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I-Witness - Annette Kobak
- University of Wisconsin Press
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25 I-Witness an nette kobak Trans form ing trau matic ex pe ri ence into the writ ten word—as tes ti mony, me moir, the a ter, fic tion, or ad vo cacy—can be a com plex en ter prise, as the writ ers in this part of the book at test. If the trauma has been caused by an au thor i tar ian state, it can also be a life-threatening one. Three of the writ ers here—Emin Milli, Na zeeha Saeed, and Hec tor Aristizábal—not only found their lives in jeop ardy after speak ing out against a government-imposed story but still live under threat of re pri sals. As I write, one of them, Emin Milli, has been im pris oned for a sec ond time, in spite of hav ing the sup port of dem o cratic or gan iza tions out side his coun try: a graphic ex am ple of the per ils of in di vid ual tes ti mony, even in its near-collegiate new dig i tal form. Si lence can be psycho log i cally on er ous (as the fourth writer, Molly An drews, sug gests), but it is often ex is ten tially the safer op tion—and any au thor i tar ian govern ment seems to know how to keep it that way. How did we get to this point—or, rather, back to this point? Wasn’t the ar bi trary ar rest of in di vid u als by an au thor i tar ian power at the core of what the En light en ment tried to ban ish? Didn’t let tres stand up against let tres de ca chet over two cen tu ries ago, and win? Why does an au thor i tar ian govern ment or dic ta tor still feel threat ened by one in di vid ual who stands up for see ing things dif fer ently, and says so? (Why, in an era of glo bal ized com mu ni ca tions, are there still dic ta tors?) You would think that any fledg ling dic ta tor might spot that tar get ing writ ers has been self-defeating his tor i cally: writ ers usu ally win in the long run, even if they some times have to die to do so. Na po leon Bon a parte, who created the blue print for mod ern to tal i tar ian re gimes, rec og nized this, even at the height of his mil i tary power. “Do you know what I mar vel at most in the world?” he asked the man he had just ap pointed head of the Uni ver sity of Paris in 1808. “It’s the im po tence of force in or ga niz ing any thing. There are only two pow ers in the world, the sword and the mind. . . . In the long run, the sword is al ways beaten 26 annette kobak by the mind.”1 And in that long run—sit ting on Saint Hel ena, see ing the im po tence of force, his half a mil lion troops wiped out in Rus sia, his vast con quests hav ing re duced France to less ter ri tory than it had when he took power—the ex-emperor had rea son to brood on his in sight, as he or dered thou sands of books to fill the empty places of swords and bat ta lions. What is it, then, that dic ta tors fear in writ ers? It’s ob vi ous, you might say: writ ers tell the truth, and dic ta tors need to sup press the truth in order to stay in power. Yet this is too sweep ing: “writ ers” are a hetero ge ne ous group ing, and not nec es sar ily more eth i cal or pro phetic or even truth ful than the rest of a sup pressed pop u la tion (al though the best may be some or all of those things). In deed, be cause both fic tion and non fic tion—and even “sim ple” man i fes toes— need to ma nip u late form and lan guage to be ef fec tive, being crafty with the truth is part of a writer’s job spec ifi ca tion. The “truth” is...