Document Type
Article
Department
Religion
Publication Date
3-2016
Abstract
Beginning with an identification of the ethical and political ambivalence surrounding hope, this essay considers whether an analysis of the activity of bearing witness to truth could offer a theoretical framework for thinking about hope differently. Specifically it argues that hope can be taken as a discipline, or practice, one which is both required for, and enacted in, the act of bearing witness. Through a consideration of the process of bearing witness in Truth and Reconciliation Commissions responding to national and intergenerational trauma, the essay explores the way in which bearing witness is a fundamentally hopeful action in so far as it ceaselessly seeks to speak to the truth of an event while acknowledging the inability to ever fully capture that event in words
Publication Title
Political Theology
Volume
17
Issue
2
First Page
137
Last Page
150
DOI
10.1080/1462317X.2016.1161300
Comments
Published as:
Tamsin Jones. “Bearing Witness: Hope for the Unseen.” Political Theology 17, no. 2 (April 2016): 137-150.
Author's accepted manuscript provided by Trinity College Digital Repository in accordance with the publisher's distribution policies.