Bearing witness from temporal distance is a distinct civic mode of testimony

Evidence

Bearing witness from a distance of time and place is a different mode of testimony than first-hand witness. It is produced out of and encourages a different sensibility or passion, another sort of disposition, even distinct sentimentalities. It is, in short, another kind of pre-occupation than that of immediate victims or witnesses. It concerns more mediated knowledge, a commitment to be informed rather than a drive to share if not shed a burden. It often turns on a passion to pass along historically a sense of outrage over injustice rather than an effort, often melancholic but sometimes manic, to externalize. It involves a civic commitment to take social equality seriously across time rather than to elevate disinterested and dispirited self-interest as the driving principle of sociality above all else. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1858

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the distinction between first-hand testimony and mediated, cross-time bearing witness as two distinct dispositions with distinct political stakes.
• XREF: connects to: Who counts as a witness determines whether slow violence registers as violence — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 49