Bodies of Evidence and the Intricate Machines of Untruth

Franklin and Lyons discuss how the essays and interviews in this volume evidence the important ways that the agency that witnesses to human rights abuses possess is both circumscribed by state institutions and ideologies, and asserted in the face of state violence, past and present. They also analyze two contexts not addressed within the special issue. In examining Argentinian Claudia Bernardi's artwork, pictured on the cover, they consider the connections between anthropological excavation of massacre sites and the forensic uses of human rights testimony in the public sphere. Concluding with a reading of Nancy Stohlman and Laurieann Aladin's Live from Palestine, Franklin and Lyons explore how this collection provides testimony to the horrors of the Occupation that speaks to both individual responses and collective resistance, demonstrating important possibilities for the testimonial uses of life writing.