When survivors of terrible events share their stories they risk
becoming one-dimensional symbols of an historic event – usually
tragic victims or unsung heroes. Too often, their testimony is
understood singularly as an individual act of witness, ignoring the
contexts in which these first-person accounts are invited, recorded,
heard, and diffused. Nor is enough heard of their important place in
social movements and within survivor communities themselves. Beyond
Testimony and Trauma considers other ways to engage with survivors and
their accounts based on insights gained from long-term oral history
projects in a variety of contexts, including factory closures,
industrial injury, eugenics and forced sterilization, the Holocaust,
genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia, Argentinian torture camps, the
Yugoslav Wars, and Jewish emigration from the Maghreb. The
contributors, all innovators in the field of oral history, include
Henry Greenspan who provides reflections from forty years of listening
to Holocaust survivors as well as an insightful afterword. They
demonstrate that – through deep listening, long-term relationship
building, and collaborative research design – it is possible to move
beyond the problematic aspects of “testimony” to shine light on
the more nuanced lives of survivors of mass violence. In the process,
they offer alternative approaches to the collection of oral history
that will shake the foundations of current historiographical practice.
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Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780774828949
Publisert
2021
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
University of British Columbia Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter