Bearing witness: hope for the unseen
Beginning with an identification of the ethical and political ambivalence surrounding hope, this essay considers whether an analysis of the activity of bearing witness to truth could offer a theoretical framework for thinking about hope differently. Specifically it argues that hope can be taken as a...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic/Print Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
[2016]
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In: |
Political theology
Year: 2016, Volume: 17, Issue: 2, Pages: 137-150 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Hope
/ Attest
/ Truth commission
/ Truth
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RelBib Classification: | VA Philosophy VB Hermeneutics; Philosophy |
Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | Beginning with an identification of the ethical and political ambivalence surrounding hope, this essay considers whether an analysis of the activity of bearing witness to truth could offer a theoretical framework for thinking about hope differently. Specifically it argues that hope can be taken as a discipline, or practice, one which is both required for, and enacted in, the act of bearing witness. Through a consideration of the process of bearing witness in Truth and Reconciliation Commissions responding to national and intergenerational trauma, the essay explores the way in which bearing witness is a fundamentally hopeful action in so far as it ceaselessly seeks to speak to the truth of an event while acknowledging the inability to ever fully capture that event in words. |
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ISSN: | 1462-317X |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Political theology
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/1462317X.2016.1161300 |