| Abstract | Focusing on a familiar case study from the work of Shoshana Felman, this article analyses the discourse on viewing video testimony. It identifies three schools of thought: that viewing video testimony is a form of primary witnessing; that it is a form of secondary witnessing; and that it is not a form of witnessing at all. Underpinning each of these arguments is an assumption that the emotional work of witnessing relies on spatiotemporal copresence. In response, this article argues that viewing video testimony is in fact a form of tertiary witnessing, defined by its paradoxical combination of spatiotemporal distance and emotional copresence. In order to think through the new mobility of video testimony, and the experience of encountering it online, this article revisits one of the first accounts of viewing video testimony -- Shoshana Felman's essay "Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching." In this article, Felman recalls how screening a video testimony in a graduate seminar sent her class into crisis.
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