Witnessing the World Otherwise: Testimony, Community, and the (Post-)Human
Conference 17th-18th June 2026
Invited Speakers: Peggy Kamuf (University of Southern California) and Kaushik Sunder Rajan (University of Chicago)
Maison Française d’Oxford, Oxford, UK
This two-day workshop will explore the intersections between testimony, community and the (post-)human. It will focus on a range of responses to these topics: from Holocaust testimony and post-structuralist theory to cutting-edge anthropology and scholarship on the ecological crisis. It will also feature a keynote lecture by Prof. Kaushik Sunder Rajan, who works at the intersection of anthropology and French thought, as well as a workshop with Prof. Peggy Kamuf on Jacques Derrida’s testimony seminars.
In the first instance this workshop explores a tension in the development of French thought. Thinkers like Sarah Kofman, Maurice Blanchot, Derrida and others were profoundly influenced by the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, such as Primo Levi and Robert Antelme, among others. It was felt that their testimonies bore witness to a limit-experience of the human subject, which was subsequently woven into broader deconstructions of subjectivity as self-presence and identity, as well the possibility of any community based on those metaphysical ideas. Their thinking can be juxtaposed with other tendencies in French thought which seek to disrupt the individual/collective binary by positing the 'transindividual', from Etienne Balibar's readings of Spinoza to Gilbert Simondon's notion of individuation.
And yet, the Holocaust also engenders an implicit and explicit return to 'humanism'. Many of these thinkers formulate questions of an ethical and political nature that cannot be detached absolutely from concerns with the ‘human’ and ‘humanism’, whether in the form of Derrida's reflections on human rights or Kofman's affirmation of a “nouvel ‘humanisme’”. How can we interpret such a stress on humanism in many testimonial and theoretical responses to the Holocaust, and the simultaneous philosophical and political impulses toward the deconstruction of the subject by these same authors? As Jewish thinkers, how do they position themselves in relation to the avowed humanist strand of the Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue française? Is there a way of thinking 'humanistically' without a metaphysics of the subject?
This tension is complicated by our contemporary emphasis on the post-human and the non-human. Though these thinkers have shaped our current critical landscape, the non-human, and the environment more broadly, are often (though not always) notable absences in their work. How can we renew the questions they raised around humanism in response to our contemporary conjuncture? This conference will seek to explore how testimony, in both its anthropocentric, legal, literary and philosophical forms, works to reveal the limits and possibilities of community.
We will open a space for considering testimony in a broadened field — where non-human agents (animals, environments, technologies) challenge the boundaries of who or what can testify, and to whom. What kinds of community are possible — or necessary — when the very conditions of life are increasingly 'dehumanising', but also when the traditional figure of the human subject is itself under question? Can an individual testify for many? How do changing technologies mediate how we witness the climate crisis? What's the relationship between dehumanisation and the post-human, especially in racialised and/or colonial contexts? Can the earth and/or animals testify (e.g. in the context of environmental personhood)?
Ultimately, this workshop seeks to promote an interdisciplinary engagement with philosophy, at the intersection of the environmental humanities, Holocaust studies, postcolonial and indigenous studies, etc. At its heart is a contemporary political imperative: to reimagine how we think of ourselves as individuals and how we can bear witness in an era of profound ecological and cultural transformation.
The organisers invite propositions on topics related (but not limited) to the following areas:
- 20th Century European Philosophy
- Holocaust Studies, Memory Studies & Jewish Thought
- Humanism in Post-structuralism/Deconstruction
- Studies of the post-human, non-human & animals
- Postcolonial & Indigenous Studies
- Environmental & Ecological Studies
- Political & Legal Theory (of testimony, community etc.)
- French Studies
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Abstract proposals for papers should be sent to: wwoconference@gmail.com by 1st March 2026.
Organisers: Eve Judah & Cameron Etherton
This conference is generously funded by the Society for French Studies, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford with the kind collaboration of the Maison Française d’Oxford.
Witnessing the World Otherwise Network is part of TORCH Student Networks
