CCST2110: Testimony

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CCST2110 Testimony

• Final Assignment Due in person or in office to
  me November 4 COB (close of business)
• If you need until Nov. 5, you will need to submit
  to me electronically, including the
  non-plagiarism statement at j.leach_at_uq.edu.au

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Testimony

• One of the inartistic modes of proof, according
  to Aristotle (others?)
• Catachresis testimony as a mode of
  truth-telling, thus linked to torture, trauma,
  pain
• Testimony in legal sphere, religious sphere,
  cultural sphere (holocaust testimonies,
  survivors testimonies)

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According to Aristotle

• Testimony from witnesses (recent and ancient)
• Contracts
• Torture
• Oaths
• Laws
• All properly belonging to Forensic oratory,
  according to Aristotle (Cicero disagrees)

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Formally, testimony is of 2 types

• Oral Testimony
• From witnesses (martyrs)
• As hearsay
• As revelation of personal experience
• Secular revelations
• Experiential narratives

• Statistics next week

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To Witness

• We operate on the assumption that before we give
  testimony to others, we witness something
• Much of the authority and authenticity of what we
  say comes from the way this act of witness is
  treated rhetorically.
• Did you witness something accidently? Were there
  other witnesses? How long ago did you witness
  the event? How out of the ordinary was the
  event that you witnessed?

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Witnessing

• John Ellis Seeing Things, John Durham Peters
  Witnessing in Media, Culture, Society
• Claim The advent of TV (less so radio) puts
  audiences in the position of witness.
• Put another way, we are rhetorically addressed as
  witnesses
• The 20th century is the transformation of
  witnessing by audiences and the rhetorical modes
  they prefer (the spectacular-the idealised-the
  real)

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Authority and Authenticity

• Authority
• The truthfulness of the testimony is based on
  the perceived truthfulness of the speaker.
• A key component of this is emotion (both the
  presence and absence of emotion) and the affect
  of the speaker
• singularity, uniqueness, knowing the speaker

• Authenticity
• The truthfulness of the testimony is based on
  external corroborating evidence.
• We judge the testimony in light of other things
  that we know.
• patterns, regularities, knowing the way the
  world is

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2 examples of testimony based on authority

• Enlightenment Science
• 17th century gentlemen scientists gentlemen
  prefer gentlemen
• To be gentle meant to be honest
• Thus, other gentlemens reports of their
  experiments were to believed with little question.

• Holocaust Museums
• Shoa testimony taken from survivors and testimony
  not corrected
• Museums recreate a holocaust experience to
  encourage the same emotionas victims.

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2 examples of testimony based on Authenticity

• Contemporary Science
• When new study results are announced, they are
  immediately replicated, no matter who you are.
• Organised skepticism is a guiding norm to
  understanding scientific testimony (ie. Cold
  fusion)

• Holocaust Studies
• The Wilkomirski affair
• Fragments is evidence of childhood suffering, not
  being a survivor of the holocaust
• Affect doesnt matter we want to know that he
  was there.

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Virtual Witnessing

• Asking us to be there in absentia
• Characteristic of
• --news,
• --science,
• --autobiography,

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Testimony and Memory

• Note that much hinges on the claim of what the
  witness remembersand what the audience
  remembers.
• External aids to memory (prosthetic memory) are
  crucial herediaries, documents, or as Sontag
  points out, photography
• Are these prosthetic memory aids reliable in
  aiding more truthful/more persuasive testimony?

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Summary Testimony 1

• What is testimony? (go back to bridging lecture)
• Witnessing
• Authority/Authenticity
• Virtual witnessing
• Prosthetic Memory