Violence, Truth and Reconciliation: Bearing Witness
| Module title | Violence, Truth and Reconciliation: Bearing Witness |
|---|---|
| Module code | POC2113 |
| Academic year | 2024/5 |
| Credits | 15 |
| Module staff | Dr Shubranshu Mishra (Convenor) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 10 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 20 |
|---|
Module description
Bearing witness involves documenting and understanding the lived experiences of individuals and communities who have endured historical trauma and ongoing conflicts. It is a vital task through which people foreground their grieving self and intervene in the production of the truth of unacknowledged violence. Who is a true witness of violence - the survivor or the dead, the saved or the drowned, the left behind or the missing, the disposable or the disposed? How can we examine their reconciliation through private memories, silences and jittery voices that negotiate with their horrors and trauma? On this module you will explore bearing witness in various contexts spanning Asia, Africa, and Latin America, including everyday narratives and microaggressions of racism, poverty, and mobilities, from an intersectional lens. You will critically examine structures of occupation, terror, and resistance.
Various techniques of witnessing involve oral histories, archival research, public history initiatives, subversive practices, and collaborative cultural projects. These approaches help us understand how societies/people remember and represent profound injustices and how the act of bearing witness contributes to collective memory, historical understanding, and the pursuit of truth and justice.
Palestinian children having their names written on their arms to make their bodies easier to identify. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo wearing white headscarves to symbolise the nappies of the disappeared. Anne Frank’s diary depicting the horrors of the Holocaust. South Asian women expressing pain and anguish to Partition violence through heart-wrenching poetry. The anti-racist and anti-caste agenda enacted by the legendary African American artist Nina Simone and the Tamil-Dalit singer Arivu in their lyrics and performances displacing the dominant gaze. The testimonies of the perpetrators and survivors during South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission shedding light on the devastating impact of Apartheid and the hope for justice. The gravediggers of the unmarked graves of Kashmir preserving the objects of the dead to help families identify their missing men.
By centring the experiences of vulnerable and besieged people and incorporating global perspectives, we aim to redefine the concept of bearing witness and examine the techniques of witnessing in different conflicts as forms of truth-telling. This exploration will involve the works of activists, writers, and artists such as Ghassan Kanafani, Primo Levi, Amrita Pritam, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Gopal Guru, W.E.B. Du Bois, among other
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 you with a theoretical and empirical understanding of oppression and resistance through an interdisciplinary 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
- Heterogeneities of bearing witness
- 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 130 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | 20 | 10 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 | 60 | To complete research paper and exam revision. |
Formative assessment
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group Presentations | 10-15 minutes | 1-6 | Oral |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | 0 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bearing Witness Essay project | 100 | 3500 words | 1-6 | Written |
| 0 | ||||
| 0 | ||||
| 0 | ||||
| 0 | ||||
| 0 | ||||
| 0 | ||||
| 0 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bearing Witness Essay Project (3500 words) | Bearing Witness Essay Project (3500 words) | 1-6 | August/September reassessment period |
| 1-6 | August/September reassessment period |
Re-assessment notes
Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.
Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the assessment(s) as defined above. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
- Agamben, G. (1999). Remnants of Auschwitz: The witness and the archive (D. Heller-Roazen trans.). New York: Zone Books.
- Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York, NY: The Viking Press.
- Bauman, Z. (2003). Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Malden, MA: Distributed in the USA by Blackwell.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Gopal Guru (ed.), Humiliation: claims and contexts, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.
- JanMohamed, A. R. (2005). The death-bound-subject: Richard Wright’s archaeology of death. United States: Duke University Press Books.
- Kanafani, Ghassan, and Barbara Harlow. Palestine's children: returning to Haifa & other stories. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000.
- 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.
- 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.
| Credit value | 15 |
|---|---|
| Module ECTS | 7.5 |
| NQF level (module) | 5 |
| Available as distance learning? | No |
| Last revision date | 19/08/2024 |