Testimony as “Survival” of an “Irrevocable” Past: Historiography, Present and Temporality

Traditionally, testimony was understood by historiography either as a vestige of the past, from which knowledge could be extracted by inferential means, or as a direct access route to it, generally marked by the psychoanalytic notion of “trauma”. In this paper I propose an approach to testimony as “...

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Autor principal: Urteneche, Gonzalo
Formato: Artículo revista
Lenguaje:Español
Publicado: Grupo Prohistoria 2022
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Acceso en línea:https://ojs.rosario-conicet.gov.ar/index.php/prohistoria/article/view/1611
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Sumario:Traditionally, testimony was understood by historiography either as a vestige of the past, from which knowledge could be extracted by inferential means, or as a direct access route to it, generally marked by the psychoanalytic notion of “trauma”. In this paper I propose an approach to testimony as “survival” of an “irrevocable past”. Through the concept of “survival”, developed by the art historian Georges Didi-Huberman, I will try to unpin the testimony of its uses marked by the aforementioned temporal dichotomy and to assess its temporarily impure character. The notion of “irrevocable past”, as introduced by Berber Bevernage, will allow me to propose that historical time, in general, and the present, in particular, are not something given and self-evident but constructed and disputed.