Is Bearing Witness Enough?
Is Bearing Witness Enough?
复制标题
作见证就够了吗？
DOI：
10.1111/aman.13078
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发表时间：
2018
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Hernandez, Christopher
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hernandez, Christopher
这个重要主题论坛将考古学视为一种见证形式。虽然一段时间以来，见证一直是结构性暴力的学术审讯的重要框架（Agamben 1998; Butler 2016），但也许是Paul Farmer（2004）推广了这种审查结构性暴力的方式。对于农民来说，有两种方式可以作证。第一个是“展示穷人坚忍的痛苦”（25）。第二个需要表明，痛苦“是结构性暴力的后果，这种暴力与现行制度是不可分割的，并将该制度中明显不相关的方面联系在一起”（26）。在最一般的层面上，见证是一种审查暴力遭遇、创伤事件、混乱和结构性不平等的宝贵方式。它可以帮助获得那些可能对这些事件感到遥远的人的支持，分散来自最直接受影响社区的压力，并带来变化。见证可以采取交流创伤性个人经历或为他人记录混乱、制度化暴力以及经常逃避社会审查的各种不同的形式。贡献者建立在这些形式的争论，见证是考古知识的一部分。也就是说，作为考古学家，我们对过去进行记录。当我们制作这样的故事时，我们选择如何讲述它们。当然，这些选择受到现有传统、我们在实地的立场和我们的政治承诺的限制。最重要的是，这些叙述受到我们作为观察员所接受的训练的限制，对本论坛的贡献是多种多样的，但它们反映了对作证的一些共同关切和考虑。在这个美国人类学家论坛上，我邀请了考古学家，他们询问见证意味着什么。贡献者名单并不意味着详尽无遗。
This Vital Topics Forum looks at archaeology as a form of bearing witness. While bearing witness has been an important frame for scholarly interrogation of structural violence for some time (Agamben 1998; Butler 2016), it is perhaps Paul Farmer (2004) who popularized this way of scrutinizing structural violence. For Farmer, there are two ways to bear witness. The first is “to show the stoic suffering of the poor”(25). The second entails showing that suffering “is a consequence of structural violence that is immanent to the prevailing system and that links together apparently disconnected aspects of that system”(26). At its most general level, bearing witness is a valuable way to scrutinize violent encounters, traumatic events, dislocations, and structural inequalities. It can help obtain support from those who might feel distant from those events, diffuse pressure from communities most directly affected, and bring about change. Bearing witness can take the form of communicating traumatic personal experiences or documenting for others the dislocations, institutionalized violence, and kinds of difference-making that often escape social examination. Contributors build on these forms by arguing that bearing witness is part of an archaeological episteme. That is, as archaeologists, we produce accounts of the past. When we produce such accounts, we make choices about how they are narrated. Those choices, of course, are constrained by existing traditions, our positions in the field, and our political commitments. Most importantly, those accounts are limited by what we are trained to see as observers.The contributions to this forum are diverse, yet they reflect some shared concerns and considerations about bearing witness. In this American Anthropologist forum, I have invited archaeologists who interrogate what it means to bear witness. The list of contributors is not meant to be exhaustive.