Dori Laub’s "Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle" shows how trauma, undeniably one of the most devastating human creation, is ironically only resolvable within and by humans. Such paradox is best illustrated in his quote, “The survivors did not only need to survive so that they could tell their stories; they also needed to tell the stories in order to survive.” The irony augments as the traumatized are frustrated by physical disabilities, the event’s inexplicability, guilt, or mere alteration of the memory. Witnesses of trauma also are unable to objectively articulate the event, and while others are exterminated to prevent the sharing of their perspective. Trauma abolishes both its history and the people's identities, yet still burdens with responsibility and indoctrinated guilt.
Trauma must be examined in lines with the theory of diffusion of responsibility,which states that people become less responsible for an action in the presence of others. However, the theory only deals with action and justification, not the consequences. The murder of Kitty Genovese can be described as the apotheosis of diffusion of responsibility as 38 witnesses spread their responsibilities to take no action when Genovese was raped and stabbed for over two hours. However, rarely questioned is the potential for trauma to befall on the witnesses. The theory of diffusion of responsibility and Laub’s description of trauma thus contradict in the presence of collective responsibility; Responsibility diffuses within a group, yet those traumatized from it are borne with an overwhelming sense of guilt and perplexion. The traumatized must rely on imperfect vocalization to rid such burden, or “make and break the promise: the promise of testimony as a realization” that the traumatized is, in fact, not at fault.
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