ABSTRACT
Human rights testimonies, shaped and packaged into narratives of witness, educate and bind readers to the degree that they convince them of two things: that the story is the "real" story of a "real" survivor. That is, narrative joined to an embodied person; and that the reading experience constitutes a cross-cultural encounter positioning readers as ethical subjects within the global imaginary of human rights advocacy. Witness narratives communicate the urgency of a conflict or situation to the reader. Discursively positioned as a first-person witness, the narrator speaks as a first-hand actor in and observer of disastrous, violent, and degrading conditions of existence. Examining the paratexts and epitexts that surround witness narratives can further illuminate how narratives are situated for empathetic reception. The environment of suspicion to which witness narratives are vulnerable produces "detectives of verification" who use any or all of the vulnerabilities to question a narrative's "authenticity" and to raise the suspicion that it is fraudulent, a hoax.
