Abstract
The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide is a cultural history of an iconic figure in twentieth-century Western discourse—the “witness to genocide.” Using a broad historical trajectory, Carolyn J. Dean analyzes the performance, narratives, and representations of victims who took the witness stand in trials related to crimes of mass violence from the 1920s through the 1960s, and explores more recent debates over global victimhood and humanitarian intervention. Using a number of case studies, she traces the paths by which victims, survivors, and witnesses of mass atrocities moved from the culture’s sidelines to its moral center—hence her use of the term “moral witness.” Dean convincingly shows that the figure of the witness has become the barometer of moral consciousness across the West.