Yesterday, I was included in a panel with James Dawes, who teaches literature at Macalester College. This was at Elon College, hosted by Safia Swimelar, who is teaching a human rights class and helping her students put on a performance of Ariel Dorfman’s Speak Truth to Power.
Dawes’ book, That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity, is a fascinating and nuanced look at how stories are told to promote human rights and the challenges and dilemmas these stories represent. To write the book, Dawes did many firsthand interviews with journalists and human rights workers, and the book is often emotionally gripping.
What I especially appreciate about the book is that it takes on some assumptions and questions them in a thoughtful and sensitive way. For instance, he questions the notion that the testimony victims give of the abuse they suffered is always beneficial to them psychologically. In other words, that telling “heals.” This made me remember a Duke event several years ago that focused on the Korean “comfort women” forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army during World War II. An enterprising Duke undergraduate arranged the whole event around a documentary and the visit of a former “comfort woman” who was willing to tell her story.
First, we watched the documentary, which was informational but not very well-done. Then we turned to the panel and the guest (I was on the panel, more out of solidarity that any expert knowledge). The wonderfully elegant and reserved woman, by then in her eighties, walked slowly to her chair. But she did not speak. She was so moved and upset by the film that no words would come. As it turned out, she had never told her story in public before and it remained one of great pain and shame for her. There was a good audience of about 100 people. And we all sat with her in silence as she wept. This went on for at least 10 minutes. Eventually, she was able to speak. But those 10 minutes were among the most moving and wrenching I had ever experienced. And they really made me question bringing victims to relive their stories, despite the obvious need we have to know about the terrible things that have happened in order to prevent them from happening ever again.