Witnessing is curious. To pursue the curious lure of witnessing, this entanglement in the event, is to swiftly arrive at the limits of the human. For all the witnessing work that (we) humans do, witnessing also does work in binding and defining us. Witnessing’s curious slipperiness, its ambivalent nature and function, has enabled its exploitation as much as facilitated its capacity for revelation or emancipation. Yet because witnessing cuts across knowledge-making practices and domains, reckoning with the curious forces, dynamics, and capacities of witnessing is an important task. It is a task that requires us to consider witnessing as nonhuman. This entry calls for attention to nonhuman witnessing as an expansive revisioning of what counts as witnessing, who or what has standing as witness, and how testimony takes place.

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WITNESSING: Curiosity and the Nonhuman

  • Michael Richardson

摘要

Witnessing is curious. To pursue the curious lure of witnessing, this entanglement in the event, is to swiftly arrive at the limits of the human. For all the witnessing work that (we) humans do, witnessing also does work in binding and defining us. Witnessing’s curious slipperiness, its ambivalent nature and function, has enabled its exploitation as much as facilitated its capacity for revelation or emancipation. Yet because witnessing cuts across knowledge-making practices and domains, reckoning with the curious forces, dynamics, and capacities of witnessing is an important task. It is a task that requires us to consider witnessing as nonhuman. This entry calls for attention to nonhuman witnessing as an expansive revisioning of what counts as witnessing, who or what has standing as witness, and how testimony takes place.