Between History and Psychoanalysis: A Case Study in the Reception of Holocaust Survivor Testimony

Referring to a well-known case study from the work of Dori Laub, this article examines the conflict between history and psychoanalysis as frameworks for the reception of Holocaust survivor testimony. It focuses especially on the status of fact and interpretation, on the role of performative and constative language, on the function of narrative in relation to knowledge and on the interactive nature of testimony. The diagnostic analysis of selective listening leads to a reconsideration of reception in terms of the relational self, the hybridity of testimony as a genre and the cognitive uncertainty it arouses.