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A874963d7f37b8a0a74d1d4a08 Witnessing Beyond Recognition KELLY OLIVER University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis E ;so London a A version of part of chapter 1 was published as "Beyond Recognition: Witnessing Ethics," Philosophy Today44, no. 1 (spring 2000); copyright 2000 DePaul University, reprinted here with permission fromDePaul University. A version of part of chap­ ter 3 was published as "What Is Transformative about the Performative? From Repeti­ tion to Working Through," Studies in Practical Philosophy 1, no. 2 (falll999); copy­ right Humanities Press, Inc., reprinted with permission from Humanities Press, Inc. Copyright 2001 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any fo rm or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press Ill Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 5540 1-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oliver, Kelly, 1958- Witnessing : beyond recognition I Kelly Oliver. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8166-3627-3 (alk. paper) - ISBN 0-8166-3628-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Recognition (Philosophy) 2. Perception (Philosophy) 3. Social perception. I. Title. B828.45 .055 2001 128-dc21 00-009646 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 11 10 09 08 07 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 ForRuthy who has survived unimaginable torture, and who, in the last year, has taught me more about the anxieties, response-abilities, joys, courage, vigilance, and necessity of loving than books ever could. Contents Acknowledgments - ix Introduction: Beyond Recognition - 1 Part I. Recognition 1. Domination, Multiculturalism, and the Pathology of Recognition - 23 2. Identity Politics, Deconstruction, and Recognition - 50 3. Identity as Subordination, Abjection, and Exclusion - 61 Part II. Witnessing 4. The Necessity and Impossibility of Witnessing - 85 5. False Witnesses - 107 6. History, Transformation, and Vigilance - 133 Part III. Visions 7. Seeing Race - 147 8. Vision and Recognition - 169 9. Toward a New Vision - 191 Conclusion: Witnessing the Power ofLove - 217 Notes -225 Wo rks Cited - 231 Index -237 Acknowledgments I would like to thank audience members at various presentations of this project (at Notre Dame University, Purdue University, University of Wash­ ington, Seattle University, State University of New Yo rk at Stony Brook, Villanova University, Modern Language Association) for their helpfulqu es­ tions, comments, and suggestions. Thanks to Rita Alphonso for research as­ sistance. I would also like to thank my colleagues Beverly Haviland, Eva Kittay, and Edward Casey fo r pointing me in some exciting and fruitful directions. Thanks to Courtney Martin and Steve Edwin fo r the index. Thanks to the graduate students in my seminars during 1998-99 fo r stimulating discussions of some of the issues that concern me here. Thanks to Shaun Gallagher, Robert Bernasconi, Ewa Ziarek, and Cynthia Willett for exceptionally helpful suggestions and advice on an earlier draftof the manu­ script. Special thanks to Benigno Trigo for continuing conversations about these issues and provocative insights that contribute to some of my favorite parts of the book. As always, thanks to my fr iends and family (with and without fur), whose sustenance enables me to write. ix Introduction: Beyond Recognition Dori Laub, a psychoanalyst interviewing survivors as part of the Video Ar­ chive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, remarks on a tension be­ tween historians and psychoanalysts involved in the project. He describes a lively debate that began after the group watched the taped testimony of a woman who was an eyewitness to the Auschwitz uprising in which prisoners set fireto the camp. The woman reported four chimneys going up in flames and exploding, but historians insisted that since there was only one chimney blown up, her testimony was incorrect and should be discredited in its en­ tirety because she proved herself an unreliable witness. One historian sug­ gested that her testimony should be discounted because she "ascribes impor­ tance to an attempt that, historically, made no difference" (Felman and Laub 1992, 61). The psychoanalysts responded that the woman was not testifying to the number of chimneys blown up but to something more "radical" and more "crucial" -namely, the seemingly unimaginable occurrence of Jewish resistance at Auschwitz, that is to say, the historical truth of Jewish resistance at Auschwitz. Laub concludes that what the historians, listening for empirical facts, could not hear, was the "very secret of survival and of resistance to ex­ termination" (62). The Auschwitz survivor saw something unfamiliar, Jewish resistance, which gave her the courage to resist. She saw something that in one sense did not happen-four chimneys blowing up-but that in another made all the difference to what happened. Seeing the impossible-what did not happen-gave her the strength to make what seemed impossible possible: surviving the Holocaust. While the historians were listening to hear confirmationof what they al­ ready knew, the psychoanalysts were listening to hear something new, some­ thing beyond comprehension. Whilethe historians were trying to recognize empirical facts in the survivors' testimonies, the psychoanalysts were trying to acknowledge that the import of these testimonies was unrecognizable. 2 Introduction Although undeniably powerful in their impact, the empirical fa cts of the Holocaust are dead to the process of witnessing, that which cannot be report­ ed by the eyewitness, the unseen in vision and the unspoken in speech, that which is beyond recognition in history, the process of witnessing itself. The process of witnessing, which relies on address and response-always in ten­ sion with eyewitness testimony-complicates the notion of historical truth and moves us beyond any easy dichotomy between history and psychoanalysis. The tension between recognizing the familiar in order to confirmwhat we already know and listening fo r the unfamiliar that disrupts what we al­ ready know is at the heart of contemporary theories of recognition. How is it possible to recognize the unfamiliar and disruptive? If it is unfamiliar, how can we perceive it or know it or recognize it? These questions are related to the question of how we experience anything new or different. Conceptually, these questions seem to lead to paradoxes or aporias that can leave us with the belief that we experience newness only through what we already know and therefore that we cannot experience newness at all. Of course, we do ex­ perience newness and difference. How could we possibly become function­ ing adults if we didn't? If we always experienced the world only in terms of what we already knew, then we couldn't learn anything at all. We would re­ main infants unable to make distinctions and therefore unable to fu nction. Many of the paradoxes of difference or newness are the result of how we conceive of ourselves. First, we end up with paradoxes if we believe that we encounter difference and newness only or primarily intellectually, especially if we believe that the intellect is distinct from perception, sensation, passion, or embodiment in general. Afterall, how can we both know and not know something at the same time? The intellect and reason notoriously lead us into contradictions. This hermeneutical problem has troubled philosophers from Plato's Meno (1987a) to Jacques Derrida's "Psyche: Inventions of the Other" (1992). Second, we end up with paradoxes if we believe that we are self-same and our identities are unified,es pecially if we conceive of identity in opposition to difference. How can a unified,self -contained being ever come in contact with something or someone wholly other to itself? If the self is bounded and experiences only that which is within its boundaries, then how can it encounter anything outside of its own boundaries? Certainly, how we conceive of ourselves determines how we conceive of others, and vice versa. If we conceive of ourselves as self-identical, and we conceive of identity as opposed to difference,and we conceive of anything or anyone outside of the boundaries of ourselves as different, then we will con­ ceive of anything diffe rent or outside of ourselves as a threat to our own Introduction 3 identity. Identity will be pitted against difference. Relations will be hostile. Hostile relations will lead to hostile actions, and the result will be war, domi­ nation, and torture. All of this is to say that our conceptions of ourselves de­ termine our conceptions of others and our conceptions of our relationships with others. Moreover, our conceptions of our relationships determine how we behave toward others and ourselves. There is an intimate and necessary correspondence between how we conceive of others and how we treat them. As a philosopher who is interested in social and political problems, then, I believe that it is important to examine and diagnose our self-conceptions as they affect our conceptions of others and relationships, and our actions to­ ward and in them. Julia Kristeva says that any philosophy of language pre­ supposes a particular notion of the subject. So, too, any social or political theory presupposes a particular notion of the subject. In fact, our actions, policies, stereotypes, fantasies, and desires also presuppose notions of what it is to. be a subject and to "have" subjectivity. How we conceive of ourselves as subjects and how we conceive of our subjectivity are at the foundation of what we believe about ourselves, the world, and other people, and we act ac­ cordingly. This is why in order to begin to understand domination and op­ pression it is imperative to investigate who we think we are and how we imagine others.
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