Abstract: E.L. Doctorow’s The March highlights the ethical and epistemological significance of individual witness to historical understanding through its ironical foregrounding and forceful subversion of 19th century photography as a form of historical witness. This paper reveals the disadvantages and paradoxical ends of photographical witness by exposing how photography, under the sway of official discourse and personal motivation, distorts the historical truth of the Civil War and thereby manipulates history through its creation of a mythologized memory for posterity. On the contrary, The March accommodates a wide range of personalized accounts with its complex plot lines and multiple points of view, which manifest different aspects of the Civil War and present to the reader a realm of historical testimonies. In this way, historical truth of the Civil War resides in the multiplicity of individuals. This kind of historical understanding uncovers the human subject as the object of history, and history as a sector of intersubjectivity and a realm of testimonies. The March implies that history is history only to the extent that it has reached neither absolute explanation nor absolute singularity—to the extent that the meaning of it remains entangled in a realm of testimonies. In this respect, it becomes a more valid, more real and more truthful form of historical witness.

Keywords: E.L. Doctorow; The March; photography; fiction; historical witness

摘要： 多克特罗的《大进军》通过对摄影作为历史见证的反讽和颠覆，突出了个体见证对于历史理解的伦理和认识论意义。本文通过分析小说中自愿为历史作见证的摄影师在官方话语和个人动机的驱使之下歪曲现实、再造历史、营造单一记忆神话的过程，揭示了摄影作为历史见证手段的吊诡和缺陷。本文认为，《大进军》以多线索、多视角的叙述结构囊括了众多个性化的证人和难以化约的证词，形成了一种“见证之场”。这种历史书写揭示了作为主观性的人以及作为发生之场和见证之场的历史。只有当历史在发生之场中呈现，当它的意义在见证之场中被模糊而无限延宕时，历史才是历史。在这一层面上，《大进军》成为了比摄影更为合理、真确和诚实的见证。

关键词: 多克特罗, 《大进军》, 摄影, 小说, 历史见证