Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book directs attention to the lacuna that constitutes the capacity to bear witness and at the same time undermines it. Years of listening to both direct and indirect testimonies on trauma have led to identify four modes of witnessing, reflecting four modes in which language collapses into the traumatic lacuna: the "metaphoric mode", the "metonymic mode", the "excessive mode" and the "Muselmann mode". These four modes of witnessing are distinguished by the degree of psychic motility they succeed to form in relation to traumatic memories. The book suggests that since the literary testimonies underwent the highest degree of aesthetic, intellectual and emotional elaboration, they would constitute the most distanced accounts. It also suggests that the most metaphoric mode would then be manifest in the literary testimonies, while the most psychotic manifestations were likely to occur in the raw testimonies.