1st Edition

Tapestry of Memory Evidence and Testimony in Life-Story Narratives

Edited By Nanci Adler Copyright 2013
    279 Pages
    by Routledge

    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    In this volume, contributors present narratives and explore the way they influence the perception of the past. While acknowledging the debate about the validity of qualitative research based on narratives, this volume aims to illuminate how truth and evidence form part of a much wider debate on the representation of history.

    The volume includes the work of historians but the interdisciplinary nature of the contributions shows that the validity debate also applies to the broader fields of cultural studies, sociology, and other social sciences. The distinction between memory and testimony is a crucial theme. Memory, though selective, is the basis of testimony. Testimony provides an audience with information that becomes evidence of what was seen or experienced. Such evidence can form the basis of legal truth.

    Nanci Adler and Selma Leydesdorff divide the volume into three core sections: Official Testimony and Other "Facts and Evidence"; The Creation of New History and the Integration of Collective Memory in the Story of One's Self; and Claims Based on Narratives vs. Official History. After a comprehensive introduction by the editors, the volume offers twelve essays by leading scholars. This work is a new offering in Transaction's acclaimed Memory and Narrative series.

    I: Official Testimony and Other “Facts and Evidence”; 1: Historicizing Hate: Testimonies and Photos about the Holocaust Trauma during the Hungarian Post-WWII Trials; 2: The Legacies of the Stalinist Repression: Narratives of the Children of Loyalist “Enemies of the People”; 3: “You Don’t Believe Me?”: Truth and Testimony in Cypriot Refugee Narratives; 4: Between Social and Individual Memory: Being a Polish Woman in a Stalinist Prison; II: The Creation of a New History and the Integration of Collective Memory in the Story of One’s Self; 5: “They Didn’t Rape Me”: Traces of Gendered Violence and Sexual Injury in the Testimonies of Spanish Republican Women Survivors of the Franco Dictatorship; 6: On Testimony: The Pain of Speaking and the Speaking of Pain; 7: Memories of Argentina’s Past over Time: The Memories of Tacuara; 8: History, Memory, Narrative: Expressions of Collective Memory in the Northern Cheyenne Testimony; 9: Voices behind the Mic: Sports Broadcasters, Autobiography, and Competing Narratives of the Past; III: Claims Based on Narratives versus Official History; 10: The “Book of Us”: Will and Community in South African Land Restitution; 11: “What May or May Not Have Happened in the Past”: Truth, Lies, and the Refusal to Witness Indigenous Australian Testimony; 12: Individual Desire or Social Duty? The Role of Testimony in a Restitution Procedure: An Inquiry into Social Practice; List of Contributors

    Biography

    Nanci Adler