Who has the right to testify? The story of Rigoberta Menchu and the problem of the post-truth

Abstract

The article considers the polemic of the Nobel Prize winner R. Menchu with the U.S. anthropologist D. Stoll, erupting after Menchu’s testimony about the barbaric persecution of the indigenous Q’iche’ Maya by the Guatemalan government. Stoll accused Menchu of falsifying facts and manipulating the reader’s perception. The story poses questions that are relevant for contemporary study of literature: who has the right to testify about historical events, and what are the authenticity criteria to be observed by the author of a documentary piece? In search for the answers, one digs into the notion of ‘eyewitness contract’, which means the author’s responsibility for the authenticity of the described events, and the reader’s willingness to hear and accept the testimony. Violation or inability to observe the terms of such a contract engenders discord (‘differend’, according to J. F. Lyotard), which, in its turn, questions the very possibility of reinstating the severed social ties and finding the appropriate language to create a ‘post-catastrophic literature’.