Rebecca Faison: Response #1

   In "Bearing Witness of the Vicissitudes of Listening," Dori Laub focuses on the importance of listening to a victim's trauma. A particular emphasis that I enjoyed was how the listener listens. The listener, coming into the event with an open mind, "…the blank screen on which the event comes to be inscribed for the first time" (Laub 1), interprets the victims trauma in relation to their own trauma (Laub 4). One of the points I found interesting is, "…he preserves his own separate place…a battleground for forces raging in himself, to which he has to pay attention and respect if he is to properly carry out his task" (Laub 3). The hearer understands what the victim has gone through - the emotion, torment, etc - and compares it to themselves: "…he can become the enabler of the testimony - the one who triggers its initation, as well as the guardian of its process and of its momentum" (Laub 4). Our minds subconsciously do this - to try to make things easier on ourselves. Does your pencil lead break off easily when using a plastic pencil sharpener? Try using and xacto knife to sharpen it. Does the xacto knife not make the point small enough? Use sandpaper. Not using this process means wandering through our lives in ignorance, constantly dealing with the same issues and not being able to move onto new issues, when our lives could be easier if only we could find new ways of dealing with these issues.