Paper Short Abstract:

I unpack how witnessing takes shape around a police plan implemented in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Brussels (2015/2016), i.e. the ways in which documentary and affective modalities of witnessing enable to speak to different audiences and complementary seek repair and demand responsibility.

Paper Abstract:

In this presentation I unpack how witnessing takes shapes around a police plan implemented in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Brussels (2015/2016), drawing on fieldwork between 2021-2023. I unpack the ways documentative and affective modalities of witnessing speak to different audiences and do complementary work to seek repair and responsibility. The police plan targeted (Islamic) civil society organizations and mosques. While the police outputs of the plan were mediatized, the experiences of organizations passed in silence and were publicly disavowed. In response to this silence, I assembled an archive of testimonies, documents from my interlocutors and media outputs to give organizations’ experiences of surveillance a reality. Although the subject is sensitive and politically charged, my interlocutors were often ‘relieved’ to talk about their experiences because of lingering feelings of injustice and remaining questions. The actual doing of this documentative witnessing is, in this way, reparative by allowing interlocutors to share their experiences. Such documentative witnessing is key to provide the necessary ‘evidence’ and appeals to human right organizations and politicians. Inspired by Thomas’ understanding of “witnessing 2.0”, I also create an affective witnessing that enables to generate new relations, feelings and conversations (Welcome & Thomas, 2021; Thomas, 2019, 2020). To do so, I co-wrote and performed in a theater play with three fellow researchers and a local theater organization, and I also write poems. These modalities enable to affectively witness experiences of surveillance, generate conversations with wider audiences, and situate these experiences in the postcolonial conditioning of Muslims.