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The Power of Testimony

Abstract A recent conference at the University of Cape Town that reflected on the dynamics of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa this past decade indicates some of the ongoing issues that call into question the communicative ethics for giving testimony and acknowledgement of trauma and guilt, and the place of those who testify and those who give witness. Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith’s book, Human Rights and Narrated Lives, is a wide-ranging comparative analysis of that faith in (among other things) the power of testimony within discourses of human rights that emerged late last century. The methodology of the book draws attention to dynamics of life narrative that are useful for thinking about the production and reception of life narrative in the “War on Terror,” and its distinctive reconfiguration of the language of human rights discourse