ABSTRACT
A look at mass violence from below, from the perspective of witnesses. This optic challenges the classic, empirical standard of documented, objective, and verifiable truth, a standard in the tradition of historical and legal positivism that exalted historical reconstruction. This argument seeks to preserve the victim’s voice and aspires to mine it for historical insight. Victims, who serve as witnesses to atrocity, disclose dimensions of persecution that empirical and schematic interpretations miss.
