the definitive model for memory construction” (Wieviorka 2006: xiv). Such construction is not limited to the ways discussed by Wieviorka. In her chapter titled Dancing Memory, Dana Mills looks at the Holocaust as one of the biggest catalysers of the foundation of the state of Israel, as well as one of the most formative elements in the creation of Israeli identity (chapter 3, this volume). As such, it has been hugely influential in Israeli artistic language and specifically in Israeli dance. She focuses on readings of two dance works: Ami Yam, Ami Ya’ar, a dance work performed by the Batsheva Dance Company in the 1960s (choreography: John Cranko) and Memento Mori, performed by the Kibbutz Dance Company in the 1990s (choreography: Rami Be’er). These are two works in which the Holocaust plays a central role. Mills analyses the ways in which these dance works record shifting discourses of citizenship in Israeli society, from a republican discourse to a liberal one. Rather than paying exclusive attention to the complexities of the choreographies of these dance works, equal attention should be devoted to the complexities of identity the dance works engage with. Dance, as a method of witnessing, testifies to these complexities. Furthermore, dance, as Mills argues, “cannot only witness shifts in discourses of citizenship but [also] the price hegemonic discourses bear on the moving body. The moving body remembers the price it has to pay for joining in with collective enterprises”.[36] While Wieviorka does not explicitly address the question of art as political witness, she acknowledges that political testimony can be transformed “into a work of art” (Wieviorka 2006: 83).3 Such transformation may not be the main purpose of testimony (see our discussion of Avishai Margalit’s work below) but it is nevertheless important.
There can be observed a certain recent expansion of the concept of being a witness, illustrated by such qualifiers as expert, moral, silent, transparent, convincing, secondary, post-factum or invisible, to name but a few, all of which indicate the need for differentiation with regard to the concept of being a witness. The expert witness, for example, relies – and makes others rely – on the epistemological advantage resulting from specialist and exclusive knowledge based on his or her professional education. The criminal justice system and politico-historical contexts requiring specialist knowledge often rely on such a witness.4 This approach is closely related to the transparent witness, a professional or nonprofessional documentarian who, in addition to demonstrating his or her own point of view, acknowledges the complexity of the events depicted and appears to be “fair” vis-à-vis the subjects and conditions depicted (Zuckerman 2014: 40– 41). Here, transparency refers to verifiability and fairness.
Morality and Observation
Avishai Margalit identifies the moral witness in terms of “knowledge-by-acquaintance of suffering” (Margalit 2004: 149). In order to qualify as moral witness, “[h]e or she should witness – indeed, they should experience – suffering inflicted by an unmitigated evil regime” (ibid.: 148).5 “Being a moral witness involves witnessing actual suffering, not just intended suffering” (ibid.: 149). It also involves experience of suffering, not just observing (the) suffering (of others). Recall that Levi (1989: 84), too, distinguishes “things seen at close hand” from things “experienced personally”, the one attributed to the survivor, the other to the “true” witness.
[37]Margalit (2004: 149–150) stresses that an observer can also be a moral witness (although she or he cannot be a “paradigmatic case of a moral witness”. An observer can be a moral witness on condition that, just like the sufferer, she or he is “at personal risk” (ibid.: 150) – risk both in the form of “belonging to the category of people toward whom the evil deeds are directed” (ibid.) and risk in the form of “trying to document and record what happens for some future use” (ibid.). The use of the present tense in these conditions for risk – deeds are, not were, directed towards a certain group of people, and witnesses record what happens, not what happened – implies contemporaneity. Aftermath artists (see below) cannot be moral witnesses of the original event, only of the aftermath as “the authority of a moral witness comes from being an eye-witness” (ibid.: 173).
Artists who make record of their own suffering, inflicted on them by others, are paradigmatic moral witnesses. Artists can also be classified as moral witnesses if they belong to the category of people who were targeted even if they, the artists, were not themselves targeted. If they do not belong to the same category of people, then artists documenting or recording the suffering of others can be, but do not necessarily have to be, moral witnesses: in order to qualify as moral witness, their “testimonial mission has [to have] a moral purpose” (ibid: 151) and they have to take risks. “To be a moral witness … is all about taking risks” (ibid.: 157).
If an artist does take risks as an eye-witness, then she or he would seem to qualify as moral witness even though the production of art “for some future use” (ibid.: 150) appears to contradict Margalit’s insistence on testimony’s “intrinsic value”, its non-instrumentality: in Margalit’s understanding, testimony is not a means to an end. Indeed, the testimony of the paradigmatic moral witness is given “intrinsic value …, no matter what the instrumental consequences of it are going to be” (ibid.: 167). Thus, an artist documenting, with a moral purpose and for future use, the suffering of others at the same time that this very suffering occurs can, if – and only if – she or he takes risks, be a moral witness; however, due to both the lack of personal experience of suffering and the documentation’s instrumentality, he or she cannot be a paradigmatic one.
Furthermore, Margalit differentiates the moral witness from the political witness who “believes that the incriminating evidence that she gathers is an instrument in the war effort” (ibid.). In light of the title of the present book, a longer quotation seems to be necessary here:
The political witness, by temperament and training, can be a much better witness than the mere moral witness for the structure of evil and not only for episodes of evil. And thus he can be a more valuable witness in uncovering the factual truth. The political witness can be very noble in fighting evil against all odds. And yet as an ideal type, although his features partly overlap with those of the moral witness, the political witness is still distinct, not to be confused with the moral witness. Both are engaged in[38] uncovering what evil tries to cover up. The political witness may be more effective in uncovering the factual truth, in telling it like it was. But the moral witness is more valuable at telling it like it felt, that is, telling what it was like to be subjected to such evil. The first-person accounts of moral witnesses are essential to what they report, whereas political witnesses can testify from a third-person perspective without much loss (ibid.: 168).
The distinction between “telling it like it was” and “telling it like it felt” (ibid.; italics added) is an important one. It is equally important that there is overlap between the moral and the political witness; these two subject positions are not mutually exclusive. Margalit’s understanding of “political witness”, however, is a very specific one – one that the contributors to this volume do not necessarily share. While it has been said that art is political on condition that it “extends the thread of recognition and understanding beyond what previously was seen and known” (Elderfield 2006: 44), any work of art is susceptible to politically informed analysis. Such analysis will reveal, for example, that art is eminently political even if it confirms “what previously was seen and known” (ibid.). Indeed, art, while bearing witness to politics, lacks criticality if it mainly reconstructs or anticipates the motives of the political elite (Krippendorff 2000: 91). Such art is political but hardly critical (Möller 2016). Art, thus, is always a contribution to political discourse, shaping “what can be seen, what can be said and what can be thought” (Rancière 2009: 103). In other words, art contributes to our understanding of what is possible, envisioning what Jacques Rancière calls “a new landscape of the possible” (ibid.) or rendering the emergence of such a new landscape difficult.
Bearing witness to politics through political analysis of art reveals as much about art as it does about the political constellations within which art operates. Neither art nor bearing witness to politics through art is necessarily or automatically critical or politically progressive. Political analysis can reveal whether it is or not. Such analysis, however, “should not … aim