Counter-testimony, counter-archive

The testimonies of hospitalized survivors may well be described as the counter model of the publically accepted and documented testimonial genre. They are the counter-testimony of the popular Holocaust testimony. As such, they are bound to be rejected, as they unsettle the prevailing sense of what Holocaust testimony should look like. Questions about believability as raised in Rakovsky’s testimony are one example of such resistance. Countertransference might take the more general form of public avoidance or dismissal, as was the case until recently. Yet the distinctive considerations of countertransference associated with counter-testimony have implications not only for this relatively small collection but to testimony in general. Counter-testimony puts the widely established variety of testimony in a new light. It is as though Laub brings his recent project to bear on his earlier one, as a commentary on the existing testimony and trauma discourse to which he himself had been a key contributor.