LTA2074 Literature of Witness
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
The film Ararat, by Atom Egoyan, contains testimony from a woman who has witnessed a massacre of young brides. She asks, “Now that I have seen this event, how shall I dig out these eyes of mine?”
This woman occupies the most direct position—the eyewitness—in relation to an extreme event; however, the question of witnessing also extends to all of us who encounter images and stories of atrocities in our everyday lives. We will trace the concept of witnessing in philosophical, legal, and human rights contexts before turning to novels and other literature of witness by international writers such as Pat Barker, Nadine Gordimer, Gunter Grass, Primo Levi, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Toni Morrison, and Virginia Woolf in order to investigate the following questions: What kinds of events generate or require witnesses, and how does witnessing differ from simply seeing? What effects does the event have upon the witness, and vice versa? What does it mean for literature to act as a kind of witness? How can literature ethically represent or “witness” extreme events? What responsibilities do we have to serve as witnesses to extreme global events, and what do we do with the energy created by our witnessing of such events?
Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)