Violence, Truth and Reconciliation: Bearing Witness
| Module title | Violence, Truth and Reconciliation: Bearing Witness |
|---|---|
| Module code | POC2113 |
| Academic year | 2019/0 |
| Credits | 15 |
| Module staff | Dr Shubranshu Mishra (Convenor) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 11 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 20 |
|---|
Module description
We, the survivors, are not the true witnesses…We survivors are not only an exiguous but also an anomalous minority: we are those who by their prefabrications or abilities or good luck did not touch bottom. Those who did so… the submerged, the complete witnesses… are the rule, we are the exception (Primo Levi, 1989).
Who is a true witness of violence? Is it the survivor or the dead, the saved or the drowned, the left behind or the missing, the disposable or the disposed? How can we understand the closures people seek through acknowledgement and response-ability? How can we examine their reconciliation through private memories and jittery voices that negotiate with their horrors and trauma, and their perception of their own victimisation?
The module has a cross-regional focus and will study histories of violence through issues ranging from slavery in the US, the Holocaust in Europe, India-Pakistan Partition violence, to the nature of migration in Europe and Burma, post 9/11 counter-terror operations, and other counter-insurgency measures in Latin America and South Asia. It explores the multiplicities of witnesses and the acts of bearing witness through public and private memories and practices such as private mourning, public grieving, state commemorations, truth and reconciliation commissions, protests and subversions.
With the publication of Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz: The witness and the archive (1999), following the work of Primo Levi, the scope of witnessing has become a deeply contested field. Unpacking the category of ‘the witness’ and departing from the dominant understanding, you will explore the heterogeneities of bearing witness. You will do so through everyday narratives of racism, poverty, displacements, migrations within the structures of terror and counter-terror, militarisation and acquiescence to suggest the precarious existences and the possibilities of witnessing or enacting citizenship.
Furthermore, you will examine the techniques of witnessing by the actors in conflict as forms of truth telling and as a reflexive relationship through which people respond to their marginalisation by the state. With those propositions in mind to broaden the scope and shift the perspective, we study the act of bearing witness as a vital task to foreground one’s grieving self and intervene in the production of the truth of unacknowledged violence.
Although no prior knowledge is required, it is expected that students taking this course are interested in themes of violence, memory, migration, historical and contemporary security and cultural debates from a theoretical and empirical point of view. A background in social science will be helpful for following the key debates. The module is especially suitable for students studying International Relations, Politics and History.
Module aims - intentions of the module
The module aims to bring to the fore personal narratives of people exposed to everyday violence to engage with the dominant scholarship in order to redefine the scope of witnessing. It will provide a theoretical and empirical understanding of oppression and resistance through an inter-disciplinary approach.
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
ILO: Module-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 1. demonstrate familiarity with the field of memory studies and history.
- 2. go beyond simplistic approaches in understanding violence and narratives of conflict
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 3. develop your skills in interpretative research and analysing primary and secondary, and oral and written material.
- 4. locate these theories and the debates/questions which surround them in the larger context of the study of Politics and History.
ILO: Personal and key skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 5. engage with, and analyse challenging literature and articulating complex concepts
- 6. explain and discuss personal reflections of complex issues related to memory and trauma with others.
Syllabus plan
Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:
- Understanding Violence and Memory
- The Camp and The Colony: Reducing life to nakedness
- Bearing Witness: The ‘inauthenticity’ of testimony
- Widening the Scope (I): Heterogeneities of bearing witness
- Widening the Scope (II): The Geographies of bearing witness
- Disposable Life: The Missing and the left Behind
- Institutionalisation of Truth: Commissions and Memorialisation
- ‘The Courage of Truth’: Truth-telling and politics
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | 128 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | 22 | 11 x 2 hour seminars. |
| Guided Independent Study | 60 | Seminar preparation through directed reading. |
| Guided Independent Study | 10 | To prepare for formative assessment: seminar presentations. |
| Guided Independent Study | 58 | To complete research paper and exam revision. |
Formative assessment
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual Presentation | 10 minutes | 1-6 | Oral |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 60 | 40 | 0 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Research Paper | 60 | 3000 words | 1-6 | Written |
| Examination | 40 | 1 hour | 1-6 | Written |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research Paper | Research Paper (3000 words) | 1-6 | August/September reassessment period |
| Examination | Examination (1 hour) | 1-6 | August/September reassessment period |
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
Basic reading:
Agamben, G. (1999). Remnants of Auschwitz: The witness and the archive (D. Heller-Roazen trans.). New York: Zone Books.
Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception (K. Attel trans.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York, NY: The Viking Press.
Arifcan, U. (1997). The Saturday mothers of Turkey. Peace Review, 9(2), 265–272. doi:10.1080/10402659708426062.
Bauman, Z. (2003). Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Malden, MA: Distributed in the USA by Blackwell.
Bhargava, R. (2000). Restoring decency to barbaric societies. In R. I. Rotberg & D. Thompson (Eds.), Truth v.Justice: The morality of truth commissions (pp. 45–67). United States: Princeton University Press.
Butler, J. (2001). Giving an account of oneself. Diacritics, 31(4), 22–40. doi:10.1353/dia.2004.0002.
Butler, J. P. (2004). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London: Verso Books.
Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Caruth, C. (Ed.). (1995). Trauma: Explorations in memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Craps, S. (2013). Postcolonial witnessing: Trauma out of bounds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Das, V., Kleinman, A., & Ramphele, M. (Eds.). (2000). Violence and subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Edkins, J. (2011). Missing: Persons and politics. United States: Cornell University Press.
Evans, B., & Giroux, H. A. (2015). Disposable futures: The seduction of violence in the age of spectacle. United States: City Lights Books.
Fassin, D. (2008). The humanitarian politics of testimony: Subjectification through trauma in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cultural Anthropology, 23(3), 531–558. doi:10.1111/j.1548- 1360.2008.00017.
Feitlowitz, M. (1992). Night and fog in Argentina. Salmagundi. doi:10.2307/40548602.
Felman, S., & Laub, D. (1992). Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (2001). Fearless speech. Los Angeles, CA: Distributed by MIT Press.
Foucault, M. (2007). Subjectivity and Truth. In S. Lotringer (Ed.), The politics of truth (pp. 147– 167). Los Angeles, CA: Semiotexte/Smart Art.
Foucault, M. (2011). The government of self and others: Lectures at the college de France, 1982- 1983 (G. Burchell trans.). United States: Picador USA.
Foucault, M. (2012). The courage of truth: The government of self and others II: 1983-1984 (G. Burchell trans.). United States: St Martin’s Press.
Foucault, M. (2014). Wrong-doing, truth-telling: The function of Avowal in justice. United States: University of Chicago Press.
Giroux, H. A. (2007). Stormy weather: Katrina and the politics of disposability. United Kingdom: Paradigm Publishers.
Humphrey, M. (2003). From victim to Victimhood: Truth commissions and trials as rituals of political transition and individual healing. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 14(2), 171–187. doi:10.1111/j.1835 9310.2003.tb00229.x.
JanMohamed, A. R. (2005). The death-bound-subject: Richard Wright’s archaeology of death. United States: Duke University Press Books.
Kaul, S. (2015a). Of gardens and graves: Essays on Kashmir | Poems in Translation. India: Three Essays Collective.
Khanna, R. (2009). Disposability. differences, 20(1), 181–198. doi:10.1215/10407391-2008-021.
Levi, P. (1989). The drowned and the saved (R. Rosenthal trans.). New York: Random House.
Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise than being, or, beyond essence (A. Lingis trans.). United States: Duquesne University Press.
Mamdani, M. (2000). The truth according to the TRC. In I. Amadiume & A. A. An-Na’im (Eds.), The politics of memory: Truth, healing and social justice (pp. 176–183). United Kingdom: Zed Books.
Novak, D. R. (2006). Engaging Parrhesia in a democracy: Malcolm X as a truth-teller. Southern Communication Journal, 71(1), 25–43. doi:10.1080/10417940500503480.
Rothberg, M. (2008). Decolonizing trauma studies: A response. Studies in the Novel, 40(1-2), 224–234. doi:10.1353/sdn.0.0005.
Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional memory: Remembering the holocaust in the age of decolonization. United States: Stanford University Press.
Rothberg, M. (2014, May 2). Trauma theory, implicated subjects, and the question of Israel/Palestine. Retrieved July 3, 2016, from Profession, https://profession.commons.mla.org/2014/05/02/trauma-theory-implicated-subjects-and- the-question-of-israelpalestine/.
Vajpeyi, A. (2007). Prolegomena to the study of people and places in violent India (IndiaVol. 26 ed.). New Delhi: WISCOMP.
| Credit value | 15 |
|---|---|
| Module ECTS | 7.5 |
| NQF level (module) | 5 |
| Available as distance learning? | No |
