Abstract
What characterises witnessing and testimony as phenomena? What is meant by their pedagogical possibilities? To begin to answer these questions, Hållander creates a framework in this chapter for the theoretical approach applied in the book, highlighting and contextualising central concepts. First, she explores witnessing and testimony through an etymological investigation and then focuses on their connection to the wound and injustice. This is followed by a more detailed discussion of pedagogy and, more specifically, of pedagogical possibilities, in relation to Agamben’s writings on potentiality (Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Stanford University Press, 1999) and by putting these phenomena in a societal context.
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Notes
- 1.
“bli vittne till, bära vittne om”, ådagalägga, visa”, och vittnesmål eller vittnesbörd som “avlägga vittnesmål, vittna”. Svenska Akademiens ordlista över svenska språket (Stockholm: Svenska akademien, 2006), http://www.svenskaakademien.se/ordlista.
- 2.
Original in Swedish: “det är genom den döda kroppen som sanningen uppstår” (Azar 2008, p. 7). My translation.
- 3.
Original in Swedish: “uppdaga sanningen genom att ta till orda; det är genom vittnets mun som det förflutna och frånvarande återföds i det nuvarande nuet” (Azar 2008, p. 7). My translation.
- 4.
In the book I have chosen to use the words possibility and impossibility instead of potentiality and impotentiality. Agamben’s choice of words is often, not always, potentialities and not possibility in the English translations. The two concepts are related, for example, former translators of Aristotle into Swedish, which I refer to in this book, use the Swedish word möjlighet instead of potentialitet (possibilities/potential) in Swedish. In the book I use these terms synonymously.
- 5.
Roger Simon also writes on the possibilities. His theoretical framing of education in Teaching Against the Grain: text for a pedagogy of possibility is partly ethical, partly as an understanding of the possibility as something “that which is not yet”. This understanding is related to dreams and hopes about a better future for ourselves, for the children and the coming generation (1992).
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Hållander, M. (2020). The Impossible Witnessing, The Pedagogical Possibilities: Theoretical Framing. In: The Pedagogical Possibilities of Witnessing and Testimonies. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55525-2_2
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