The witness has become a key figure of our time, whether as a survivor testifying to what he has lived through (superstes) or as a third party telling what he has seen or heard (testis). Publicly bearing witness to suffering and injustice also distinguishes the first age of humanitarianism (International Red Cross) and the second wave (Doctors without Borders, Doctors of the World).
Focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I will show how humanitarian organizations establish a legitimate way of communicating the "victims' truth" to the world and treat victims as experts and authorities (auctor). One of the effects of this shift, the increasing presence of psychiatrists and psychologists in the field, also renders trauma less a clinical category than a political argument. Drawing upon an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this examination raises general questions about the politics of testimony in a time when political causes become global and moral sentiments enter the political sphere. It also questions the processes of subjectification that result in the production of
subjectivities and the obliteration of subjects.
Didier Fassin's visit has been co-sponsored by The Center for European Studies, the Robet F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies, and the Department of Anthropology
