Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Ian (2012) 'The Role of Testimony and Testimonial Analysis in Human Rights Advocacy and Research' in State Crime: Journal of the International State Crime Initiative, London, Pluto Press, 1.2, 2012.
THE ROLE OF TESTIMONY AND TESTIMONIAL ANALYSIS IN HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
Ian
Patel
Ian
Patel
is
a
Postdoctoral
Research
Fellow
in
the
School
of
Law,
Kings
College
London.
Abstract:
This
article
addresses
the
prominence
of
testimony
evidence
in
the
practice
and
theory
of
human
rights.
It
examines
the
use
of
testimony
in
legal
mechanisms,
by
international
advocacy
organizations,
and
in
academic
human
rights
research.
It
reflects
on
the
reasons
behind
the
prominence
of
testimony,
treating
it
as
a
source
of
evidence,
an
advocacy
tool,
and
a
trope
within
human
rights
discourse.
This
article
places
testimony
in
political
context,
and
explores
the
political
implications
of
the
fact
that
the
narrative
accounts
of
victims
of
state
crime
are
utilized
by
international
advocates/experts
as
a
primary
source
of
evidence.
As
an
original
theoretical
discussion,
this
article
critiques
what
it
perceives
to
be
the
dominant
epistemology
of
testimony
in
a
human
rights
context.
It
concludes
that
the
meaning
and
uses
of
testimony
in
a
human
rights
context
are
curated
by
international
experts,
a
trend
that
risks
the
disenfranchisement
of
witnesses
from
the
meaning
and
uses
to
which
their
testimony
is
assigned.
Keywords:
testimony;
self-narration;
liberalism;
research
methods;
victim
representation;
sources
of
evidence
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
first-person
accounts
present
a
coherent
self.
Rather,
I
favour
self-narration
because
it
alludes
to
an
underlying
assumption
in
most
narrative
research
that
a
first-person
account
provides
valuable
insight
into
that
persons
experiential
realities.
Since
narrative
accounts
are
often
framed
by
a
demand
for
coherent
self-presentation,
self-narration
is
a
choice
term
capturing
the
demand
for
narrative
coherence
and
the
experiential
reality
supposedly
identifiable
in
narration.
2
By
human
rights
advocacy
I
am
referring
particularly
to
international
NGO
networks
and
their
attendant
campaigns,
reports
and
media
resources.
By
human
rights
research
I
am
referring
to
international
criminal
justice,
truth
and
reconciliation
commissions,
transitional
justice,
restorative
justice,
and
research
on
post-conflict
societies
and
on
civil
reconstruction
in
post-conflict
situations.
3
See
section
on
Visual
Anthropology
in
American
Anthropologist
108.1
(2008).
4
Paynes
observation
was
made
as
a
respondent
to
a
panel
on
Testimonial
analysis,
use,
and
aftermath
at Ways of Knowing After Atrocity: A Colloquium on the Methods Used to Research, Design and Implement Transitional Justice Processes, Oxford Transitional Justice Research, University of Oxford, June 2012.
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
different
to
a
life
history
of
a
refugee;
and
a
UK
victim
impact
police
statement
is
different
to
a
focus
group
transcript
of
regional
CSO
leaders.
At
particular
issue
in
this
article
is
the
reliance
on
marginalized,
silenced,
oppressed
narratives
in
the
theory
and
practice
of
human
rights,
and
the
uses
to
which
such
narratives
are
directed.
I
use
the
term
self-narration
in
this
essay
to
refer
to
narratives
told
in
the
first
person
by
a
narrator
who
recounts
the
extreme
experiences
of
conflict
situations.
I
use
the
terms
testimony
and
testimony
paradigm
to
indicate
the
legal
prominence
of
self-narration
within
human
rights
advocacy
and
research
as
well
as
its
attendant
epistemology.
Self-narration
as
testimony
is
a
phrase
used
to
indicate
the
promotion
of
self-narration
as
a
species
of
testimony
within
human
rights
research
and
advocacy.
The
deliberation
and
houseroom
given
to
the
self-narration
of
victims
and
survivors
of
state
crime
has
been
an
important
part
of
procedural
justice.
While
the
psychological
benefits
of
speaking
out
remain
in
question,
there
is
nevertheless
much
to
suggest
the
use-value
of
testimony
for
testifiers
themselves,
who
can
experience
a
sense
of
(albeit
a
nebulous
term)
acknowledgement.
Accordingly,
testimony
is
often
viewed
in
terms
of
the
recent
incremental
advances
in
victim-centred
justice.
In
a
broader
sociological
sense,
testimony
is
seen
to
provide
an
on
the
ground
perspective,
and
in
this
regard
has
become
a
key
heuristic
among
researchers
in
their
attempt
to
understand
the
experience
of
conflict.
Indeed
it
is
difficult
to
challenge
the
reliance
on
testimony
evidence
without
risking
the
criticism
that
in
doing
so
one
represses
the
voices
of
those
who
have
suffered
oppression.
From
an
academic
vantage,
challenging
testimony
evidence
risks
appearing
obscurantist
or
recalling
a
Derridean
critique
of
language
that
denies
narratives
consensual
meaning.
Although
this
article
fundamentally
takes
issue
with
the
reliance
and
promotion
of
self-narration
as
a
species
of
sociological
and
legal
evidence
in
a
human
rights
context,
my
intention
is
not
to
delegitimize
narrative-based
evidence.
Rather,
I
wish
to
suggest
the
ways
in
which
our
ideas
about
self-narration
as
a
form
of
testimony
invite
certain
assumptions
about
the
act
of
account-giving
itself
that
complicate
our
attempts
at
interpretation.
Specifically,
I
want
to
interrogate
the
interpretative
move
by
which
instances
of
self-narration
are
given
voice
that
is,
are
made
to
fit
a
framework
of
testimonial
analysis
a
move
which
neutralizes
the
researchers
frame
of
interpretation.
This
article,
then,
moves
between
the
epistemic
status
of
first-person
narrative
accounts
and
the
practical
uses
and
effects
of
testimony
evidence
in
the
field
of
human
rights.
My
intention
is
to
show
that
self-narration
is
evidentiary
and
meaningful
as
testimony;
yet,
at
the
same
time,
I
want
to
suggest
that
it
is
the
object
of
certain
misplaced
assumptions
that
lead
in
some
cases
to
tendentious
standards
of
interpretation.
My
purpose
in
this
article
is
to
approach
the
dominant
international
model
of
human
rights
interpretation
not
simply
as
an
ideologically
freighted
enterprise,
but
as
a
series
of
epistemological
claims.
In
doing
so,
this
article
touches
on
a
different
question:
can
Western
academics
and
practitioners
reasonably
hope
to
engage
with
the
narratives
of
their
respondents
in
a
way
that
is
dialogic
as
opposed
to
conscribing
or
prescriptive,
yet
at
the
same
time
empirically
valid?
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Testimony
evidence
in
a
human
rights
context
is
presented
as
an
end
in
itself,
as
something
which
bears
inherent
use-value.
Yet
human
rights
organizations
collect
testimony
in
terms
of
its
exchange- value,
too.
The
testimony
of
witnesses
forms
thick
rivers
of
fact,
which
might
be
siphoned
and
filtered
into
evidence
by
future
legal
mechanisms
or
political
movements
(Cmiel
1999:
1246).5
Human
rights
advocacy
also
makes
use
of
testimony
as
a
campaign
tool
that
harnesses
the
affective
spectacle
of
testimony
and
the
reactive
emotion
it
can
provoke
in
readers,
listeners,
and
viewers.
Existing
critiques
of
testimony
evidence
tend
to
question
either
its
supposed
utility
or
its
supposed
ideological
disinterestedness.
Recent
examples
of
the
public
circulation
of
testimony,
in
for
instance
the
former
Yugoslavia
and
Rwanda,
have
shown
that
the
dissemination
of
documentary
evidence
does
not
necessarily
provoke
international
political
action
or
local
mobilization.
Political
critiques
of
testimony
evidence
have
addressed
what
is
claimed
to
be
the
top-down,
expert
arbitration
of
testimony.
They
take
to
task
the
unequal
dynamic
of
power
between
expert
interpreters
of
testimony
on
the
one
hand
and,
on
the
other,
those
persons
whose
narratives
are
utilized
as
evidence
(Pittaway
et
al.
2010;
Mander
2010).6
This
article
proceeds
in
a
different
manner,
by
challenging
certain
epistemological
and
hermeneutic
assumptions
in
dominant
interpretations
of
self-narration
as
testimony.
This
analysis
might
be
described
as
endogenous
to
human
rights,
in
the
sense
that
it
examines
the
internal
assumptions
of
human
rights
claims
and
human
rights
as
a
Western
epistemic
knowledge.
While
this
article
recalls
existing
work
on
epistemic
communities
and
hermeneutic
injustice,
it
concentrates
not
simply
on
the
shared
epistemic
assumptions
within
networks
and
powerful
geopolitical
constituencies,
but
on
epistemological
assumptions
about
narrative
accounts
as
a
species
of
evidence
(Haas
1992;
Fricker
2007).
I
suggest
that
the
assumptions
behind
the
dominant
epistemology
of
testimony
are
in
the
first
place
fallacious,
and
in
the
second
place
ideologically
encoded.
I
do
not
call
for
self-narration
to
be
subject
to
stricter
standards
of
proof,
or
for
that
matter
to
any
new
interpretative
frame.
Rather,
my
focus
is
on
the
actions
of
human
rights
experts,
who
(I
suggest)
make
their
narrative
subjects
the
mouthpiece
of
pre-existing
human
right
credos.
This
article
begins
from
the
understanding
that
human
rights
researchers
and
advocates
(myself
included)
act
as
collectors,
filterers,
translators,
and
presenters
of
information
regarding
alleged
violations
(Metzl
1996:
705).
Human
rights
may
exist
as
a
moral
call
or
appeal,
but
in
application
it
is
codified
as
a
collection
of
norms
and
abstract
designates
and
categories.
The
abstract
schema
of
human
rights
is
given
specificity
by
reference
to
case
studies,
but
I
would
suggest
that
its
emphasis
on
the
individual
as
the
unit
of
human
rights
is
ratified
by
the
voice
of
the
human
rights
claimant.
When
human
rights
researchers
and
advocates
utilize
testimony
evidence,
however,
they
ferry
its
knowledge
and
curate
its
meaning,
and
in
doing
so
trammel
the
narrative
accounts
of
others
with
5
An
example
of
such
an
organization
is
the
Abdorrahman
Boroumand
Foundation,
which
collects
testimonies
from
relatives
and
friends
of
those
killed
or
disappeared
in
the
Islamic
Republic
of
Iran.
6
For
an
excellent
critical
analysis
of
international
advocacy
networks,
see
Subotic
(2012).
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
their
own
normative
understanding.
The
epistemology
of
testimony
as
understood
by
many
practitioners
and
experts
tends
to
mask
this
process
of
collecting,
filtering,
and
translating.
This
masking
occurs
in
the
assumption
that
an
instance
of
testimony
evidence
is
the
unique
particular
which
proves
the
general
normative
rule.
Human
rights
testimony
and
human
rights
norms
come
into
use
correspondingly
as
a
person
petitions
for
rights
previously
denied
them.
Human
rights
advocates
are
able
to
refer
to
victims
accounts
of
their
experiences
as
testimony
as
opposed
to
mere
narratives
because
of
the
assumption
that
self-narration
is
emblematic
of
human
right
norms.
A
witnesss
account
of
events
gives
us
much
contextual
and
cultural
content,
but
crucially
it
is
also
understood
to
be
the
sign
of
the
self-determining
human
rights
claimant,
functioning
therefore
as
a
kind
of
testimony.
By
the
same
token,
individual
self-narration
is
often
made
to
serve
a
collective
or
community
function,
a
process
supported
by
the
assumption
that
the
narrating
I
is
surrogate
to
a
collective
we.
The
interpretive
move
by
which
an
instance
of
self-narration
is
converted
into
victim
testimony
is
too
often
elided
by
the
epistemology
of
the
interpreter
herself
an
epistemology
which
merges
epistemic
claims
with
morality
and
politics.
The
further
move
by
which
victim
testimony
is
integrated
into
a
wider
programme
of
political
action,
in
which
human
rights
is
promoted
and
enforced
across
the
world,
also
tends
to
be
elided.
Focussed
on
the
evidentiary
framing
of
human
rights
interpretation,
this
article
is
not
a
comment
on,
for
instance,
local
NGO
organizations
that
collect
testimony.
Rather,
I
focus
on
international
and
Western
academic
application
of
such
testimony.
When
referring
to
examples
of
international
or
academic
application
of
testimony
evidence
I
am
not
taking
issue
simply
with
the
understanding
of
individual
international
experts
within
these
arenas.
I
am
also
taking
into
consideration
their
place
in
an
international
order
of
liberal
states
which,
through
the
vehicles
of
humanitarian
advocacy
and
international
human
rights
law,
acts
or
attempt
to
act
on
behalf
of
victims
of
conflict.
This
article
begins
by
examining
the
broader
epistemological
implications
of
the
rise
of
narrative
research,
specifically
in
the
field
of
human
rights
advocacy
and
research,
and
then
reveals
the
extent
to
which
the
epistemology
of
testimony
and
the
liberal
project
of
human
rights
are
mutually
dependent.
A
critical
analysis
of
the
epistemology
of
testimony
in
human
rights
advocacy
and
research
is
both
timely
and
necessary.
A
survey
of
33
human
rights
fellows
found
that
68
per
cent
indicated
the
semi-structured
interview
as
their
choice
research
method
(Reed
and
Padskocimaite
2012:
4).7
Like
other
types
of
evidence
based
in
self-narration,
interview
evidence
is
employed
as
an
indicator
of
peoples
perceptions,
meanings,
definitions
of
situations
and
constructions
of
reality
(Punch
2005:
168).
While
there
is
a
great
deal
of
literature
on
technical
aspects
of
qualitative
7
The
most
popular
methods
were:
semi-structured
interview
(61
per
cent),
case
study
(45
per
cent),
ethnography (36 per cent), archival research (27 per cent) and statistical analysis (21 per cent).
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
interviewing,
little
work
has
been
done
on
the
epistemological
assumptions
implicit
in
such
qualitative
research.8
Since
the
epistemology
of
testimony
is
a
relatively
under-researched
area,
I
hope
this
article
will
clarify
some
of
the
ways
in
which
certain
key
terms
in
the
field
of
human
rights
testimony,
truth- telling,
recognition
are
underpinned
epistemologically.
I
hope
this
discussion
will
be
of
use
to
others
working
on
research
methods
in
the
field
of
human
rights,
and
will
be
a
contribution
to
existing
literatures
on
rights
consciousness,
evidentiary
sources,
victim
empowerment,
and
victim
representation.
9 Amanda Anderson (2006: 3), for instance, writes that by the late 1980s, there was an established critical
interest
in
first-person
perspectives
and
in
the
lived
experiences
of
diverse
social
groups.
10
General
texts
include
Clandinin
and
Connelly
(2000),
Elliot
(2005)
and
Chamberlayne
et
al.
(2000).
11
Many
disciplines
have
come
to
value
what
many
see
as
the
narrative
constitution
of
psychology
and
identity. As a typical critical statement in this vein has it: [W]e lead our lives as stories, and our identity is constructed by both stories we tell ourselves and others about ourselves and by the master narratives that consciously or unconsciously serves as models for ours (Rimmon-Kenan 2002: 11). Jerome Bruner (2002: 89) describes selves as stories that impose a structure, a compelling reality on what we experience. In more general terms, philosopher Marya Schechtman (1996: 93) advocates a narrative
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
rights
advocacy
and
research
promotes
narrative
as
a
type
of
evidence
that
pertains
not
simply
to
the
psychological
realities
of
a
victim,
survivor
or
witness,
but
one
which
also
serves
a
testimonial
function.
self-constitution
view,
and
maintains
that
peoples
lives
are
narrative
in
form.
A
person
creates
his
identity
by
forming
an
autobiographical
narrative
a
story
of
his
life.
In
the
same
vein,
Charles
Taylor
(1989:
47)
suggests
that
a
basic
condition
of
making
sense
of
ourselves
demands
that
we
grasp
our
lives
in
a
narrative.
12
For
a
discussion
of
the
notion
of
a
hierarchy
of
credibility,
see
Sanders
(1987:
238).
13
See
also
Braithwaite
(2007),
Beverley
(1992),
Bell
(2010),
Pranis
(2001),
Neimeyer
and
Tschudi
(2003).
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
In
the
face
of
authoritarian
regimes
which
have
silenced
the
accounts
of
individuals
by
destruction
or
by
disseminating
their
own
propagandizing
discourse,
the
personal
accounts
of
witnesses
of
state
crime
among
others
have
provided
a
hugely
important
counter-narrative.
Self-narration,
on
this
basis,
was
formulated
as
valuably
indicative
of
the
experience
of
witnesses
to
events.
With
this
promotion
of
self-narration
in
the
field
of
human
rights
came
a
type
of
essentialism
about
what
it
meant
to
give
an
account
of
oneself.
This
was
not
a
humanist
stress
on
the
immutable
value
of
self-narration
so
much
as
a
proclamation
of
its
discursive
integrity
from
social
and
political
forces.
Analyses
that
utilize
testimony
evidence,
in
other
words,
often
presuppose
self-narration
as
the
self- sufficient
practice
by
which
human
beings
exercise
in
language
what
is
significant
to
or
about
them.
Narrative
is
reified
as
the
essential
practice
of
self-knowing,
leaving
its
structures,
co-optive
influences,
and
social
relations
unproblematic
to
it.
As
the
human
function
best
placed
to
act
as
a
vehicle
of
critique
to
hegemonic
systems
of
meaning,
which
silence
or
overwrite
the
human
speaking
voice,
narrative
is
afforded
the
worth
of
a
universal,
innate
human
capacity.
Such
essentialism
is
maintained
even
when
narrative
is
held
in
relation
to
historico-cultural
formations.
The
ability
to
narrate
is
often
presented
as
the
practice
of
a
universal
and
unchanging
dignity
that
is
naturalized
as
a
narrative
human
condition.
For
example,
the
abolitionist
slogan
Am
I
not
a
man
and
a
brother?
works
publicly
as
a
political
and
moral
appeal,
but
in
an
epistemological
sense
it
also
works
metaphysically
to
confirm
a
(socially
interdependent)
human
condition.14
Self-Narration
As
Testimony
From
the
discussion
above,
we
can
now
identify
a
further
inflection
given
to
self-narration
as
an
empirical
resource.
As
a
witness
or
victim
or
survivor
of
human
rights
violations,
ones
account
of
ones
experiences
is
presumed
to
carry
a
testimonial
freight
by
dint
simply
of
its
existence.
Felman
and
Laub
(1992:
5)
have
described
testimony
as
a
crucial
mode
of
our
relation
to
events
of
our
times
our
era
can
precisely
be
defined
as
the
age
of
testimony.
If
ours
is
an
age
of
testimony,
it
is
because
we
live
in
an
age
in
which
witnessing
itself
has
undergone
a
major
trauma
(Felman
1991:
76).
The
in
extremis
pain
of
recent
history
establishes
the
need
for
testimony
and
the
ethical
right
of
traumatized
human
subjects
to
be
heard
and
thus
acknowledged.
On
this
basis,
survivors
of
historical
suffering,
and
their
stories
of
survival,
demand
to
be
granted
an
epistemic
status
by
precisely
those
structures
of
knowledge
and
power
that
have
failed
them.15
The
crises
of
recent
history
have,
in
other
words,
instituted
a
crisis
of
reference.
Amid
the
unmeaning
of
war
and
14
This
rather
complex
relationship
between
self-narration
and
philosophical
notions
of
selfhood
is
15 For a discussion of institutional failure and a concomitant rejection of the claims of collective
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
atrocity,
and
among
the
fragmentary
detritus
of
documentary
evidence
left
by
that
devastation,
testimony
rises
to
the
fore
as
a
kind
of
traumatic
realism
(Rothberg
2000).16
When
a
narrative
account
is
identified
as
testimony
in
a
human
rights
context
this
tends
to
be
a
deliberate
attempt
to
identify
that
narrative
account
as
(i)
a
species
of
empirical
evidence,
and
(ii)
one
that
carries
with
it
a
certain
moral
imperative
contained
in
the
act
of
bearing
witness.
Testimony,
in
this
sense,
is
seen
to
marry
legal
with
moral
and
affective
forms
of
persuasion.
Put
crudely,
in
its
very
broadest
sense,
testimony
means
people
telling
other
people
things.17
Most
testimony
(in
this
broad
sense)
involves
some
kind
of
narrative.
Furthermore,
some
type
of
self- narration
I
was
there;
this
is
what
I
saw;
and
now
Im
telling
you
what
I
saw
is
implicit
in
most
kinds
of
testimony.
This
kind
of
minimal
testimony
can
provide
a
wealth
of
factual
information
for
those
wishing
to
collect
verifiable
evidence
about
a
situation.
Self-narration
in
the
field
of
human
rights
is
carrying
a
heavier
burden,
however.
Because
the
experiences
at
stake
are
so
unique
and
extreme,
self-narration
in
such
contexts
is
urged
to
cleave
to
a
more
declarative
and
revelatory
script.
The
formula
in
this
latter
case
might
read
something
like:
I
was
there;
this
is
what
I
saw,
lived
through,
and
experienced;
this
is
the
effect
it
had
on
me
and
who
I
am;
and
this
is
why
Im
telling
you
about
it.
Because
self-narration
in
a
human
rights
context
is
so
freighted
with
experiential
extremities,
it
is
elevated
to
a
form
of
knowledge
in
itself.
Testimony
is
the
name
we
give
to
this
form
of
knowledge.
The
interpreter
assigns
a
value
to
the
content
of
such
testimony
beyond
what
is
empirically
relevant
to
the
existing
body
of
documentary
evidence.
To
take
a
fictional
example:
Security
forces
came
to
our
house
and
arrested
me,
though
they
did
not
have
a
warrant.
My
father- in-law
became
short
of
breath
and
fainted
from
the
shock
of
it.
That
the
speaker
in
this
fictional
example
was
arrested
without
a
warrant
has
legal
and
political
implications,
but
the
hurt
of
the
family
member,
and
the
emotional
effect
of
this
hurt
on
the
speaker,
too
has
legal
and
political
implications.
Those
who
are
called
upon
to
speak
of
their
experiences
are
thus
poised
to
answer
to
these
dual
functions
of
empirical
knowledge
and
experiential
knowledge.
16
Traumatic
realism,
Michael
Rothberg
(2000:
140)
writes,
is
marked
by
the
survival
of
extremity
into
the
everyday
world.
Recent
historical
suffering
has
been
so
extreme
as
to
empty
out
previous
models
of
realism
based
on
moral
and
political
traditions
complicit
in
that
suffering.
In
this
vacuum
a
traumatic
realism
survives
as
the
first
point
of
reference
by
which
to
rebuild.
Rothberg
also
places
traumatic
realism
beside
a
demand
for
documentationand
a
demand
for
the
risky
public
circulation
of
discourses
on
the
event
(2000:
7).
17
For
existing
discussions
on
the
epistemology
of
testimony,
see
Coady
(1992),
Lackey
(2008),
Lackey
and Sosa (2006), Graham (1997), Fricker (1994). On testimony as an acquired source of knowledge, see Lackey (1999). On testimony-based belief, see Stevenson (1993) and Sosa (1994). Also see Humes ([1777] 1972) influential account of testimony.
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Table
1
Epistemological
assumptions:
self-narration
as
testimony
Political
assumptions
Testimony:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Social
assumptions:
Testimony:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Psychological
assumptions:
Testimony:
1.
2.
3.
4.
The
epistemology
of
testimony
is
a
paradigm
that
views
first-person
narratives
as
a
kind
of
a
lattice
of
legal
and
political
meaning.
Under
this
paradigm
self-narration
is
a
knowledge
that
both
verifies
certain
facts
about
a
situation
and
satisfies
the
need
for
representation
of
the
extreme
experiences
to
which
victims
of
state
crime
are
subject.
Provides
a
verbal
transcription
of
lived
experience.
Promotes
individual
healing.
Reveals
individual
experiences
and
social
(as
opposed
to
ideological)
norms.
Presents
a
singular
cohering
self-portrait.
Promotes
mutual
understanding.
Gives
verbal
form
to
identity.
Is
the
currency
of
forgiveness
and
reconciliation.
Aids
mutual
recognition.
Speaks
truth
to
power,
thereby
promoting
justice.
Confirms
the
individuals
standing
as
a
claimant
to
human
rights
protections.
Bears
witness
to
injustice.
Promotes
an
accurate
historical
record.
10
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
This
integration
of
self-narration
into
a
testimony
paradigm
is
complex
and
needs
more
critical
attention.
I
believe
the
epistemological
claims
made
on
behalf
of
self-narration
take
their
cue
from
traditions
within
criminology
specifically,
the
need
for
empirical
investigation
into
the
experiences
of
victims
(Green
1990;
Hillyard
1993).18
I
believe
self-narration
in
human
rights
research
has
been
subject
to
a
process
of
epistemological
overcompensation,
however.
Self-narration
as
empirical
resource
has
been
conflated
with
the
idea
of
self-narration
as
testimony,
meaning
that
self-narration
has
come
to
serve
as
the
basis
of
a
knowledge
that
is
somehow
both
empirical
and
political,
both
affective
and
petitioning.
In
most
cases,
of
course,
self-narration
in
a
human
rights
context
does
indeed
warrant
deliberation
from
a
number
of
perspectives
and,
too,
provides
a
compelling
knowledge
of
conflict
situations.
I
want
to
question
however
the
purposiveness
the
testimony
paradigm
confers
on
all
instances
of
self- narration.
Self-narration
utilized
as
evidence
in
a
human
rights
context
tends
to
be
presented
as
serving
a
truth-telling
function.
As
we
shall
see,
however,
not
all
acts
of
self-narration
can
responsibly
be
said
to
sound
the
proclamation
of
certain
enshrined
political
goods.
Because
self- narration
as
testimony
need
not
pertain
to
empirically
verifiable
facts
to
be
valid,
but,
rather,
can
qualify
as
such
simply
as
an
account
of
individual
experience,
the
purposiveness
implied
to
self- narration
is
left
unquestioned.
As
legal
critic
Jan-Melissa
Schramm
(2000:
5)
explains:
[T]his
is
the
essential
ambiguity
of
the
term
testimony
that
it
not
only
encompasses
narratives
of
experience
which
need
lay
no
immediate
claim
to
issues
of
truth
or
falsehood,
but
that
it
seeks
to
be
regarded
as
a
species
of
evidence.
Seen
as
evidence,
testimony
serves
as
a
vehicle
for
the
attestation
of
the
real
because
of
its
roots
in
ancient
notions
of
legal
and
religious
authority.
While
contiguous
to
legal
definitions,
the
general
term
testimony
can
be
seen
as
a
type
of
evidence
whose
weight
of
proof
is
not
solely
dependent
on
empirically
verifiable
standards.
The
open
reference
of
its
epistemology
has
allowed
human
rights
advocacy
and
research
to
direct
testimony
as
it
pleases,
towards
ends
rooted
not
simply
in
a
conclusive
empirical
world,
but
in
real
political
goods.
This
process
by
which
self-narration
is
presented
as
conforming
to
existing
human
rights
norms
can
be
blunt
and
heavy-handed,
and
on
other
occasions
it
is
masked
by
a
researchers
objective
methodology.
Whether
this
is
critical
complacency
or
something
more
pernicious
is
a
question
too
complex
to
address
here.
18
Criminologists
have
paid
special
attention
to
the
narratives
of
offenders:
see
Bennett
(1981)
and,
more
recently, Presser (2009). In a basic sense, offender narratives shed light on the norms held by an offender as they differ from those of the wider moral and legal community in which the offender lives.
11
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
they
are
committed.
I
wish
to
further
explore
however
the
manner
in
which
the
epistemology
of
testimony
is
seen
to
legitimize
the
enlisting
of
testimony.
To
uncover
the
epistemology
of
testimony
we
need
to
turn
to
academic
constructs
and
applications
of
testimony.
In
human
rights
research,
testimony
evidence
belongs
to
qualitative
data,
in
counter- distinction
or
complementary
to
quantitative
data.
Such
testimony
evidence
is
gained
most
commonly
by
collecting
textual
data
through
interviews
and/or
observation
of
individuals
or
groups
of
people
(Pham
and
Vinck
2007:
234).
Archival
evidence
and
court
and
tribunal
evidence
may
also
be
utilized.
Some
common
testimony
evidence
collection
tools
include:
informant
interviews,
focus
group
discussions,
participant
observation
and
direct
observation
(ibid.:
234).
Qualitative
interviewing
has
its
own
categories:
open-ended,
structured,
semi-structured,
and
so
on.
This
data
may
also
be
integrated
into
a
process
of
systematic
data
collection
of
information
or
knowledge
using
scientific
approaches
(ibid.:
232).
Often,
testimony
evidence
is
converted
into
datasets
which
are
then
subject
to
coding,
the
process
of
classifying
and
quantifying
information
for
the
purpose
of
statistical
analysis
(Sikkink
2011:
135).
Testimony
evidence
can
be
presented
alongside
statistical
data
garnered
from,
for
instance,
population-based
surveys
or
structured
questionnaires.
I
list
these
qualitative
research
methods
mainly
to
contextualize
my
analysis,
since
my
focus
lies
more
in
the
epistemological
assumptions
which
orientate
such
methods.
Crucially,
empirical
surveys,
scholarly
articles,
and
NGO
reports
are
all
littered
with
quotations
from
respondents
in
a
way
that
is
not
critically
explained
or
justified
methodologically.19
While
methodology
chapters
justify
the
variant
of
interview
or
observation
used
and
its
coding
method
or
the
manner
in
which
a
reports
quantitative
data
complements
its
qualitative
data
or
vice
versa
these
do
little
to
explain
the
epistemology
orientating
them.
Of
particular
concern
is
the
way
in
which
testimony
evidence
is
framed
by
and
thus
conscripted
to
pre-existing
norms
about
account-giving
as
a
human
rights
practice
in
itself.
In
March
2012
Human
Rights
Watch
published
a
report
entitled
I
Had
to
Run
Away:
The
Imprisonment
of
Women
and
Girls
for
Moral
Crimes
in
Afghanistan.
The
report
is
based
on
58
interviews
of
women
and
children
accused
of
moral
crimes.
As
a
Human
Rights
Watch
report,
its
recommendations
are
pitched
directly
to
Afghanistans
Supreme
Court,
the
Attorney
General,
the
Afghan
Independent
Human
Rights
Commission
(AIHRC),
the
United
Nations,
and
International
Donors,
among
others.
Its
recommendations
framed
by
domestic
constitutional
and
legal
issues,
and
relevant
international
human
rights
law
and
treaties
are
made
concrete
and
given
experiential
reference
by
the
testimonies
of
those
interviewed.
The
exact
phrase
I
had
to
run
away
does
not
actually
appear
in
the
report,
and
appears
to
have
been
coined
to
highlight
a
general
rule
about
the
reports
data.
Of
the
42
married
women
and
girls
interviewed
for
this
report,
22
were
arrested
as
a
direct
result
of
having
run
away
in
order
to
flee
abuse
by
their
husband
or
family
members
of
their
husband
(HRW
2012:
39).
19
For
an
example
of
a
highly
accomplished
piece
of
research
which
nevertheless
falls
into
this
trap,
see
13
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
The
story
is
told
of
a
woman
named
Gulara,
who
was
married
against
her
will
at
age
15:
Her
husband
had
been
promised
to
another
girl
when
he
was
born
but
his
father,
for
reasons
unknown
to
Gulara,
decided
to
break
the
engagement
and
marry
his
son
to
her
instead.
She
said
this
caused
disagreements
within
her
husbands
family,
but
her
family
was
unaware
of
this
when
they
agreed
to
the
marriage.
She
told
Human
Rights
Watch:
I
had
so
many
problems
with
domestic
violence.
Everyone
in
my
husbands
family
was
treating
me
in
a
really
bad
way.
When
we
got
engaged,
it
was
my
father-in-law
who
came
to
our
house
and
asked
for
me
for
his
son.
But
the
father-in-law
himself
was
beating
me
a
lot
from
just
the
time
I
got
married.
She
said
she
was
also
beaten
by
her
brother-in-law.
Gulara
went
to
a
shelter
to
try
to
get
help
with
these
problems
and
asked
them
to
help
her
obtain
a
divorce.
Instead,
Gulara
says
that
the
shelter
returned
her
to
her
husband
after
he
promised
not
to
repeat
his
prior
actions.
However,
the
situation
worsened.
My
husband
said,
Now
you
have
found
the
ways
and
the
places
where
you
can
go
and
complain
about
us.
My
situation
day-by-day
got
worse
and
then
I
was
forced
to
run
away.
(HRW
2012:
51)
What
is
quoted
of
Gularas
narrative
amounts
to
90
words.
It
is
debatable
whether
this
length
of
quotation,
together
with
the
direct
quotation
from
other
respondents,
is
appropriate
to
the
interview
data
as
the
primary
source
of
evidence.
The
shifts
of
focus
within
the
report
from
the
temporal
and
circumstantial
specificities
of
individual
self-narration;
to
the
regional
political
concerns
of
prosecutors
and
police;
to
the
macro-discourses
of
ICCPR,
CEDAW,
and
ICESCR
will
be
a
familiar
hermeneutic
to
most
readers.
I
would
suggest
that
the
amalgamated
phrase
I
had
to
run
away,
as
the
eponymous
statement
of
the
report
itself,
is
the
trope
by
which
the
report
signals
its
political
legitimacy
and
methodological
integrity.
This
is
despite
the
fact
that
the
testimonies
used
in
the
report
are
summarily
converted
into
an
international
language
of
civil
and
political
rights.
While
this
may
be
a
laudable
enterprise,
such
an
epistemology
declares
legitimate
what
should
be
open
to
critique.
The
mechanisms
favoured
by
the
dominant
institutions
and
state
parties
in
the
promotion
of
human
rights
and
transitional
justice
are
overwhelmingly
legalistic,
and
more
specifically
centre
on
the
rule
of
law,
constitutional
reform,
and
democratic
enfranchisement.
Human
rights
advocacy
and
research
are
at
once
beholden
to
and
complicit
in
these
institutions
and
state
parties.
In
this
legalistic
landscape,
and
amid
the
demands
from
donors
for
outcomes
and
measurable
results,
it
might
be
said
to
be
a
curious
turn
of
fate
that
human
rights
research
and
advocacy
would
continue
to
rely
heavily
on
that
most
qualitative
of
evidentiary
sources,
the
narrative
account.
In
this
sense,
the
rise
of
so-called
history
from
below
analysis
may
serve
as
a
useful
reference
in
our
understanding
of
the
sustained
promotion
of
testimony
evidence.
14
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
In
its
human
rights
variation,
justice
from
below
wishes
to
critique
what
it
sees
as
the
top-down
promotion
of
justice,
by
suggesting
that
formal
legal
institutions
and
sanctioned
transitional
mechanisms
form
a
dominant
script,
which
detaches
scholars
and
practitioners
from
local
needs,
definitions
of
justice,
and
relevant
cultural
practices
(McEvoy
and
McGregor
2008).
Because
justice- from-below
advocates
aim
to
enfranchise
unheard
accounts
into
the
currency
of
human
rights
evidence,
their
ability
to
be
self-critical
can
be
diminished
by
what
they
see
(correctly)
as
a
pressing
moral
and
political
need.
Just
as
history
from
below
has
been
criticized
(ironically)
for
co-opting
grassroots
movements
into
dominant
historical
paradigms,
justice
from
below
has
been
criticized
for
promoting
expert
arbitration
of
justice
processes.
As
Tshepo
Madlingozi
(2010:
225)
has
written:
Whether
it
is
through
field
reports,
policy
papers,
or
academic
papers
and
manuscripts,
transitional
justice
experts
professional
advancement
is
based
on
being
able
to
speak
about
and
speak
for
victims.
Despite
the
constant
references
to
the
need
to
have
victims
voice
be
heard,
to
have
victim-centered
or
bottom-up
transitional
justice
processes,
and
to
have
victim
empowerment,
transitional
justice
scholars
and
practitioners
have
not
genuinely
interrogated
how
their
programmes
and
interventions
have
led
to
the
disempowerment
or
empowerment
of
victims.
For
our
purposes,
Madlingozi
establishes
that
the
epistemology
of
testimony
assumes
the
dependency
of
account-givers
on
the
expert
agency
of
professional
interpreters.
Rather
than
promoting
or
empowering
account-givers
critical
understanding
of
their
own
socio-political
context,
justice-from-below
analysis
performs
a
top-down
orchestration
of
narrative
meaning
in
the
very
act
of
supposed
liberation.
To
return
to
the
notion
of
a
hierarchy
of
credibility,
in
the
final
account
it
is
the
human
rights
advocate
herself
who
outranks
the
narrative
voice
on
which
she
relies
as
evidence.
The
agency
by
which
a
narrative
is
given
meaning
is
not
borne
by
the
author
of
the
narrative,
but,
rather,
by
their
advocate.
Miranda
Fricker
has
written
persuasively
on
the
notion
of
hermeneutical
injustice.
This
occurs
when
a
person
is
in
effect
written
out
of
the
deliberative
process
by
which
norms
are
instituted
and
meaning
constructed.
This
process
belongs
to
an
unequal
distribution
of
the
shared
resources
for
social
interpretation
(Fricker
2009:
148).
In
the
case
of
testimony
evidence,
the
authors
of
the
testimonies
themselves
are
too
often
left
un-empowered,
and
thus
unable
to
participate
in
the
deliberative
process
by
which
rights
claims
are
formulated,
despite
the
fact
that
their
own
story
is
a
source
of
evidence
supporting
the
rights
claim
itself.
Much
post-conflict
human
rights
research
challenges
the
centralization
of
a
state
regime
by
examining
local
experiences.
Because
such
research
starts
from
a
specific
instance
before
moving
to
more
general
concerns,
it
risks
making
an
individuals
narrative
answerable
to
the
particular
credo
or
critical
telos
of
the
researcher
herself.
To
take
a
more
specific
example,
there
is
a
certain
logic
followed
by
human
rights
research
which
draws
on
the
accounts
of
survivors
of
a
regime:
a
Survivor
must
ipso
facto
be
the
bearer
of
an
important
testimonial
account.20
Those
researchers
engaged
on
20
As
Roger
Luckhurst
has
written
in
The
Trauma
Question
(2008:
2),
extremity
and
survival
are
the
privileged markers of identity. Concentration camp inmates, Vietnam and Gulf veterans, victims of
15
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
a
justice-from-below
analysis
must
check
the
logic
which
suggests
that
localized
conflict
is
best
understood
through
local
accounts.
As
Phil
Clark
has
shown
in
his
research
on
the
Rwandan
genocide,
many
survivors
were
in
hiding
during
the
atrocities
and
were
unable
to
shed
light
on
local
killing
practices
(Clark
2010).
Epistemologically
speaking,
a
narrative
account
is
a
discrete
and
unique
entity,
and
a
rather
poor
vehicle
for
making
generalizations
about
a
complex
historical
period
or
conflict.
This
is
not
to
say,
of
course,
that
survivors
cannot
ameliorate
the
historical
record.
Neither
is
it
the
case
that
retrospective
accounts
inevitably
parrot
state-authored
discourses
or
act
as
ciphers
of
a
state.
Yet
narrative
evidence
is
far
more
fragile
more
rhetorically
conditioned
than
it
is
convenient
to
recognize.
From
here,
I
want
to
suggest
my
own
theory
of
the
epistemological
assumptions
by
which
testimony
evidence
is
allowed
to
be
so
(mis)used.
At
this
point
the
reader
might
ask
what
I
am
arguing
for
in
the
interpretation
of
testimony
evidence.
Do
I
wish
to
argue
for
testimony
evidence
as
non- purposive
self-narration
as
opposed
to
purposive
testimony
and,
if
so,
what
does
this
mean?
I
do
not
have
space
here
to
propose
a
theory
of
self-narration
as
unsusceptible
to
end
goals
such
as
reconciliation,
collective
memory,
and
so
on.
Rather,
I
want
to
interrogate
the
notion
of
human
rights
researchers
as
legitimate
interlocutors
with
the
narratives
of
their
respondents.
Testimony
evidence
in
human
rights
advocacy
and
research
is
formalized
in
quasi-legal
fashion,
as
if
the
researcher
were
prosecutor
and
the
respondent
his
witness.
Yet
testimony
evidence
is
made
to
serve
expressly
political
ends
beyond
the
legal
sphere.
This
is
not
however
something
I
want
to
redress
in
formal
legal
terms.
Rather,
I
want
to
question
the
expressly
political
ends
to
which
testimony
evidence
is
subject
ends
which
reach
far
beyond
the
legal
notions
of
representation
in
which
human
rights
advocates
trade.
Furthermore,
I
want
to
suggest
that
a
particular
epistemology
of
testimony
is
the
means
by
which
human
rights
advocates
mask
this
process
of
political
co-option.
There
are
inherent
qualities
that
tend
to
be
vouchsafed
implicitly
to
self-narration
by
those
who
advocate
first-person
narratives
as
a
species
of
testimony
evidence.
The
assumptions
underwriting
testimony
evidence
in
human
rights
advocacy
are
of
course
wide-ranging,
and
examples
can
be
found
of
rigorous
contextualizing
as
well
as
breezy
complacency.
A
danger
facing
all
those
engaged
in
narrative
research
is
the
assumption
that
a
persons
account
presents
a
fully
formed
and
coherent
self
communicated
in
toto
by
the
act
of
narration.
(This
tends
to
be
circumvented
within
human
rights
research
by
the
implicit
claim
that
respondent
narratives
are
purposed
by
their
authors
to
articulate
what
is
most
important
to
them.)
The
pitfalls
of
retrospective
narration
and
of
memory
in
general
are
well
accounted
for
as
one
might
expect,
since
much
testimony
evidence
is
retrospective
(Holocaust
evidence
being
a
case
in
point).21
Yet
other
problems
are
more
often
than
not
left
unidentified.
A
set
of
difficulties
follows
the
deracination
of
an
account
from
its
rhetorical
contingencies,
eliding
the
fact
that
every
account
is
audience-driven.
That
is
to
say,
every
self-
atrocities,
traumatized
parents
and
survivors
of
disaster
are
the
subject
of
intensive
political,
sociological,
biological,
psychiatric,
therapeutic
and
legal
investigation
and
dispute.
21
To
take
a
popular
example,
Primo
Levis
memoirs
operate
according
as
much
to
the
personal
psychological needs of remembrance as they do to the needs of historical accuracy. More concerning, however, is the state of Israels intercession in the interpretation of Shoah texts.
16
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
narrating
account
addresses
itself
to
a
call
to
account
by
an
other
(audience),
and
to
this
extent
every
account
is
inevitably
persuasive,
tactical,
interlocutory,
purposive
and
appeal-based
in
answering
this
other.
Interviewers,
for
instance,
need
to
be
mindful
of
the
way
in
which
respondents
will
tend
to
reproduce
existing
discourses
about,
say,
political
oppression
and
political
hope
often
in
ways
which
reflect
the
interviewers
own
lexicon,
political
discursive
allegiances,
and
turns
of
phrase.22
translated data. Translation issues are however too complex to address here.
23 The Nuremberg Tribunal had a wealth of Nazi documentation to draw on as evidence, yet more recent
17
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Justice
Accountability
Peace
Discrediting
of
old
regimes/elites
Official
historical
record
Settling
of
conflict
over
past
Healing
of
individual
victims
Group
reconciliation
New
shared
history
Exposing
institutional
pathologies
Individual
criminal
accountability
Human
rights
education
Rule
of
law
Democracy
End
to
human
rights
abuses
Advocates of testimony evidence have a tendency to promote self-narration as a kind of political discourse. The experts delivering mechanisms like truth commissions are engaged in a process of prescriptive translation, whereby testimony is not only made legible as a kind of political discourse, but is in effect made answerable and accountable to the goods it is presumed to promote. For a specific example of the strictures to which self-narration is subject in order to be recognized as evidence, we can turn to the ongoing Khmer Rouge Tribunal (or ECCC) in Cambodia. All Civil Parties must complete a Victim Information Form to be accepted by the court. There has been little critical attention paid to the format of this form. Beyond requesting basic information about the potential Civil Party, only in Part B of the form, Information about the alleged crimes, is space given over for Civil Parties to describe the crimes they suffered. This space, I would estimate, allows a maximum description of 20 words. Other details about crimes suffered are given in multiple-choice Yes/No answers. The only other opportunity Civil Parties have to tell their story is an optional Supplementary Information Form, which provides space for a narrative of around 1,000 words. Very few Civil Parties will be asked to testify in court. The percentage of those Civil Parties in the second case who are given this opportunity is likely to be around 2 per cent. Yet this has not prevented an access of legal scholarship discussing victim participation at the court both celebrating advances already made and criticizing their limitations yet none of these interrogated the narrative form of victim participation as such (Diamond 201011; Pham et al. 2009).
18
Patel, Ian (2012) 'The Role of Testimony and Testimonial Analysis in Human Rights Advocacy and Research' in State Crime: Journal of the International State Crime Initiative, London, Pluto Press, 1.2, 2012.
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
create coherence in regard to experience, which is understood as being rather formless (iii) persons live better and in a more ethical way if they have a coherent life-story and coherent narrative identity (or, in contrast, narrative is understood as being detrimental because it creates such coherence). (Hyvrinen et al. 2010: 12)
This
is
a
major
criticism
of
all
narrative-based
social
science
research,
but
one
that
is
currently
being
redressed
by
practitioners
in
the
field.
Evidence
on
the
effects
of
trauma
has
done
much
to
problematize
the
coherence
norm
(Andrews
2010:
148).24
But
in
the
field
of
human
rights
advocacy,
without
sustained
challenge,
it
remains
implied
that
self-narration
naturally
coheres
to
human
rights
norms.
Despite
misgivings
about
the
uses
to
which
self-narration
as
testimony
has
been
steered
and
the
epistemological
assumptions
to
which
it
is
subject,
it
is
not
enough
simply
to
throw
out
narrative
practice
and
interpretation
with
this
dirty
bathwater.
As
Norman
Denzin
(1989:
62)
suggests,
we
are
not
tasked
with
identifying
narrative
coherence
to
be
either
an
illusion
or
a
reality,
but,
rather,
we
must
inquire
into
how
individuals
give
coherence
to
their
lives
[the]
sources
of
this
coherence,
[and]
the
narratives
that
lie
behind
them.
If
we
are
to
see
self-narration
as
a
sub-set
of
testimony
that
is,
as
a
truth-telling
action
that
carries
a
special
authority
we
must
temper
this
special
status
with
an
examination
of
the
political
and
epistemological
assumptions
that
accompany
narrative
as
a
species
of
evidence.
I
suggest
that
too
often
self-narration
as
testimony
is
conscripted
to
act
as
a
mouthpiece
to
a
liberal
discourse,
a
process
that
is
masked
by
appeal
to
testimony
evidence
as
an
inherent
political
good.
24
In
the
face
of
mental
disorders
exhibited
by
veterans
of
the
Vietnam
war,
PTSD
was
formally
recognized
by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1980 and added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Formally defined, PTSD relates to an extraordinary experience involving actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a physical threat to the physical integrity of the self. See American Psychiatric Association (2000: 4678). On occasion legal practitioners are now advised by experts on the effects of trauma. In January 2012, clinical psychologist Dr Jane Herlihy, who directs The Centre for the Study of Emotion and Law, travelled to Phnom Penh to advise Co-Lead Civil Party Lawyers among others of the implications of civil party participation, and particularly the risks of re- traumatization, in the light of failings during the first case.
20
Patel, Ian (2012) 'The Role of Testimony and Testimonial Analysis in Human Rights Advocacy and Research' in State Crime: Journal of the International State Crime Initiative, London, Pluto Press, 1.2, 2012.
25
As
Paul
Eakin
(2001:
113)
has
written,
autobiography,
despite
its
regulation
by
normative
models
of
personhood,
lends
itself
to
egalitarian
individualism:
As
we
might
say
in
the
States,
the
right
to
write
our
life
stories
is
a
natural
extension
of
the
right
to
life,
liberty,
and
the
pursuit
of
happiness.
26
See
also
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
(1968:
143).
21
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Human
rights
texts,
in
the
liberal
tradition,
are
those
in
which
the
speaking
human
voice
is
free
to
affirm
itself
as
a
mode
of
authority
in
itself.
Implicit
to
such
human
rights
discourse
is
a
knowledge- claim
about
what
the
speaking
voice
at
its
humanist
best
should
sound
like.
In
liberal
ideology,
the
human
rights
voice
as
experiential
uniqueness
and
as
agentic
self-representation
collude
to
form
a
single
rhetoric:
it
is
exactly
the
humble,
vulnerable,
hard-won,
confessional
human
voice
that
is
authorized
to
sound
the
victory
of
liberal
individualist
freedom.
As
Paul
Fairfield
(2000:
174)
has
written:
It
has
been
a
guiding
intuition
of
liberal
morality
that
the
self
possesses
a
capacity
for
autonomous
agency
and
self-creation.
This
autonomous
agency
is
more
precisely
defined
as
a
persons
ability,
protected
as
a
right,
to
reflect
on
the
norms
to
which
they
are
subject.
As
Habermass
well-known
statement
has
it,
the
modern
legal
order
can
draw
its
legitimacy
only
from
the
idea
of
self-determination:
citizens
should
always
be
able
to
understand
themselves
also
as
authors
of
the
law
to
which
they
are
subject
as
addressees
(Habermas
1996:
449).
The
difficulty,
in
the
context
of
our
discussion,
is
that
the
authors
of
first-person
victim
narratives
are
not
given
the
opportunity
to
reflect
on
the
dominance
of
Western
liberal
subjectivity,
yet
remain
open
to
conscription
to
the
liberal
cause
nevertheless.
In
the
liberal
tradition,
the
subjects
self-determination
can
be
seen
as
co-extensive
with
his
self- authoring:
Liberals
traditionally
have
defended
the
right
of
the
individual
to
become
its
own
author
(Fairfield
2000:
174).
Despite
limitations,
liberalism
justifies
itself
by
positing
individual
self-creation
as
a
worthy
ideal,
in
which
individuals
become
the
principal
author
of
their
own
lives
(ibid.).
This
self-narrating
faculty
is
not
simply
something
to
be
negatively
protected
by
a
liberal
dispensation,
but
is
the
site
of
an
individuals
moral
accountability:
Moral
agents
are
free,
and
are
even
under
an
obligation,
to
assume
responsibility
for
their
own
narrative
history
as
well
as
for
their
particular
actions
(ibid.:
168).
Liberal
conceptions
of
the
self
invest
a
strong
belief
in
the
autonomous
power
of
self-narration.
If
the
liberal
subject
is
conceived
according
to
an
idea
of
the
self
as
agent,
and
testimony
evidence
(as
I
am
suggesting)
is
made
to
fit
a
model
of
liberal
subjectivity,
at
what
point
is
agency
conferred
on
the
authors
of
testimony?
It
may
be
impossible
for
human
rights
experts
to
secure
the
subjects
of
testimony
the
material
agency
that
comes
from
living
under
democratic
and
non-repressive
conditions,
but
surely
it
is
possible
for
such
experts
to
further
their
hermeneutical
agency,
in
the
form
of
participation
in
the
meaning
of
their
narrative
history?
It
is
not
an
exaggeration
to
say
that
human
rights
advocacy
relies
on
testimony
evidence
as
one
of
its
central
tropes,
and
that
testimony
is
seen
to
correspond
to
certain
negative
freedoms.
The
content
of
what
we
might
say
under
duress
of
torture
or
coercive
interrogation
techniques
is
atrocious
precisely
because
of
the
value
we
accord
to
our
self-declarations
as
the
index
of
our
humanity
(and,
increasingly,
identity).
The
unrecognizable,
coerced
narrative
about
oneself
that
might
be
obtained
by
torture
is
a
kind
of
echo
that
lends
ones
self-narration
as
a
free
juridical
subject
a
more
sombre
timbre.
The
case
of
the
Pakistani-born
American
citizen
Aafia
Siddique,
whose
arrest
is
reported
to
have
been
premised
on
that
fact
that
her
second
husbands
uncle,
Khalid
Sheikh
Mohammed,
had
named
her
as
an
al-Qaeda
operative
during
his
interrogation
by
the
CIA,
has
an
immediate
complication
in
this
sense.
Her
name
was
revealed
by
Mohammed
under
(questionable)
22
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
interrogation
techniques
(likely
to
have
included
so-called
waterboarding)
designed
to
force
confession.27
This
case,
in
which
a
person
is
likely
to
have
been
made
to
speak
under
duress,
recalls
the
doctrine
of
the
fruit
of
the
poisonous
tree.
This
doctrine
stipulates
that
information
revealed
by
a
confession
obtained
by
police,
where
this
confession
is
later
ruled
to
have
been
improperly
obtained,
is
inadmissible
evidence.
If
the
tree
itself
is
poisonous,
then
anything
produced
by
that
tree
its
fruit
must
too
be
toxic
and
therefore
disregarded.28
Self-narration
in
the
context
of
human
rights,
then,
is
always
a
strange
kind
of
fruit.
In
liberal
discourse
it
is
upheld
as
the
emblem
of
a
subjects
self-determination.
But
this
emblematic
status
has
an
underside
as
forced
or
coerced
speech.29
In
the
context
of
the
evolution
of
human
rights,
Joseph
Slaughter
(1997:
407)
has
proposed
that
human
rights
in
general,
and
human
rights
law
in
particular,
can
be
understood
in
terms
of
narrative
genres
and
narrative
voices.
Drawing
on
the
work
of
Adeno
Addis,
Slaughter
traces
an
individualist
credo
in
international
human
rights
law
dependent
on
an
Enlightenment
(Descartes
and
Rousseau)
conception
of
the
universal
knowable
subject.30
This
juridical
subject
is
a
victoriously
autonomous
self,
the
hero
of
her
own
personal
narrative
of
human
dignity,
enlightenment,
and
liberation
(Slaughter
1997:
411).
This
self-declarative
narrative
presents
itself
as
discrete
from
the
normative
social
world
that
precedes
and
exceeds
it.
For
Slaughter,
the
subject
enshrined
in
human
rights
discourse
should
be
defined
in
terms
of
her
ability
to
speak
as
a
subject
rather
than
in
terms
of
an
inherent
humanness:
As
conceptions
of
the
speaking
subject
change,
whether
over
time
or
across
cultures,
so
too
must
conceptions
of
human
rights
that
guarantee
the
subjects
ability
to
narrate
herself
(ibid.:
412).
We
are
shocked
into
social
relationality
and
responsibility
by
our
ability
to
speak
(or
have
our
speech
silenced
or
coerced):
the
testimony
offered
by
victims
of
human
rights
abuses
tends
to
suggest
that,
even
if
the
subject
is
ultimately
unknowable,
the
individual,
through
self-narration,
experiences
herself
as
a
distinct
spatio-historical
being
(ibid.:
429).
If
human
rights
exist
on
a
continuum
of
narratability,
human
rights
violations
target
the
voice
and,
therefore,
the
voice
should
be
the
focus
of
international
human
rights
instruments
(ibid.:
407).
This
notion
concentrates
self-narration
as
the
focus
of
political
norms:
As
we
better
understand
what
a
subject
needs
to
be
able
to
tell
her
story,
we
can
evaluate
entitlements
and
prohibitions
for
their
effectiveness
in
guaranteeing
the
ability
to
self- narrate
(ibid.:
430).
For
Slaughter,
human
rights
norms
must
be
redefined
in
terms
of
the
liberty
to
tell
ones
story
(ibid.:
415).
27
At
the
time
of
Khalid
Sheikh
Mohammeds
interrogation
(200203),
however,
such
techniques
had
not
been
ruled
illegal
by
the
Attorney
General.
See
Mark
Tran
(2008).
28
This
legal
metaphor
represents
a
general
principle
in
United
States
law;
in
English
law,
on
the
contrary,
(coerced
or
forced
speech).
For
a
discussion
of
such
binary
coding
and
more
general
discussion
of
systems
theory,
which
helps
explains
the
processes
of
reduction
and
totalization
by
which
the
law
operates,
see
Emilios
Christodoulidiss
chapter
Luhmanns
Systems
Theory
(1998:
8991).
30
For
further
discussion,
see
Addis
(1992).
23
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
One
may
think
that
Slaughter
over-emphasizes
the
importance
of
self-narration
when
he
refers
to
it
as
the
measure
of
human
rights.
In
one
sense,
Slaughters
claim
chimes
nicely
with
the
rise
of
victim- centred
justice,
which
emphasizes
victim
participation
(testimony)
as
central
to
victims
procedural
justice.
By
promoting
self-narration
in
this
way,
Slaughter
in
fact
perpetuates
the
notion
of
self- narration
as
synonymous
with
testimony.
Yet
if
we
are
to
believe
Slaughter
when
he
says
that
self- narration
is
the
sign
of
the
liberal
subject
itself
and
therefore
inescapable
given
that
liberalism
is
the
dominant
global
political
order
one
may
in
fact
do
well
to
promote
effectiveness
in
guaranteeing
the
ability
to
self-narration,
howsoever
we
wish
to
define
the
terms
of
such
a
guarantee.
In
this
sense
it
is
no
surprise
that
post-1990
Nelson
Mandela
at
once
liberal
politico
and
local
voice
of
victimhood
would
become
a
figurehead
for
the
export
of
human
rights
and
transitional
justice
across
the
globe.
In
1995,
for
instance,
the
Washington
DC
Institute
of
Peace
produced
a
three- volume
work
entitled
Transitional
Justice:
How
Emerging
Democracies
Reckon
With
Former
Regimes,
with
a
foreward
by
Mandela.
In
his
foreward,
Mandela
speaks
a
justice
script
whose
legitimacy
is
confirmed
by
readers
knowledge
of
Mandela
as
a
local
testifier
to
apartheid
oppression:
In
nearly
all
instances,
the
displaced
regimes
were
characterised
by
massive
violations
of
human
rights
and
undemocratic
systems
of
governance.
In
their
attempt
to
combat
real
or
perceived
opposition,
they
exercised
authority
with
very
little
regard
to
accountability
(Mandela
1995:
xxi).
Mandelas
aim
in
this
statement
is
to
make
undemocratic
and
repressive
rule
conform
to
a
standardized
justice
script,
made
in
the
name
of
an
international
community
predicated
on
human
dignity
and
justice
(ibid.).
Figures
like
Mandela
and
Aung
San
Suu
Kyi
are
paraded
around
the
Western
world
because,
among
other
reasons,
they
appear
to
be
a
combination
of
local
experience
and
global
liberalism,
and
will
speak
to
that
effect.
We
have
been
discussing
the
imperative
to
self-narrate
in
the
liberal
tradition.
Slaughters
notion
that
self-narration
presents
distinct
spatio-historical
realities
confirms
it
as
an
important
evidentiary
resource
for
coming
to
terms
with
human
lives
and
the
political
realities
that
shape
them.
Yet,
as
we
have
seen,
we
must
question
the
extent
to
which
the
epistemology
of
testimony
follows
a
different
pattern,
by
which
the
meaning
and
supposed
utility
of
narrative
accounts
are
orchestrated
on
behalf
of
their
authors
by
expert
intermediaries.
In
the
case
of
human
rights
advocacy
and
research
which
utilizes
the
stories
of
others,
we
must
remain
alert
to
this
credo
of
self-narration
as
liberal
subjectivity,
yet
we
are
dealing
with
its
corollary
namely,
an
institutionalization
of
testimony
by
which
its
final
meaning
and
value
is
realized
by
a
second
party.
In
this
sense,
transitional
justice
which
among
other
things
heralds
a
nations
entre
into
the
international
order
of
liberal
states
seems
particularly
relevant
to
our
discussion.
The
transitional
justice
enterprise
involves
the
dissemination
of
individuals
stories.
As
Madlingozi
(2010:
211)
puts
it,
the
transitional
justice
entrepreneur
gets
to
be
the
speaker
or
representative
on
behalf
of
victims,
not
because
the
latter
invited
and
gave
her
a
mandate
but
because
the
24
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
entrepreneur
sought
the
victim
out,
categorized
her,
defined
her,
theorized
her,
packaged
her,
and
disseminated
her
on
the
world
stage.
Within
this
process,
the
story
is
the
central
device
in
sustaining
the
transitional
justice
industry
(ibid.:
225).
The
story
is
also,
of
course,
an
individualizing
trope,
converting
victims
from
their
place
within
wider
social
movements
into
the
unit
of
human
rights,
the
individual.
We
now
may
be
able
to
see
one
way
in
which
the
epistemology
of
testimony
supports
a
power
relation:
Alcoff
and
Gray
(1993:
278,
284),
for
instance,
in
their
treatment
of
survivor
discourse,
maintain
that
[b]efore
we
speak
we
need
to
look
at
where
the
incitement
to
speak
originates,
what
relations
of
power
and
domination
may
exist
between
those
who
incite
and
those
who
are
asked
to
speak,
as
well
as
those
to
whom
the
disclosure
is
directed.
Where
I
do
fall
in
with
the
political
critique
of
testimony
evidence,
then,
is
on
this
question
of
agency.
The
dissemination
of
the
narratives
of
victims
and
survivors
is
indeed
a
political
good,
but
this
needs
to
be
counterpoised
with
the
harms
of
victim
dependency
on
expert
interpretation.
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
I
have
suggested
above
that
epistemology
is
often
the
means
by
which
political
allegiances
are
neutralized.
I
now
want
to
discuss
in
more
detail
this
merging
of
narrative,
epistemology,
testimony,
and
politics.
I
will
suggest
that
human
rights
advocacy
recognizes
self-narration
as
an
expressly
political
account,
and
in
doing
so
regulates
such
narrative
evidence
according
to
its
own
norms.
To
speak
of
testimony
as
political
accounts
is
also
to
confront
the
manner
in
which
human
rights
culture
and
institutions
stage,
instigate,
and
provide
space
for
(and,
more
often,
regulate,
orchestrate,
and
define)
the
reception
of
testimony
that
bears
on
experience
of
social
suffering
or
political
oppression.
As
Veena
Das
and
Arthur
Kleinman
(2001:
21)
have
suggested
in
a
discussion
about
such
testimony,
at
the
macro
level
of
the
political
system,
there
is
the
need
for
the
creation
of
a
public
space
that
gives
recognition
to
individuals
accounts.
The
notion
that
the
international
community
has
a
responsibility
to
allow
houseroom
for
the
political
accounts
of
others
to
be
recognized
is
well-known.
The
epistemology
of
human
rights
advocacy
adapts
this
theme
to
imply
that
testimony,
as
political
discourse,
has
a
responsibility
to
cohere
with
current
schemes
of
political
recognition.
If
social
recognition
refers
to
established
norms
of
social
and
moral
personhood,
political
recognition,
in
the
above
sense,
refers
not
simply
to
these
same
norms,
but
to
the
paradigms
of
the
human
personality
protected
in
the
discourse
of
human
rights
that
exists
in
international
law.
Recognition,
in
the
texts
of
international
law,
belongs
to
the
unified,
monadic,
self-possessed
individual
of
libertarian
philosophy
(Slaughter
2007:
19).
The
idea
that
self-narration
concerning
social
suffering
or
oppression
must
frame
itself
in
established
political
languages
is
underwritten
by
an
assumption
that
the
author
of
such
a
narrative
is
speaking
as
a
political
subject.
As
a
political
subject,
one
speaks
a
language
of
sameness,
a
discourse
of
common
modalities
of
the
human
beings
extension
into
the
civil
and
social
order
(ibid.:
17).
It
is
as
though
the
self-narrating
subject
must
perform
the
equal
humanity
and
fundamental
dignity
of
the
human
personality
found
in
both
the
self
and
others,
so
that
this
abstraction,
protected
in
law,
can
be
recognized,
ratified,
achieved.
Slaughter
has
written
of
this
performativity
that
such
acquisition
of
human
rights
fluency
climaxes
in
a
recognition
scene
in
which
the
individual
formally
recognizes
itself
as
a
subject
of
human
rights
as
one
subject
among
others
(ibid.:
253).
The
self-narrating
subject,
in
this
view,
recognizes
her
own
place
within
a
process
of
political
recognition
only
after
she
herself
has
performatively
taken
authorship
of
it.
Given
that
testimony
is
an
established
road
to
political
recognition
and
hence
forms
of
enfranchisement,
to
risk
unintelligibility
and
misrecognition
might
be
seen
as
inadequate
to
the
task
of
political
action.
Incomplete
recognition
may
diminish
the
intelligibility
and
therefore
the
effectiveness
of
ones
account.
To
qualify
as
political
discourse,
and
thus
utilizable
evidence,
testimony
is
made
to
traffic
in
normative
or
recognizable
discourse.
Since
narrative-based
evidence
is
made
to
function
as
a
kind
of
testimony
within
public
processes
of
political
recognition,
it
is
urged
towards
making
its
narrative
subjects,
especially
the
self
at
the
centre
of
narration,
fully
recognizable.
Until
this
process
of
recognition
becomes
dialogical
as
opposed
to
unilateral,
victims
of
state
crime
will
continue
to
be
incorporated
into
a
dominant
paradigm
of
human
rights
in
the
act
of
recognition.
26
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
This
discussion
of
the
political
function
that
self-narration
asks
or
is
asked
to
perform
might
lead
us
to
think
that,
in
effect,
there
are
two
ways
of
giving
an
account
of
oneself.
The
first
we
give
as
the
image
of
human
rights
law,
a
political
subject
mobilized
as
an
accountable
being
legally
and
institutionally.
This
first-order
account
is
dependent
on
those
norms
which
form
and
inform
our
status
as
a
subject
and
provide
the
political
frames
available
to
us.31
Thus,
in
accounting
for
ourselves
politically,
we
might
call
upon
our
status
as
a
national
citizen
protected
by
standards
of
human
rights,
a
nationality
that
is
secured
in
turn
by
a
sovereignty
that
is
recognized
under
international
law.
If
we
position
ourselves
as
rightful
claimants
to
such
political
rights
following
our
citizenship,
we
are
by
the
same
token
accountable
to
the
established
legal
and
moral
order
that
underpins
such
rights.
Equally,
in
narrating
oneself
as
a
political
subject,
there
is
a
further
normative
expectation
that
one
speaks
into
embodiment
the
abstract,
legal
conception
of
the
individual.
Ones
self-recognition
as
a
political
subject
is
simultaneously
made
to
uphold
the
right
[of
everyone]
to
recognition
everywhere
as
a
person
before
the
law
(Article
6,
UDHR).
To
become
a
claimant
to
certain
rights,
as
Seyla
Benhabib
(2001:
16)
has
written,
presupposes
a
prior
claim
of
membership.
In
having
a
relationship
to
such
rights,
she
maintains,
one
is
already
a
member
of
an
organized
political
and
legal
community,
and
such
entitlements
create
reciprocal
obligations
among
consociates,
that
is,
among
those
who
are
already
recognized
as
members
of
a
legal
community.
Moreover,
to
speak
about
oneself
in
the
language
of
rights
is
to
come
into
full
possession
of
those
rights
to
become
integrated
to
those
practices
and
rules,
constitutional
traditions
and
institutional
habits,
which
bring
individuals
together
to
form
a
functioning
political
community
(Benhabib
2001:
55).
The
second
account
we
give
according
to
our
own
personal
conception
of
ourselves.
This
second- order
narrative
is
accountable
to
ones
sense
of
oneself
as
a
social
being
perhaps
but,
unlike
the
first
account,
it
serves
no
instrumental
or
pragmatic
function.
That
is,
second-order
accounts
do
not
operate
under
a
regulatory
demand
but
are
better
positioned
to
risk
unintelligibility,
unofficial
status,
and
self-criticism.
An
account
pragmatically
aimed
towards
securing
established
political
rights
or
recognition,
or
an
account
that
must
satisfy
a
real-world
demand
made
of
it,
often
cannot
risk
second-order
ambiguity,
self-questioning,
or
paradox
(paradox
here
used
in
the
strict
sense
of
statements
made
against
or
beyond
received
paradigms).
Second-order
accounts
stand
in
tension
with,
and
can
be
made
to
function
as
a
critique
of,
first-order
accounts.
It
should
be
clear
that
human
rights
advocacy
because
of
its
commitment
to
effectiveness
is
primed
to
turn
second- order
accounts
into
first-order
ones.
Many
human
rights
researchers,
for
instance,
worry
that
respondents
are
telling
them
what
the
international
community
wants
to
hear.
And
can
we
blame
them
for
doing
so?
31
This
notion
of
first-order
and
second-order
self-narration
is
indebted
to
Nancy
Fraser
(2010),
who
27
Patel, Ian (2012) 'The Role of Testimony and Testimonial Analysis in Human Rights Advocacy and Research' in State Crime: Journal of the International State Crime Initiative, London, Pluto Press, 1.2, 2012.
Closing
Remarks
In
the
field
of
human
rights
research,
there
remains
the
urgent
criminological
need
to
conduct
empirical
investigation
into
the
experiences
of
those
who
have
suffered
under
forms
of
political
oppression.
Narrative-based
evidence
ought
to
remain
central
to
human
rights
research
in
the
light
of
this
need.
Yet
researchers
and
advocates
must
more
firmly
address
the
trend
by
which
the
narrative
accounts
of
witnesses
are
adapted
to
the
explicitness
and
tendentiousness
of
purposive
testimony.
Where
human
rights
research
is
concerned,
special
attention
must
be
paid
to
epistemology.
This
discussion
has
revealed
the
urgent
need
for
an
epistemology
that
is
not
only
faithful
to
the
social
world
presented
in
the
narratives
of
victims,
but
one
that
is
framed
to
advance
victims
consciousness
about
and
participation
in
the
political
meaning
of
their
narratives.
In
order
to
prevent
victims
of
state
crime
becoming
the
mouthpieces
of
a
self-proclaiming
liberal
discourse,
human
rights
advocates
might
put
greater
effort
into
furthering
the
hermeneutical
participation
of
victims.
It
may
be
that
such
a
dialogical
project,
in
which
experts
and
respondents
together
construct
the
meaning
and
frames
of
reference
of
a
testimonial
account,
is
inappropriate
to
the
professional
practice
of
human
rights
advocacy.
In
this
case,
testimony
evidence
should
nevertheless
cease
to
be
used
as
a
device
against
censure
as
a
methodological
trope
designed
to
protect
the
credibility
and
progressiveness
of
an
advocacy
cause.
References
Addis,
A.
(1992)
Individualism,
Communitarianism,
and
the
Rights
of
Ethnic
Minorities,
Notre
Dame
Law
Review
67:
123361.
Alcoff,
L.
and
Gray,
L.
(1993)
Survivor
Discourse:
Transgression
or
Recuperation?
Signs
18(2):
260 90.
American
Psychiatric
Association
(2000)
Diagnostic
and
Statistical
Manual,
4th
rev
edn.
Washington,
DC:
APA.
Anderson,
A.
(2006)
The
Way
We
Argue
Now:
A
Study
in
the
Cultures
of
Theory.
Princeton,
NJ:
Princeton
University
Press.
Andrews,
M.
(2010)
Beyond
Narrative:
The
Shape
of
Traumatic
Testimony,
in
M.
Hyvrinen,
L.
Hydn,
M.
Saarenheimo
and
M.
Tamboukou,
eds,
Beyond
Narrative
Coherence
(Studies
in
Narrative).
Amsterdam:
John
Benjamins.
28
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Andrews,
M.,
Squire,
C.
and
Tamboukou,
M.
(2008)
Introduction:
What
is
Narrative
Research?
in
M.
Andrews,
C.
Squire
and
M.
Tamboukou,
eds,
Doing
Narrative
Research.
London:
Sage,
pp.
122.
Bell,
L.A.
(2010)
Storytelling
for
Social
Justice:
Connecting
Narrative
and
the
Arts
in
Antiracist
Teaching.
Oxford:
Routledge.
Benhabib,
S.
(2001)
Transformations
of
Citizenship:
Dilemmas
of
the
Nation
State
in
the
Era
of
Globalization:
Two
Lectures.
Assan:
Koninklijke
Van
Gorcum.
Bennett,
J.
(1981)
Oral
History
and
Delinquency:
The
Rhetoric
of
Criminology.
Chicago,
IL:
University
of
Chicago
Press.
Beverley,
J.
(1992)
The
Margin
at
the
Centre:
On
Testimonio
(Testimonial
Narrative),
in
S.
Smith
and
J.
Watson,
eds,
De/Colonizing
the
Subject:
The
Politics
of
Gender
in
Womans
Autobiography.
Minneapolis,
MN:
University
of
Minnesota
Press,
pp.
91114.
Braithwaite,
J.
(2007)
Building
Legitimacy
Through
Restorative
Justice,
in
T.R.
Tyler,
ed.,
Legitimacy
and
Criminal
Justice:
International
Perspectives.
New
York:
Russell
Sage
Foundation,
pp.
14663.
Bruner,
J.
(2002)
Making
Stories:
Law,
Literature,
Life.
New
York:
Farrar,
Straus
and
Giroux.
Chamberlayne,
P.,
Bornat,
J.
and
Wengraf,
T.
(2000)
The
Turn
to
Biographical
Methods
in
the
Social
Sciences.
London:
Routledge.
Christodoulidis,
E.
(1998)
Law
and
Reflexive
Politics.
Dordrecht:
Kluwer.
Clandinin,
D.J.
and
Connelly,
F.M.
(2000)
Narrative
Inquiry:
Experience
and
Story
in
Qualitative
Research.
San
Francisco,
CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Clark,
P.
(2010)
The
Gacaca
Courts
and
Post-Genocide
Justice
and
Reconciliation
in
Rwanda:
Justice
without
Lawyers.
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
Cmiel,
K.
(1999)
The
Emergence
of
Human
Rights
Politics
in
the
United
States,
The
Journal
of
American
History
86(3):
123150.
Coady,
C.A.J.
(1992)
Testimony:
A
Philosophical
Study.
Oxford:
Clarendon
Press.
Colebrook,
C.
(2005)
Philosophy
and
Post-Structuralist
Theory:
From
Kant
to
Deleuze.
Edinburgh:
Edinburgh
University
Press.
Combs,
N.A.
(2010)
Fact-Finding
Without
Facts:
The
Uncertain
Evidentiary
Foundations
of
International
Criminal
Convictions.
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
Das,
V.
and
Kleinman,
A.
(2001)
Remaking
a
World:
Violence,
Social
Suffering,
and
Recovery.
Berkeley,
CA:
University
of
California
Press.
29
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Denzin,
N.
(1989)
Interpretative
Biography.
Newbury
Park,
CA:
Sage.
Diamond,
A.
(201011)
Victims
Once
Again?
Civil
Party
Participation
before
the
Extraordinary
Chambers
in
the
Courts
of
Cambodia,
The
Internet
Journal
of
Rutgers
School
of
Law
38.
Duff,
A.,
Farmer,
L.,
Marshall,
S.
and
Tadros,
V.
(2007)
The
Trial
on
Trial
Volume
3:
Towards
A
Normative
Theory
of
the
Criminal
Trial.
Oxford
and
Portland,
OR:
Hart.
Eakin,
P.
(2001)
Breaking
Rules:
The
Consequences
of
Self-Narration,
Biography
24(1):
11327.
Elliot,
J.
(2005)
Using
Narrative
in
Social
Research:
Qualitative
and
Quantitative
Approaches.
London:
Sage.
Fairfield,
P.
(2000)
Moral
Selfhood
in
the
Liberal
Tradition:
The
Politics
of
Individuality.
Toronto:
University
of
Toronto
Press.
Felman,
S.
(1991)
In
an
Era
of
Testimony:
Claude
Lanzmanns
Shoah,
Yale
French
Studies
79:
3981.
Felman,
S.
and
Laub,
D.
(1992)
Testimony:
Crises
of
Witnessing
in
Literature,
Psychoanalysis
and
History.
New
York
and
London:
Routledge.
Fraser,
N.
(2010)
Scales
of
Justice:
Reimagining
Political
Space
in
a
Globalizing
World.
New
York:
Columbia
University
Press.
Fricker,
E.
(1994)
Against
Gullibility,
in
B.K.
Matilal
and
A.
Chakrabarty,
eds,
Knowing
From
Words:
Western
and
Indian
Philosophical
Analysis
of
Understanding
and
Testimony.
Dordrecht:
Kluwer.
Fricker,
M.
(2007)
Epistemic
Injustice:
Power
and
the
Ethics
of
Knowing.
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press.
Graham,
P.J.
(1997)
What
is
Testimony?
Philosophical
Quarterly
47(187):
22732.
Green,
P.
(1990)
The
Enemy
Without:
Policing
and
Class
Consciousness
in
the
Miners
Strike.
Maidenhead:
Open
University
Press.
Grice,
P.
(1989)
Studies
in
the
Way
of
Words.
Cambridge,
MA:
Harvard
University
Press.
Haas,
P.
(1992)
Introduction:
Epistemic
Communities
and
International
Policy
Coordination,
in
Knowledge,
Power
and
International
Policy
Coordination,
special
issue,
International
Organization
46:
136.
Habermas,
J.
(1996)
Between
Facts
and
Norms:
Contributions
to
a
Discourse
Theory
of
Law
and
Democracy.
W.
Rehg
(trans.)
Cambridge:
Polity
Press.
Hillyard,
P.
(1993)
Suspect
Communities:
Peoples
Experience
of
the
Prevention
of
Terrorism
Acts
in
Britain.
London:
Pluto.
30
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Human
Rights
Watch
Report
(2012)
I
Had
to
Run
Away:
The
Imprisonment
of
Women
and
Girls
for
Moral
Crimes
in
Afghanistan.
Available
online
at
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/afghanistan0312webwcover_0.pdf
(assessed
2
July
2012).
Hume,
D.
(1777)
Enquiries
Concerning
Human
Understanding
and
Concerning
the
Language
of
Morals.
L.A.
Selby-Bigge
(ed.).
2nd
edn
(1972).
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press.
Hyvrinen,
M.,
Hydn,
L.,
Saarenheimo,
M.
and
Tamboukou,
M.
(2010)
Beyond
Narrative
Coherence,
in
M.
Hyvrinen,
L.
Hydn,
M.
Saarenheimo
and
M.
Tamboukou,
eds,
Beyond
Narrative
Coherence
(Studies
in
Narrative).
Amsterdam:
John
Benjamins,
pp.
117.
Lackey,
J.
(1999)
Testimonial
Knowledge
and
Transmission,
Philosophical
Quarterly
49(197):
471 90.
[Is
this
ok?]
(2008)
Learning
From
Words:
Testimony
as
a
Source
of
Knowledge.
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press.
Lackey,
J.
and
Sosa,
E.
(eds)
(2006)
The
Epistemology
of
Testimony.
Oxford:
Clarendon.
Luckhurst,
R.
(2008)
The
Trauma
Question.
London:
Routledge.
Madlingozi,
T.
(2010)
On
Transitional
Justice
Entrepreneurs
and
the
Production
of
Victims,
The
Journal
of
Human
Rights
Practice
2(2):
20828.
Mandela,
N.
(1995)
Foreword
to
N.
Kritz,
ed.,
Transitional
Justice:
How
Emerging
Democracies
Reckon
With
Former
Regimes,
2.
Washington,
DC:
Institute
of
Peace.
Mander,
H.
(2010)
Words
from
the
Heart:
Researching
Peoples
Stories,
Journal
of
Human
Rights
Practice
2(2):
25270.
McEvoy,
K.
and
McGregor,
L.
(eds)
(2008)
Transitional
Justice
from
Below:
Grassroots
Activism
and
the
Struggle
for
Change.
Oxford:
Hart.
Mendeloff,
D.
(2004)
Truth-Seeking,
Truth-Telling,
and
Postconflict
Peacebuilding:
Curb
the
Enthusiasm?
International
Studies
Review
6:
33580.
Metzl,
J.F.
(1996)
Information
Technology
and
Human
Rights,
Human
Rights
Quarterly
18(4):
705 46.
Miville,
C.
(2006)
Between
Equal
Rights:
A
Marxist
Theory
of
International
Law.
Chicago,
IL:
Haymarket.
Mirfield,
P.
(1997)
Silence,
Confessions,
and
Improperly
Obtained
Evidence.
Oxford:
Clarendon.
Neimeyer,
R.
and
Tschudi,
F.
(2003)
Community
and
Coherence:
Narrative
Contributions
to
the
Psychology
of
Loss
and
Conflict,
in
G.
Fireman,
T.
McVay
and
O.
Flanagan,
eds,
Narrative
31
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
and
Consciousness:
Literature,
Psychology
and
the
Brain.
New
York
and
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press,
pp.
16691.
Osler,
A.
and
Zhu,
J.
(2011)
Narratives
in
Teaching
and
Research
for
Justice
and
Human
Rights,
Education,
Citizenship
and
Social
Justice
6.
Pham,
P.
and
Vinck,
P.
(2007)
Empirical
Research
and
the
Development
and
Assessment
of
Transitional
Justice
Mechanisms,
The
International
Journal
of
Transitional
Justice
1:
23148.
Pham,
P.,
Vinck,
P.,
Balthazard,
M.,
Hean,
S.
and
Stover,
E.
(2009)
So
We
Will
Never
Forget:
A
Population-Based
Survey
on
Attitudes
about
Social
Reconstruction
and
the
Extraordinary
Chambers
of
the
Court
of
Cambodia.
Berkeley,
CA:
Human
Rights
Center.
Pittaway,
E.,
Bartolomei,
L.
and
Hugman,
R.
(2010)
Stop
Stealing
Our
Stories:
The
Ethics
of
Research
with
Vulnerable
Groups,
Journal
of
Human
Rights
Practice
2(2):
22951.
Pranis,
K.
(2001)
Restorative
Justice,
Social
Justice,
and
the
Empowerment
of
Marginalized
Populations,
in
G.
Bazemore
and
M.
Schiff,
eds,
Restorative
Community
Justice:
Repairing
Harm
and
Transforming
Communities.
Cincinnati,
OH:
Anderson,
pp.
287306.
Presser,
L.
(2009)
Narratives
of
Offenders,
Theoretical
Criminology
13(177).
Prichard,
D.
(2004)
Testimony,
in
A.
Duff,
L.
Farmer,
S.
Marshall
and
V.
Tadros,
eds,
The
Trial
on
Trial
Volume
1:
Truth
and
Due
Process.
Oxford
and
Portland,
OR:
Hart.
Punch,
K.F.
(2005)
Introduction
to
Social
Research:
Quantitative
and
Qualitative
Approaches.
London:
Sage.
Reed,
K.
and
Padskocimaite,
A.
(2012)
The
Right
Toolkit:
Applying
Research
Methods
in
the
Service
of
Human
Rights.
Berkeley,
CA:
Human
Rights
Center,
University
of
California.
Rimmon-Kenan,
S.
(2002)
The
Story
of
I:
Illness
and
Narrative
Identity,
Narrative
10(1).
Rorty,
R.
(1993)
Human
Rights,
Rationality,
and
Sentimentality,
in
S.
Shute
and
S.
Hurley,
eds,
On
Human
Rights:
The
Oxford
Amnesty
Lectures
1993.
New
York:
Basic
Books,
pp.
11134.
Rothberg,
M.
(2000)
Traumatic
Realism:
The
Demands
of
Holocaust
Representation.
Minneapolis,
MN:
University
of
Minnesota
Press.
Rousseau,
J.J.
(1968)
The
Social
Contract.
M.
Cranson
(trans.).
London:
Penguin.
Sanders,
A.
(1987)
Constructing
the
Case
for
the
Prosecution,
Journal
of
Law
and
Society
14(2).
Schaffer,
K.
and
Smith,
S.
(2004)
Conjunctions:
Life
Narratives
in
the
Field
of
Human
Rights,
Biography
27(1):
124.
Schechtman,
M.
(1996)
The
Constitution
of
Selves.
Ithaca,
NY:
Cornell
University
Press.
32
Patel,
Ian
(2012)
'The
Role
of
Testimony
and
Testimonial
Analysis
in
Human
Rights
Advocacy
and
Research'
in
State
Crime:
Journal
of
the
International
State
Crime
Initiative,
London,
Pluto
Press,
1.2,
2012.
Schramm,
J.
(2000)
Testimony
and
Advocacy
in
Victorian
Law,
Literature,
and
Theology.
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
Sikkink,
K.
(2011)
The
Justice
Cascade.
New
York
and
London:
Norton.
Slaughter,
J.
(1997)
A
Question
of
Narration:
The
Voice
in
International
Human
Rights
Law,
Human
Rights
Quarterly
19(2):
40630.
(2007)
Human
Rights,
Inc.:
The
World
Novel,
Narrative
Form,
and
International
Law.
New
York:
Fordham
University
Press.
Smith,
S.
and
Schaffer,
K.
(2004)
Human
Rights
and
Narrated
Lives:
The
Ethics
of
Recognition.
New
York:
Palgrave
Macmillan.
Sosa,
E.
(1994)
Testimony
and
Coherence,
in
B.K.
Matilal
and
A.
Chakrabarty,
eds,
Knowing
From
Words:
Western
and
Indian
Philosophical
Analysis
of
Understanding
and
Testimony.
Dordrecht:
Kluwer,
pp.
5969.
Stevenson,
L.
(1993)
Why
Believe
What
People
Say?
Synthese
94(3):
42951.
Stover,
E.,
Balthazard,
M.
and
Koenig,
K.A.
(2011)
Confronting
Duch:
Civil
Party
Participation
in
Case
001
at
the
Extraordinary
Chambers
in
the
Courts
of
Cambodia,
International
Review
of
the
Red
Cross
93(882).
Subotic,
J.
(2012)
The
Transformation
of
International
Transitional
Justice
Advocacy,
The
International
Journal
of
Transitional
Justice
6(1):
10625.
Taylor,
C.
(1989)
Sources
of
the
Self:
The
Making
of
the
Modern
Identity.
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
Tran,
M.
(2008)
CIA
admit
waterboarding
al-Qaida
suspects,
The
Guardian,
5
February.
Available
online
at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/05/india.terrorism
(assessed
1
August
2011).
Turner,
C.
(1996)
Holocaust
Memories
and
History,
Journal
of
the
History
of
the
Human
Sciences
9(4):
4563.
Weisberg,
R.
(1991)
Editors
Preface,
Cardozo
Studies
in
Law
and
Literature
3(2):
iiii.
Wright,
J.L.
(2006)
The
Philosophers
I:
Autobiography
and
the
Search
for
the
Self.
Albany,
NY:
State
University
of
New
York
Press.
Young,
I.M.
(2000)
Inclusion
and
Democracy.
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press.
33