The Ethics of Metawitnessing in Yannick Haenel’s Jan Karski

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article examines Yannick Haenel’s novel Jan Karski (2010) as an act of metawitnessing, a term coined by Derrida in relation to Celan’s poetry and applicable to the philosopher’s own readings of the Judeo–Romanian poet’s work. Contrary to secondary witnessing, metawitnessing is the act of testifying on behalf of a witness, which is underpinned by a self-reflective meditation upon the mutually contradictory necessity and impossibility of bearing witness. Consequently, the article discusses Haenel’s both awareness of his project’s morally risky nature and ambition to offer a broader reflection upon the figure of the witness. Guided by the novel’s epigraph – ‘Who bears witness for the witness?’ – , which paraphrases the closing stanza of Celan’s poem ‘Aschenglorie,’ the analysis then moves on to Haenel’s handling of the aporia voiced by the poem and materialized as the urge to testify to what is often felt to be unrepresentable for the absence of the absolute witnesses. Finally, drawing on Dan Stone’s considerations upon the tension between Holocaust testimony and historiography, the article posists Jan Karski as an apology of testimony, even if testimony should be – oxymoronically – a work of imagination. For, unlike history proper, eyewitness accounts can voice trauma, and can therefore testify to a differend, as Lyotard terms a situation in which victims have no means of expressing the injustice they have suffered. According to Lyotard, it is the postmodern writer’s duty to seek new artistic means to articulate the victims’ wrongs, without, however, trying to resolve the differend or substitute for those s/he is representing. The article concludes with an attempt to assess whether Haenel’s novel has done further violence to the memory of Karski and the cause he championed, or, conversely, thanks to its unconventional form, is an ethically sound testimony to the wrongs inflicted upon the Jews and their advocate.