The voice of misery : a continental philosophy of testimony /

Testimony has received much attention in recent analytic thought, critical race theory, and feminist philosophy, but the focus has primarily been on epistemological issues: what testimony can be believed, what makes a worthy witness, who gets to speak, and the like. Heiden (metaphysics, Redboud Univ., Netherlands) argues that beneath such issues is Continental philosophy, which is always cognizant of margins and offers a coherent take on the ontological constituents of testimony. Drawing on Lyotard's concept of misère--those whose destitution is characterized by lack of speech--misery is given voice by the words of a witness. Parts 2 and 3 of this rich work investigate the components of witness, in close textual dialogue with Plato, Heidegger, and Agamben, among others. But the reader reaches these astute philosophical analyses only through part 1, which offers six literary "experiments"--readings from Plato, Melville, Kierkegaard, and a couple of recent novelists--that unduly delay the conceptual payoff that philosophical readers seek (one may fruitfully defer chapters 2--7 until the end). The focus on ontology does not offer a comprehensive philosophy of testimony (the imperative to testify is underexamined, for example), but overall this work moves the concept forward in important and significant ways. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Steve A. Young, McHenry County College