on compulsively writing trauma, and freedom

“if it is the accident which pursues the witness, it is the compulsive character of the testimony which is brought into relief: the witness is ‘pursued,’ that is, at once compelled and bound by what, in the unexpected impact of the accident, is both incomprehensible and unforgettable. the accident does not let go: it is an accident from which the witness can no longer free himself.

but if, in a still less expected manner, it is the witness who pursues the accident, it is perhaps because the witness, on the contrary, has understood that from the accident a liberation can proceed and that the accidenting, unexpectedly, is also in some ways a freeing.”

—shoshana felman, “education and crisis, or the vicissitudes of teaching” in testimony: crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history