zich uit,
die hep main d’r làte inloope.… da kreng.… en nou
opelik betroàpt.… ’t foàrke sou je kefuus moàke.…

—Nou! nijdigde kontroleur uit de hoogte.. Stapel die

rommel nou maar weer weg, want neme doen ik ’t
nie.…

—Moar maa’n! je laikt puur daa’s, se benne bestig,

loog Dirk, om zich te redden.… allaineg ’n baitje
stainderig meskien!.…

Kwaadaardiger vertrok kontroleur z’n zweetmond. Hij

was weer opgesprongen van z’n mand, die knarste en
kraakte onder z’n lijf.

—Als jij hullie nie van de schaal neemt, donder ik se

fierkant tege de wage an, jou drek!..

—Stik! dá’ bi’k tog sellefers bai, hee? Daa’s f’rdomme

twee doàg kromplukke weust.… twee doage!.… dâ je
je donder deurmidde barstte.… en nou veur niks
werkt!

—Al had je ’r ’n beroerte an gekarweit, ik neem se soo

nie.. en fort nou, gauw ook! d’r blijve nou alleenig die
veertig mande daa’s.… kijk!.… zes.… honderd.… kilo
kijk! kijk!

De gewichten langzaam natellend, ingebukt en

waggelend [55]op z’n veerende mand, krabbelde ie de
vracht op z’n boek àf. In dralende weerspannigheid
had Dirk weer z’n twaalf manden van de straat op de
kar geladen. Achter zich zag ie neef Hassel staan,
 klaar met z’n waar, in schamperen lollach op sarsnuit
dat Dirk z’n rot boeltje terug gekregen had. Prachtig
glansden neef Hassel’s manden, rond en hoog, op de
handkar. Z’n bruin eikenhoutige wagen, met lichtblauw
beschilderde wielen, als azuren raderen, waarin
verflitsten de spaakjes in zongespat, kleurfel
òpkringend tegen de daverend-oranje bemeniede
assen, gloeide in zomerbrand, met z’n hel-roode
aardbeistapels, rondbroeiend geurende warmte van
glansen. Op elken mandrand, goudvlechtsel in
zonnegloed, had ie groene bladerenkranzen
geslingerd, tusschen het zingende warmhooge rood,
en half beschaduwd vruchtenvuur, dat ’t frisch jubelde
bòven de karkleuren.

—Daa’s siek veur niks, lachte kontroleur, se gaan toch

de kist in, wees ie spottend op de wagens.

Dirk stond nog achter z’n neef, woedend neer te kijken

op kontroleur. Die vervloekte Ouë … Most.. ie sain da
lappe?.. hai sou sàin t’met de mande veur s’n
skainhailige tronie sloan.… Sóó hep hai nog sait daa’t
goàr nie gong.… nie gong.… f’rdomme!

Maar kontroleur, begraven onder nieuwen werkdrom,

zag niet meer naar ’m om, loerde alleen rond naar
vervoer, gewicht, wacht op reçu’s.—

Onrustig keek ie telkens achter zich, of alles wel vlotte

en niets gegapt werd; of de kontrabons klopten, de
wagens zuinig genoeg bestapeld werden.—Te
zweeten, te zuchten zat ie van ’t aandrommende werk,
rondom z’n overal kijkend lijf, in ’t geraas van treinen
en dreungesmak, getier van ’t landvolk, dat van
 ongeduld sterker schold en trampelde voor hun
karren. Nu en dan, heerig en afgemeten kwam
patroon van kontroleur even kijken of de boel liep,
stond ie dwars in den weg dat de tuinders ’m omver
boften met hun karren en manden. Gauw had de
heere-baas ’m gezegd, dat kontroleur zich niet moest
laten beetnemen door ’t goochelend sluwe volkje;
[56]dat alle vergissingen en terugzendingen voor zijn
rekening kwamen. Dat wist ie wel, en gejaagder
loerde, zweette, vertilde ie de zware gewichten.—

Dirk had zich àchteruit door den drom wachtenden

met z’n kar heengewerkt. Achter ’m laaide ’n roode
gloed van purper en karmijn, waartusschen ’t landvolk
woelde, met ’r sjofele stinkende plunje, bronspilow
broeken, zwart-fluweelen truien, vuil-blauwe en
lakrooie kielen, grijs-bruine en goorgele hemden.—

Nou moest ie nog even, achter de Duitschers, om

nieuwe sloffies.—Van ver zag ie al ’n troep tuinders
worstelen en dringen bij ’n wagen op tweede rails, met
leeg aangevoerde manden. Z’n kar zette ie vàst tegen
’n boom vóór weibrok, en wrevelig achter ’t spoorhek
drong Dirk dwars door den stoet.—

Ze vochten in nijdig gedrang, rond den wagon.—De

een duwde den ander achteruit. Met trappen en
stooten, in furiënde werkkoorts, doken telkens ’n paar
weer in den nauwen wagon, op geschreeuw van den
grooten aardbeikooper en mandeigenaar, die aflas
hamen van tuinders.

—Hulers vier pakke, dreunde z’n stem, z’n oogen

strak in loer op ’t lijstje.
—Persint, schreeuwde ’n kerel terug, dook weg in den
nauwdonkeren wagon, holde den anderen kant weer
uit met ’n trits sloffen aan ’n touw, door de hengsels
heengeregen.

—Daa’s meroakel gemain!, krijschte éen woedend,

altait Hulers veur ’n aêr,.. daa’s puur de fint van de
bestige woar!…

Een brutale, met roet-zwarten baard om geelbleek

gezicht en smalle schuwe oogen, wenkbrauwen
neger-donker, rukte ’n tuinder z’n mandjes uit de
handen, vloekend dat ie al drie keer voor niks hier
was, op die manier niet plukken kon, z’n boel verrotte
op den grond. De baas, er bijstaand, mengde er zich
in, maar ze snauwden, verdrongen den heerigen vent.
Hij voelde dat ie in zoo’n geweldige, stuipige
werkjacht, z’n meerderheid verliezen ging.

—F’rek jai skorum, vloekte en tierde de onthutste

tuinder, verhit van zongepriem, dat z’n oogen in brand
stak, afgejakkerd hijgend van uitputting en sjouw. [57]

—Ke’ main puur niks bomme.… ’k hep in twee doage

al nie plukke kenne.… soo lait main oogst veur de
waireld.

—Moar daa’s main.… skar! duufelstoejoager.…

kabbeloebeloap!.… Doòr schold ie, wou op den zwart-
baardigen kerel instormen, maar tusschen hen in
drongen andere zwoegers, worstelend om sloffen en
manden, den wagon òp en instormend, grijpend en
rukkend wat ze maar krijgen konden.
 —Jorisse!.. riep statig baas af, acht pakke.… om
schijnorde in de bende te brengen.

Maar niemand die naar ’m hooren wou.

—Wat ’n janboel, bromde Dirk, die met z’n stiersterke

boffende schoften door ’t gedrang en gewurm der half
vechtende en razende kerels heen gestooten was,
magere zwakkelingen op zij duwend. In de woeling en
hitte van ’t gegrijp, gedrang, en geroep werden als
verschoppelingen de zwakkeren vóór- en achteruit
gemept. Bòven de koppen en kromruggen van ’n troep
tuinders, die aandrongen op één plek, graaiend naar
sloffies met armen vooruit, in woeste hebzucht,—deed
Dirk z’n greep, met z’n granieten krachtarm naar één
kant waar ie ’n lossen stapel in de gaten had
gekregen.

—Daa’s jou beurt niet.… terug! schreeuwde ’n

wagonknecht, luisterend naar den afroep van patroon.
—Maar terwijl die bij één wagon-end aansjouwden en
afweerden, ganneften ze aan anderen kant de sloffen
wèg, in tierend kabaal en worstel.

—Ikke hep ses pakke, skraif moar roak! beet Dirk af,
de rist manden over z’n schouers gooiend na ’t
bindtouw eerst stevig om z’n hand gekneld te hebben,
dat ’m niemand wat afnemen kon. Luchtig was ie den
wagon uitgesprongen, lollig zich voelend, dat hij weer
voor ’n pluk geborgen was met sloffen.

Honderden, teleurgesteld en woest, nijdig gromden en

raasden tegen de kontroleurs en bazen, waarom ’r
 niet meer manden waren. Een, wachtte al drie, ’n
ander al vier volle dagen.

—Ke’k niks an doen, laike puur roofers.… schreeuwde

’n kontroleur, morgeochend om vier uur.… stoan d’r
weer twee woages, mo’ jullie moar ’n vroegertje
moake!..

Zóó, in zwoegzweet vergloeiend onder schroeizon die

’t kokende [58]licht rond ze neerdreunde, doornageld
van steken, gemarteld en vergramd, huilde in raas-
drift hun klacht naar gereedschap, barstte hun haat en
afgunst op elkaar uit, in woest gescheld en getier;
steeg de koorts van hun werkjacht, hamerde de pols
van hun arbeid heeter, hooger, onmenschelijker. Hun
ploeterramp dáár, lag als ’n lijk te ontbinden, tusschen
het gouden daggeluk, het jubel-geschater van licht, de
wellustzwijm van geur, tusschen het groen en ’t
hemelreine, wijdzalig azuur, waarin het leven bruiste,
en de kleuren klaterden.—De wilde storm en donkere
furie van hun arbeid, brandde en stuipte in ’t rood van
hun vruchtenzee.. Verbitterd in stillen wrok, stond er
verwoesting van leefrust op andere koppen
gerammeid, driften van zorg en geld-haal, die ze
razend maakte, razend.

Aan weirand tegen spoorhek, èven buiten den

worstelkring van schreeuwers om sloffen en ronde
manden, stond droef-verschrompeld in eenzamen
staar, ’n blinde man op klein orgeltje te draaien, z’n
kaal hoofd pal in zonnevlam, brandend op
schedelnaakt.
 Tusschen gebonk en geratel dóór, schoten
melankoliek, triest-zachte klanken uit z’n ween-
instrument, dat met ’n riem over z’n borst gesnoerd,
vóór z’n buik hing, steunend op ’n kort schuinen poot
in ’t zand.—Eén mager-gele hand lag te beven op ’t
bovenblad van z’n orgeltje, en de andere dor-
uitgepeesd, draaide, draaide! Wèg zonk klaagstem
van weenend orgeltje in den tierenden werkroes van ’t
land volk. Bloedrood vlamde ’t omlijste gaas van
orgelkast, vurige poortjes in ’t licht. En stil, krombeenig
ingezakt, magerde z’n schreiend-sjofele figuur, in
groen-roode jas, als vastgenageld, gekruisigd tegen ’t
hek, eenzaam in de drift-woeling van ’t worstelende
werk. Vóór ’m, op ’t heete gras lag ’n verluisd vuil
mandrillig kereltje te smakkeren op wat verkneusde
weggeworpen rottende aardbeien. Stommer,
pruttelden de dooie droge lippen van den blinde,
angstig gissend waar z’n zwijgend geleidertje ’m
neergeduwd, had. En lang, heel lang bleef zon, sar-
heet priemen op z’n naakt schedelvleesch, op z’n
mageren, smal-hoekigen kop, angstigden [59]z’n staar-
oogen, als in luistering naar wat ze niet zien konden;
draaide de hand, draaide, draaide uit, droef
klankengeween, verdoofd wegvloeiend tusschen de
furiënde aardbeienwoeling en felle glorie van
zomerbrand, overal rondom.

Veel later, in den avond nog, dromden meér karren en

wagens áán, lag ’t aardbeipurper en karmijn te
koortszingen in ’t avondgoud, kwam ’r nieuwe vloed
aanspoelen, aangolven, op de ratelhotsende karren,
dampend nu in bovenaardsche zonglanzingen.
En van allen kant, de zwoeggezichten keken strakker,
vermoeider.—

Op ’t stationsplein vóór en achter ’t hek, oproerde ’t

nu, drongen en worstelden in beangstigend stillen
drom, stóm van werkaandacht, de late plukkers.
Wagons stonden in vreemd goudrooden gloed, in
schijnsels van kathedraligen lichtdamp, overwazend
de ploeterkoppen. Voor hun oogen verdroomde in
nevelige pracht, ’t groene, eindelooze polderland, heel
vèr, in ’t zinkende licht. De aarde dáár scheen te
verdauwen, te drenken de verschroeide vruchten, en
in zomermist zoelden de zoete grasgeuren en
bloemenrook van de weiden en akkers òver naar den
spoordijk.—

Sappig, in groen-zilverenden en aureolend rood-

zachten zonneglans, vredig en hitteloos, verkleurde ’t
weibrok vóór ’t station waar blinde man gestaan had.
—Lemperweg, zwaar beboomd, groende in fijne
lijngolvingen tegen goudregenende luchtverte.—Dáár
vertintte donkerder purpergoud, in ’t al zinkende late
licht, àchter de zwoegers, die verteerden in den
dronken hartstocht van verkoop, de geweldrazernij
van aanvoer en afname, niets meer zagen van ’t
leven, rond hen heen. Van alle kanten stroomde nog
áán zoete vracht, in wemeling van rood, róód, in al
heerlijker schakeering, ’t zoetste purper, tusschen
helsch vuur.—Over den karrendrang groeide de
wondre avondzon, met z’n uitpralend madonnagoud
zeefsel van broos-zinkend licht.—En hooger, tegen de
scheemring in, stapelden òp de wagons, en zoeter
 rookten de vochtige geuren in den verdroòmenden
lichtval.—

Tòt laat in den avond,—Lemperweg in

boomenschemer al [60]te wiegen lag in zalige zomer-
nachterust, heel Wiereland verzwelgde in geuren en
zoete kweel-geluidjes van wei en weg,—bleef
tuinderszwoeg àchter en vóór ’t hek drommen; bleef
donkerder vonken ’t vruchtenrood, schonkeren en
botsen ’t martelend geduw van atlaszware sjouw-
vrachten. Al meer verduisterde de roode vruchtenzee
in den zachten ruischgolf van scheemring,
verduisterden de kerels méé in de azuren neerkoeling
van nachthemel. Woest wrevelig staakte eindelijk de
zwoeg, ratelden de karren terug naar krot en straat,
akker en pad.—Te donker werd ’t om verder te lossen.

Stiller nu op ’t spoorplein daalde rust, vernevelde de

polderwei in nachtelijk, droom-donker groen, in heilige
stilte, als ruischte elke grashalm heilig nachtgebed uit.

Dieper nageur van vruchtenzoet bleef aromen over ’t

plein.—Van verre, uit teere, avond-doorschemerde
laantjes klonk vedelweeke stemmejubel van ’n meisje,
avondklanken verluiend in den zomernacht, als
heimwee-zoete herderszang.

En wijd, almachtig, in diep blauw, zaaide de

nachthemel z’n sterrengoud uit; hemel als eindlooze
fonkelkoepel plots in ’t duistere azuur gegroeid, waar
geruischloos gaas-ragge engelenvleugels, zilveren
glansen heiligend doorheenzwierden.— [61]