Testimonial Convers(at)ions

Authors

  • Richard Carter-White Macquarie University

Keywords:

witnessing, testimony, trauma, geography

Abstract

This short Thinking Space piece reflects on the theme of conversation in relation to the literary genre of survivor testimony. Opening with a reflection on the conversational dynamics of recent forms of interactive digital witnessing driven by artificial intelligence, the piece draws on trauma theory to consider other kinds of 'conversation' at work in testimony, and with it the distance and uncertainty that underpins testimony as a genre. 

References

Agamben, G. (1999) Remnants of Auschwitz: The Archive and the Witness. New York: Zone Books.

Aragoni, G. & Galani, A. (2021) ‘Recasting witnessing in museums: digital interactive displays for dialogic remembering.’ International Journal of Heritage Studies 27(2) 250-264.

Boswell, M. & Rowland, A. (2023) Virtual Holocaust Memory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Carter-White, R. (2022) ‘Witnessing the witnesses: responding to the testimonial spaces of the camp.’ Area 54(3) 347-354.

Caruth, C. (2016) Unclaimed Experience. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Derrida, J. (2000) Demeure: Fiction and Testimony. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Felman, S. & Laub, D. (1992) Testimony. London: Routledge.

Harrison, P. (2010) ‘Testimony and the truth of the other.’ In Anderson, B. & Harrison , P. (eds) Non-Representational Theories and Geography. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 161-179.

Harvey, R. (2010) Witnessness. New York: Continuum.

LaCapra, D. (2014) Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Levi, P. (2005) If This Is A Man / The Truce. London: Abacus.

Pain, R. (2021) ‘Geotrauma: violence, place and repossession.’ Progress in Human Geography 45(5) 972-989.

Traum, D., Jones, A., Hays, K., Maio, H., Alexander, O., Artstein, R., Debevec, P., Gainer, A., Georgila, K., Haase, K., Jungblut, K., Leuski, A., Smith, S. & Swartout, W. (2015) ‘New Dimensions in Testimony: digitally preserving a Holocaust survivor’s interactive storytelling.’ In Schoenau-Fog, H. Bruni, L, Louchart, S. & Baceviciute, S. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2015, Vol 9445. Springer: Cham.

USC Shoah Foundation (2016) ‘Nanjing Massacre Survivor Films Interview for New Dimensions in Testimony’. USC Shoah Foundation, accessed June 26th 2024 https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2016/10/12485-nanjing-massacre-survivor-films-interview-new-dimensions-testimony

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Published

2024-10-30

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2024)

Section

Thinking Space

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