Volume 21, 2021
From Witnessing to Testimony
Rafael Pérez Baquero
Pages 177-196
Witnessing Catastrophe
Testimony and Historical Representation Within and Beyond the Holocaust
This paper explores the contemporary phenomenological and psychoanalytical analyses of testimonies regarding traumatic historical events, with special attention to how such testimonies pose new challenges for the historiography of historical events in which witnesses participated. By exploring discussions on the memory of the Holocaust as well as the Spanish Civil War and Francoist repression, this paper addresses the extent to which the tensions and temporalities underlying the process of bearing witness to and giving testimony about traumatic historical events might reshape how their history is being told, written, and remembered.