The Ethics of Witnessing

In her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi SS officer who coordinated the mass deportation of Jews during the Holocaust, German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt observed that it was ‘sheer thoughtlessness’ that predisposed Eichmann to commit crimes against humanity. His blind obedience, presumed neutrality and failure to think critically did not make him any less culpable. Rather, for Arendt, such ‘thoughtlessness’ may be even more destructive than outright evil, as it erodes the capacity for judgment and undermines the ability to bear witness to what is in grave jeopardy: the shared world constituted through human plurality.

This lecture will explore how engagement with survivor testimonies of catastrophic displacement that reference textiles, dress and fashion can revitalise the affective capacities required for ethical witnessing, with a comparative focus on the Armenian Genocide and the Palestinian Nakba, including what several human rights and academic organisations have recognised as genocide in Gaza.

Rather than treating Arendt’s account of thinking and judgment as a prerequisite for witnessing, we will ask whether witnessing might instead be understood as an affective capacity that is embodied and socially mediated. We will consider how this capacity may be renewed through sustained attention to the affective intensities of narratives of dress and fashion, and how such narratives can be read thoughtfully in ways that resist administrative detachment and the normalisation of non-witnessing, whilst remaining alert to the risk of aestheticising suffering or substituting care for justice.