JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 24, Number 2, 2004 Page: 434
261-512 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 22 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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434
"the impossibility of telling" (224). The inside cannot testify on its own
because it cannot speak its trauma in a language the outside can hear or
understand, because as the witness has been deemed other, all sounds are
heard as "mere noise" (231). Felman writes, "It is impossible to testify
from the inside because the inside has no voice" (231). The outside,
however, cannot testify either because it cannot know the truth of the
trauma. But the two can work together-must work together-to articu-
late the horror. The inside and the outside need to be set "in motion and
in dialogue with one another" (232). Shoah works as testimony, Felman
argues, because it is "neither simply inside nor simply outside, but
paradoxically, both inside and outside: [it] create[s] a connection that
did not exist during the war and does not exist today . . . " (232).
Silence speaks in the oscillation between outside and inside, between
the outsider and the insider. Testimony from within needs a frame-
work to be heard as testimony.
I hear the recipes. I spent a lot of time at the beginning of this paper
quoting from the pages that come between the cover and the recipes,
looking at how the reader is guided into a particular way of seeing.
Berenbaum and De Silva want the cookbook to be seen as a Holocaust
document. They oscillate between what to do with that document-
celebrate the human spirit, condemn an evil empire-but they offer a
translation for the recipes, for "mere noise." Without that frame, without
the preface and the introduction, the recipes testify to nothing. They never
name their trauma. They never say, "This is what has happened." They
come out of trauma-their recording comes out of trauma-but without
the book's frame it is impossible to recognize it as such. We need a story
to point, to show, to explain. And what we get is an outsider, an editor, as
our guide. As De Silva reminds us, "[I]f we didn't already know the
condition its authors were in and the circumstances under which their
cookbook had been created, we could still discern their distress from the
recipes. They, too, bear witness" (xl-xli). But she makes sure that we
know about the conditions and the circumstances. We need to-for
without them, we would not be able to read "hastily written" and
"distressfully written." We need to go back and forth, back and forth,
between the outsider, the editor, and the insider, the women. We have
many acts of translation. We have many readings of silence.
But then we have The Diary ofAnne Frank. Then we have Felman's
Paul de Man chapter. We can see the dangers of filling silence. We can
see the danger of the outsider-the danger of the outsider distorting the
insider's testimony.jac
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 24, Number 2, 2004, periodical, 2004; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28644/m1/180/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .