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How are living performances grasped by those who witness them and pass them on “before they settle between the pages […] of the encyclopedias of theater”? By what means, with what instruments, according to what attitudes and strategies? This introduction sets out the itinerary of the “polyphonic investigation” collected in this volume, while proposing a preliminary typology of its “empirical anthology” as well as some conceptual reference points (drawn from Husserl, Merleau-Ponty or Bergson). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Witnessing after the "end of philosophy," in the sense in which Heidegger mentions it in his famous lecture on "The end of philosophy and the task of thinking"--what does this mean for us and our world today? As a preparation for an answer to this question, the present study proposes to elaborate a radical hermeneutics of testimony, by invoking French philosophers who can be qualified as "post-Heideggerian"--Lévinas, Ricoeur, Derrida, among others--whose thoughts on testimony were developed through the essential critique on Heideggerian idea of attestation (Bezeugung) and the creative reactivation of the semantic resources historically preserved by terms such as "witness" and "testimony". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on a new form of mediatization of testimonials. The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center (Skokie, United States) offers a "holographic theater" in which a surviving Holocaust witness can be interviewed. In this theater, everything happens as if the Great Witness were there in person, interviewed by a facilitator to answer questions from visitors. But the Great Witness is not there, only a recorded holographic projection appears with which visitors can converse. How can a program and an algorithm replace a human presence? Interviews with visitors are carried out in stimulated recall and allow us to understand the dynamics of an exceptional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are three possible ways of access to phenomena of suffered violence: the first is the experience of those who have suffered violence themselves; the second is the experience of eyewitnesses; the third, which is the most frequent one, is an indirect access through the testimony of people belonging to the first two categories. Each way of access has advantages but also serious difficulties, both in terms of the objectivity of the experience and of the possibility to express it in language. No one is free from an affective and a normative dimension; this implies that there is a certain tension with regard to the phenomenological reduction. The paper offers an analysis of these ways of access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The logic of evidence in Bartolistic literature, A reading of the Summa circa testes et examinationem eorum (Ms. Bruxelles, B.R., II 1442, fol.101 ra – 103 rb). – Bartolus teaches how to read testimonies from a logical point of view. On the one hand, the facts that the witness recounts constitute the minor premise of a syllogism, its conclusion being their legal characterization; therefore he is prohibited from pronouncing directly on any legal matter. On the other hand, given that the witness' knowledge of the facts has to stem from sensory perception, the information he provides has at least to constitute the minor premise of another syllogism, making for establishing the causa of his testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]