On Bearing Witness to the Suffering of Other: Revisiting Anthropology of Suffering

• In Event: Studying Post-Disaster Politics in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Japan

Abstract

“Psychological care” has become an integral part of intervention following large scale disasters and/or conflicts today. Professional circle of “humanitarian psychiatrists” works systematically not only to address psychological distress of people technically, but also to bear witness to their suffering in a quite empathic manner, attempting to denounce injustice and human rights violations done to the affected population. There is a politics of humanitarian testimony at play here; while focus of humanitarian apparatus centers around suffering bodies, “trauma” is beginning to serve as a tool with which victims attest to the truth of the violence and injustice done to them[Fassin and Rechtman 2009].
When anthropologists, who admit themselves as “hearers” and “witnesses” of disastrous events, make effort to somehow transform people’s traumatic stories into moral commentary or political performance through ethnographic accounts, we see a peculiar resemblance with the above stated humanitarian (psychiatric) projects. In fact, anthropology of suffering or engaged anthropology could be understood as a part of, or even epiphenomenon of, this politics of humanitarian testimony. It is in this light that this paper revisits anthropology of suffering by juxtaposing its arguments with that of other humanitarian accounts. While contextualizing its practice in the moral climate of the present, this paper also seeks to explore the possibilities of ethnographic method in critiquing the humanitarian projects from within, based on my fieldwork and other ethnographic studies conducted in Sri Lanka.

Author

• Sea Nakamura, Kyoto University