On testimony and bare life: remarks on Gert-Jan van der Heiden’s The Voice of Misery

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Abstract

Commenting upon van der Heiden’s The Voice of Misery, this paper addresses the peculiar task of witnessing and testimony that reaches beyond the ordinary sense of being a witness that is defined by the sphere of juridical concerns. Here the concern is with testimony that reaches to the point of “bare life”, the point at which a life is stripped down to a point at which the very idea of speech and bonds with others is shed. Understood in this sense, the task of testimony begins a the limits of what we call “the human”. Following from Heidegger, Plato, and Celan the effort is made both to speak about the character of such testimony as well as about the “ethos” of such a relation to life itself.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)331-340
Number of pages10
JournalEpoche
Volume27
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. Epoché.

Notes


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