Testimony: between the inside and the outside of language

Georgio Agamben's considerations refer the radicalised notion of testimony to the possibility of speaking 'in lieu' of someone experiencing an impossibility of speaking, as concealed in daily use of language. In language, testimony is a paradoxical assumption of the position of a dead or impossible subject of speech. In a performance situation, anomy is integrated in the structure of articulation. It is in and through the latter that a split between the langue as a potentiality of speech and the parole as its impossibility is unveiled. As a purely linguistic option, testimony is situated between Foucault's 'archive', i.e. conditions enabling the event (or, occurrence) of discourse and impossibility of speaking, which, by paradox, is entrusted to the tongue.