Testimony, Endurance, Tryvoga : A History Open to Shivering Bodies 1

Abstract

This chapter approaches the narrative and visual material from war diaries from two theoretical perspectives. The first one comes from Georges Didi-Huberman's writings on the representation of peoples ‘rising up’ in protest. The second perspective is linked to the concept of performative citizenship, invoked by Timothy Snyder to consider the democratic importance of the social mobilisation and solidarity that Ukraine has demonstrated in response to Russia's invasion. However, in contrast to Snyder's discussion that privileges conception of an active (‘diurnal’) subject, the material from Diaries of War and Life suggests that people ‘rise up’ not only in their activities and undertakings, but also have a ‘nocturnal’ dimension that comes into focus in narratives and representations of standstill and withdrawal from action—in the bomb shelter, in sleep, waiting. This chapter develops the concept of the ‘nocturnal people’ by elaborating some of its key aesthetic and political motifs in the diaries, both in relation to corporeality (a bodily shiver or a tremor) and to affect (dread, alarm, fear). The latter is outlined using the Ukrainian word tryvoga, which connotes a prolonged experience of dread, anxiety, a state of alertness and trepidation. The chapter concludes by noting relational associations of tryvoga as endurance of a painful experience with others that is extended in time and considers its implications for our understanding of witnessing war and mass violence.