Przywileje świadectwa. Historia, pamięć i literatura w sporach o konstruowanie nieodległej przeszłości (trans. Elżbieta & Jan Zięba)
Privileges of Testimony. History, Memory, and Literature in the Wars of the Constitution of the Recent Past (trans. Elżbieta & Jan Zięba)

Summary/Abstract: In this article I engage in a pragmatist approach to the assumed epistemic and political privilege of testimonies of survivors of State Terrorism of recent past. I combine the recentstudies of Hayden White about the .witness literature. with the .generative-performative consideration of testimony by Martin Kusch in order to give an account on this privilege thatavoids fundationalistic prejudices that I found in current debates about the subject, as well asthe unrepresentability thesis. This theoretical background will be useful to appreciate threeof the most relevant survivor witnesses: Primo Levi, Victor Klemperer, and Pilar Calveiro.

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