Ambiguities of Witnessing La and Literature in the Time of a Truth Commission [Hardcover]

The first book to explore the complex relationship between law and literature in testimony to crimes of apartheid before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission,Ambiguities of Witnessingclosely analyzes key individual testimonies. Whereas most existing books on this and other truth commissions are weighed down by abstract legal and philosophical discussion, this book does justice to witnesses' public testimony in a fascinating and theoretically sophisticated investigation of questions of human rights, mourning, forgiveness, and reparation. Framed by the personal,Ambiguities of Witnessingalso meditates on what it means for the writer to respond to this epochal event in the history of post-apartheid South Africa. Ambiguities of Witnessingis an important publication in the post-apartheid South African literary sceneand well beyond it too. The first book to explore the complex relationship between law and literature in testimony to crimes of apartheid before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission,Ambiguities of Witnessingclosely analyzes key individual testimonies. Whereas most existing books on this and other truth commissions are weighed down by abstract legal and philosophical discussion, this book does justice to witnesses' public testimony in a fascinating and theoretically sophisticated investigation of questions of human rights, mourning, forgiveness, and reparation. Framed by the personal,Ambiguities of Witnessingalso meditates on what it means for the writer to respond to this epochal event in the history of post-apartheid South Africa.Mark Sanders is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. He is the author ofComplicities: The Intellectual and Apartheid(2002) andGayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Live Theory(2006). The book is a significant contribution not only to the study of the TRC and (post)apartheid culture, but also to the postcolonial critique of legal and lÓg