Trauma, memory, testimony: phenomenological, psychological, and ethical perspectives

How can severely traumatized persons re-present the past and its impact on the present if (due to blackout, repression, or dissociation) they could not witness what they went through, or can hardly recall it? Drawing on Holocaust testimonies, this article explores the crisis of witnessing constituted by the Shoah and, more generally, problems of integrating and communicating traumatic experiences. Phenomenological, psychological, and ethical perspectives contribute to a systematic investigation of the relation between trauma, memory and testimony. I will argue that preserving personal continuity across the gap between past and present presupposes not only an ‘inner witness’ – which can, according to a long philosophical tradition, be identified with a person’s conscience – but also a social context in which one is addressed and can respond. An attentive listener can bear witness to the witness by accepting the assignation of responsibility implied in testimonial interaction, and thereby support the dialogic restitution of memory and identity.&nbsp

The problem of evil and images of (in)humanity

Editorial for issue 29(1) of Scandinavian Jewish Studies, 'The Problem of Evil and Images of (In)Humanity'

At høre det uhørte: Teologisk epistemologi som dialogisk livsorientering

What does it mean to listen to what cannot be heard? In this article, the “unheard-of” is explored along two different tracks: (a) as something God-given or divinely revealed (in the context of theology and philosophy of religion) and (b) as something egregious or criminal (in the context of ethics and trauma studies). Theological epistemology is here developed with a special focus on the limits of the cognition and knowledge of God in Christianity (Anselm of Canterbury, Luther) and contemporary Judaism (Buber, Levinas), and on the significance of dialogue and second-person encounters. Epistemology is connected with a hermeneutics of the senses, where the human being is regarded as a witness who “listens” to something transcendent which can only be articulated on the basis of acoustic or auditory metaphors but nonetheless remains inaudible. In relation to an ethical and religious life-orientation (Kant, Stegmaier, etc.), listening is described as medio-passivity “in-between” activity and passivity, subjectivity and alterity. It is argued that the listener’s personal responsivity (Waldenfels) and responsibility (Buber, Levinas) remain opposed to “resonance” (Rosa) and an “echo” (Nancy) that has no distinct voice. Methodologically, epistemology as dialogical life-orientation is seen as part of a theory-practice feedback-loop which requires patient, hospitable listening practices in view of irresolvable theoretical tensions and fruitful paradoxes that always spur further thought

At give stemme til det usynlige

The present article discusses theological questions arisingthrough the phenomenon and praxis of prayer: What are the featuresof different genres of prayer such as praise and lament, confession andintercession, and how can the relation between semantics and pragmaticswithin the performance of prayer be characterized if the languageof prayer does not only embrace self-involving speech acts in an agonicprocess leading to the supplicant’s self-transformation, but also silentgestures, deeds and attitudes? What is the relation between speech andsilence in prayer? To what extent is it legitimate to determine prayer asa ‘dialogue’ with God? Given that God does not speak with a ‘voice’that can be heard acoustically, the question is also how one can knowwhether it is God or someone else ‘speaking’ to a person. Texts by Luther,Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida, Chrétien, Wittgenstein, Phillips,Casper and Brümmer provide the basis for this discussion

Fortidens fremtid

How are we to relate to the past, especially to those events in the past which are hard to bear in the present? This is an ethical question that concerns the conditions and limits of our interactions with others. The article tries to clarify (1) what it is that we can remember, (2) what it is that we in any case must remember, and (3) what it is that we may forget, and in which situations this applies. Memory is investigated via negativa in investigating that which seems to negate memory, namely forgetting. However, the investigation of the legitimacy and questionability of forgetting shows that memory and forgetting are not just opposed, but also dialectically related to each other. Their dialectical interrelation is decisive for the formation and preservation of personal identity. Nonetheless, the future of the past is not to be found in human powers of remembrance or forgetting

Gud og menneske – Skabelsesbegrebet i moderne jødisk tænkning

This article explores the meaning of the notion of ‘creation’ inthe Jewish tradition of the 20th century – both in regard to God as creatorand the human being as creature. With reference to Franz Rosenzweig,Margarete Susman and Hans Jonas, the first part of the articlefocuses on the question of whether God, after Auschwitz, can still beunderstood as an omnipotent and righteous creator of the All, while thesecond part investigates the human condition as described by HannahArendt and Emmanuel Levinas: what does it mean to be created as or inthe image of God? In particular, creaturely freedom and responsibility,natality and creativity are highlighted and discussed in the context ofpost-Holocaust theology

Frihed til kærlighed hos Luther og Kierkegaard

”You shall love thy neighbour as yourself”. How does commanded love turn into the praxis of loving? According to Kierkegaard, works of love are not just grounded in human agency and capability, but are done in the Spirit of love. The key words of Kierkegaard’s explanation – ‘spirit’, ‘interiority’, ‘gift’ and ‘debt’ – are decisive also for the Pauline-Lutheran tradition. This tradition holds that the human being becomes free to love his neighbor only if he has been freed from self-centredness. Yet, what does that imply for the view of the person, who is simul iustus et peccator, at once a sinner and justified, at once ‘the old Adam’ and ‘a new creature’? The anthropological implications are controversial, especially in regard to the relation between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ person, the sinner’s nature and his self-transcendence. Kierkegaard’s insights could contribute to the clarification, if not correction, of some notorious problems that belong to Luther’s heritage