Witnessing is an attempt to reestablish order through an account. It needs anchor-terms.
Witnessing as an act of relating
Linking together events can amount to a mere statement of despair,
mere witnessing. Witnessing, to be sure, can be a liberating experience
in itself - but only because we attribute sense to the act of "laying it
all out", or "witnessing" itself. There would be no point in piecing together
one's story and "witnessing" it when there is nobody to hear it, and be
it the own self that in witnessing transforms into a spectator who is,
for moments at least, able make sense of the events in a coherent sentence.
Holocaust survivors are witnessing today because they want to remind mankind
of the promise of "never again". Those who wrote diaries during the Holocaust,
and had nobody to turn to, often witnessed to accuse God, the last one
they supposed could listen. And those who witnessed to show that there
is no sense that can be made, like Paul Celan, made at least a sense for
others by their example.
Anchor terms
I will argue that witnessing, or re-telling a story, or re-describing
events, can only help to overcome de-humanization when the chain of events
is linked to anchor-terms that have their foundation outside the experience
of de-humanization. To reverse the image of anchors, just think of these
words as buoys. Buoys symbolize the change from one element to another,
and in the case of narratives that try to overcome de-humanization, such
as novels of American literature, symbolize a gate from de-humanization
to humanization. (I continue to use the word anchor here because it is
the term commonly used in psychoanalysis).
An anchor term can be any word that is related to the unspeakable, un-explainable experience of de-humanization, and represents yet a concept that promises sense, a foundation outside the experience, a safe island that represents normality. By normality I mean an order that is not de-humanizing.
Witnessing and anchoring
I also hold that all witnessing itself is already an attempt to anchore,
to seek sense outside the concrete experience. Witnessing helps best to
overcome de-humanization when we couch it in language permeated by anchor
terms.