Moral Witness

J. Dean Carolyn

Description

The Moral Witness is the first cultural history of the "witness to genocide" in the West. Carolyn J. Dean shows how the witness became a protagonist of twentieth-century moral culture by tracing the emergence of this figure in courtroom battles from the 1920s to the 1960s-covering the Armenian genocide, the Ukrainian pogroms, the Soviet Gulag, and the trial of Adolf Eichmann. In these trials, witness testimonies differentiated the crime of genocide from war crimes and began to form our understanding of modern political and cultural murder.By the turn of the twentieth century, the "witness to genocide" became a pervasive icon of suffering humanity and a symbol of western moral conscience. Dean sheds new light on the recent global focus on survivors' trauma. Only by placing the moral witness in a longer historical trajectory, she demonstrates, can we understand how the stories we tell about survivor testimony have shaped both our past and contemporary moral culture.

Sujets

• Droit et juridique
• Offence against the person
• Legal history
• War crime
• History of Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501735080
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

THE MORAL WITNESS

Series editor: Elizabeth S. Anker, Cornell University

CORPUS JURIS:THE HUMANITIES IN POLITICS AND LAW PUBLISHES BOOKS AT THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN LAW, POLITICS, AND THE HUMANITIES—INCLUDING HISTORY, LITERARY CRITICISM, ANTHROPOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGIOUS STUDIES, AND POLITICAL

THEORY. BOOKS IN THIS SERIES TACKLE NEW OR UNDERANALYZED ISSUES IN POLITICS AND LAW AND DEVELOP INNOVATIVE METHODS TO UNDERTAKE THOSE INQUIRIES. THE GOAL OF THE SERIES IS TO MULTIPLY THE INTERDISCIPLINARY JUNCTURES AND CONVERSATIONS THAT SHAPE

THE STUDY OF LAW.

THE MORAL WITNESS Trials and Testimony after Genocide

Carolyn J. Dean

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2019 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2019 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: Dean, Carolyn J. (Carolyn Janice), 1960– author. Title: The moral witness : trials and testimony after genocide / Carolyn J. Dean. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2019. | Series: Corpus juris : the humanities in politics and law | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018042975 (print) | LCCN 2018047925 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501735080 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 9781501735097 (ebook epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501735066 | ISBN 9781501735066 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501735073 (pbk. ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Genocide—Historiography. | Genocide—Moral and ethical aspects. | Witnesses. | Genocide survivors. | Trials (Genocide) Classification: LCC HV6322.7 (ebook) | LCC HV6322.7 .D425 2019 (print) | DDC 345/.0251—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042975

Margarete BuberNeumann testifies at the Kravchenko Trial, February 23, 1949. Photo by KeystoneFrance/Gamma Keystone via Getty Images. Used by permission.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Introduction

ONE The Righteous Avengers / The Tehlirian and Schwarzbard Trials, 1921 and 1927

TWO The Camp Survivor / The Libel Cases of Victor Kravchenko and David Rousset, 1949 and 1950–51

THREE The Holocaust Witness / The Eichmann Trial and Its Aftermath

FOUR The Global Victim and the Counterwitness

Conclusion Acknowledgments Index

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1.1

1.2

2.1

3.1

3.2

4.1

4.2

Soghomon Tehlirian, June 1922. Samuel (Scholem) Schwarzbard, Paris. David Rousset and JeanPaul Sartre, 1948. Rivka Yoselewska on the witness stand in Jerusalem. Ada Lichtman on the witness stand in Jerusalem. Jeff Wall,Dead Troops Talk (A Vision after an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter 1986), 1992. A group of Jews on a street in the Warsaw ghetto doff their hats to the German photographer, 1941.

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THE MORAL WITNESS