Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 38

developed in light of the Holocaust should therefore have some relevance
also in connection with cases other than the Holocaust. Secondly, I want
to challenge Margalit’s emphasis on contemporaneity. Such a challenge is
in accordance with recent writings in the humanities and social sciences
decoupling the act of witnessing from presence on location when something
happens to which a person subsequently testifies from own experience.
The risk element of Margalit’s concept is probably the most difficult one
when applied to Botelho’s work. Taking risks is essential for the moral
witness; Botelho, however, avoided risks. �� Yet, he was supposed to be
exposed to the risks and dangers of “the men of [his] generation” (Botelho)
and thus to some extent “belong[ed] to the category of people toward whom
the evil deeds are directed” (Margalit). That he avoided risks disqualifies
him as a moral witness, although it can be argued that his work documents
what happened for some future use. Without risk-taking, however, an artist
cannot be a moral witness. As an artist, he cannot be a political witness,
either, because the core of political witnessing is dedication to factual truth.
But dedication to factual truth is not what art is about.
If we think about Botelho’s work in light of the terms suggested by Margalit,
then the following picture emerges. As stated above, Botelho does not
qualify as a paradigmatic moral witness. He does not have the actual and
personal experience of the suffering he engages with in his work. He did not
take personal risks during the wars; on the contrary, he avoided such risks.
Risk avoidance indeed triggered his engagement, or even obsession, with
the colonial wars. However, he belongs to the generation that was made to
suffer (and make others suffer) in the wars and he artistically engages with
what happened for present and future use. He does so, not as a journalist in
search of factual truth but as an artist. Arguably, he is not primarily interested
in what it was like but in what it felt like; the texts incorporated into his
drawings have an affective and emotional dimension irreconcilable with the
mere reporting of facts. His is an artist’s work, not a journalist’s or historian’s
work. While the texts reproduced in the artworks may have an intrinsic value
as testimonies of people who endured suffering, Botelho seems to share
the hope, specified by Danchev (����:�) as regards the artist as moralist,
“that there is, or will be, an audience of sentient spectators, viewers, readers,
absorbed in the work: a community, a moral community, for whom it stands
up and who will stand up for it.” “Witnesses,” Margalit (����:���) concludes,
“are vital not just for enlarging the scope of observational knowledge but
even more for elucidating the significance of human actions, symbolic acts,
��
The young men of his generation who actually fought the war are also said to have been
“disillusioned and unwilling to take risks” (Chabal ����:��).
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