Ustanawianie świadka
Establishing the Witness

Summary/Abstract: Dauksza presents testimony as a dynamic relationship between individuals in the act of witnessing. Several figures with different functions are involved in a violent event, and these functions change both during the event and then also during the reporting. Witnessing is a dynamically transforming network of forces, energies, affections, various motivations and various degrees of (im)mobility and action. There is no such thing as an impartial witness, for physical presence requires positioning. Dauksza explores the mechanisms by which a witness to a violent event is established, questioned and physically confronted with a participant who actively co-creates the context of the testimony. She criticizes the ethical model of testimony, prevalent since the 1980s, and its limitation to the Holocaust, pointing to the strategies of misusing testimonies such as censorship, ideologization, idealization, editing errors. Thinking about the mechanisms of witnessing in terms of politics, performance, the body and affect, Dauksza postulates gesture studies as a way of considering gestures of witnessing.

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