Testimony in a Culture of Disbelief: Asylum Hearings and the Impossibility of Bearing Witness

The ability to bear witness is crucial for those forced migrants who seek asylum in Britain. Within the context of a wider “culture of disbelief”, those others are often greeted with suspicion and are categorised as “bogus” asylum seekers if they cannot provide credible testimony in support of their application. Despite the importance of such narratives, testimonies and life-stories, asylum seekers are frequently silenced and rendered speechless within the public sphere. The aporia of bearing witness is dramatised in Kay Adshead’s The Bogus Woman and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Credible Witness in order to reveal the hostile conditions in Britain and the impossibility of testifying to a “well-founded fear of persecution” in the process of seeking asylum. This article examines the ethics and politics of speaking and hearing life-stories following Jacques Derrida’s ethical writings on hospitality, testimony, and witnessing.