Testimony, reconstructed: the secondary witness and testimonial possession in Bart van Es’ The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines Bart van Es' memoir The Cut Out Girl and its use of the testimony as the basis for an account of events associated with the Second World War in The Netherlands. It argues that van Es's memoir demonstrates the difficulties of situating testimonial discourse within collective narratives. Van Es conducts a number of interviews with his subject, Lien, a young Dutch Jewish girl, who experienced multiple traumas resulting from the removal from her family in order to avoid persecution by the German forces. By re-writing her testimony in his own words, van Es demonstrates some of the difficulties with over-identification and unsettlement that can occur in the secondary witness to testimony. Moreover, van Es submerges the testimonial speech act and shifts the focus from the giver of the testimony, to the reactions of its receiver. The Cut Out Girl shows the importance of establishing clear boundaries between testimony and other forms of discourse. Nonetheless, The Cut Out Girl is demonstrative of the way in which testimony animates its listener from within. Precisely through some of its capacity to unsettle the person who hears it, testimony encourages the listener to do more than respond passively.