Witnessing and Testimony as Event

Witnessing and Testimony

Contemporary debates in social theory around issues of multiculturalism have focused on the demand or struggle for recognition by marginalized or oppressed people, groups, and cultures. The work of Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, in particular, have crystallized issues of multiculturalism and justice around the notion of recognition. In Witnessing: Beyond Recognition, I challenge what has beco...

Witnessing, wonder, and hope.

This article is based on a keynote address I gave in South Africa at the Eighth International Conference of The South African Association of Marital and Family Therapy. The phenomenon of witnessing is explored in a number of contexts, and a distinction is made between witnessing with and without awareness, and from an empowered or a disempowered position. I propose that the African philosophy o...

Perception and Testimony as Data Providers Faculty of Philosophy And

The article addresses two questions. First, if knowledge is accounted information, how are we supposed (to apply this analysis in order) to understand perceptual knowledge and knowledge by testimony? In the first part of the article, I articulate an answer in terms of a reinterpretation of perception and testimony as data providers rather than full-blown cases of knowledge. Second, if perceptio...

Science as oath and testimony: Joshua Lederberg (1925-2008).

Josh Lederberg was already worried a generation ago: “One of the major trends of scientific writings for the past century is the systematic falsification of the actual techniques and method of discovery (1).” Lederberg wasn’t concerned that published papers fail to mention the false starts, wrong turns, or dead ends on the road to discovery. He accepted the conventional forms of scientific publ...

Testimony and Illusion