FROM THE ‘POSTTRAUMATIC’ TO THE ‘TRANSTESTIMONIAL’: DORON RABINOVICI'S DIE LETZTEN ZEUGEN (2013) AS A CORPOREAL TOPOGRAPHY OF DISCURSIVE AND EMOTIVE HOLOCAUST MEMORY

Abstract

This article explores the theatrical witness project Die letzten Zeugen (2013) by the Austrian writer Doron Rabinovici as an example of a methodological transition in Testimony Studies, one which shifts the focus from psychoanalytic engagement with the survivors’ experiences towards a collective approach to testimony at the end of the so‐called ‘era of witnesses’. Rabinovici's theatrical witness project cultivates a novel form of simultaneously discursive and emotive engagements with testimony. The article scrutinises the extent to which the physical presence of Holocaust survivors on stage serves as a ‘corporeal topography’, an exploration of the liminal quality of contemporary engagements with testimony in the impending absence of survivors. In so doing, it develops the concept of ‘transtestimony’, a liminal engagement with testimony as both an epistemic and a performative practice.